In the arts, there are rare moments when innovation, vision, talent, and collaboration converge to redefine the creative landscape—watershed moments that signal new eras. In 1920s Paris, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas helped shape the Modernist movement in their salon. In 1947, Marlon Brando’s Broadway performance in A Streetcar Named Desire marked a transformative leap for American theater. So too, the recent Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) and Hyperion Shakespeare Company production of Romeo & Juliet was more than a milestone at Harvard—it was a breakthrough that dared to reinvent a classic. With bold experimentation, visceral performances, and a fearless embrace of interdisciplinary artistry, this production transcended expectations, setting a new standard for what theater can achieve, and has challenged the very essence of how we experience Shakespeare.
Directed and co-choreographed by Adrienne Chan ’25, it was not a typical retelling. Quite differently, it achieved Chan’s aspirations of embodying the spirit of “gesamtkunstwerk”—a total artwork—to reimagine the familiar: blending choreography, storytelling, and design into a profoundly moving whole—like no Shakespeare we’ve seen before.
Paris: A Crucible of Reinvention
1920s Paris—a city alive with creativity and bold ideas, home to Jean Cocteau, Josephine Baker, Man Ray, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—was a haven for boundless creativity and free thinking. There, limitations dissolved, collaboration and innovation flourished, and the avant-garde thrived, uniquely redefining what art could be.
Gertrude Stein’s salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus in the 6th arrondissement was a pivotal force in this creative upheaval. Her gatherings brought together some of the most daring artists and thinkers of the early 20th century—all willing to push against the constraints of their mediums. In her salon, Picasso and Matisse debated the essence of form, Hemingway and Joyce explored the frontier of narrative language, and Duchamp challenged the very definition of art itself. It was a catalyst for reimagining creativity—where Cubism, Fauvism, literary modernism, and new conceptual art converged and took off, a spirit vividly captured in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which brings to life the dynamic energy and cultural revolution of 1920s Paris.
This Romeo & Juliet embodied that same creative audacity and dared to defy expectations. Like Gertrude Stein’s salon, which fostered unbounded imagination and bold reinvention, this production sought new paths, pushed beyond the familiar, and forged a powerful, intimate connection with each audience member—pulling us deeper into the narrative and inviting a fresh, urgent perspective on Shakespeare.
Chan and her co-choreographer Jimena Luque ’25 used Shakespeare’s text as a launchpad, transforming familiar narratives into something startlingly new. They broke the story apart and breathed new life into it. They challenged conventions, forged new connections, and created a space where love, rage, hope, and grief felt raw and immediate.
Just as Gertrude Stein’s salon fostered radical collaboration and boundary-dissolving ideation, Chan and Luque’s production also bridged artistic forms, drawing from an eclectic mix of dance styles—from Afro-Peruvian motifs to Andean folkloric rhythms—to shape a movement language that transcended traditional storytelling. We had no choice: in their presence, Shakespeare became a living, breathing force capable of connecting us to our most human selves, and not just a literary relic of the past.
Chan and Luque’s Romeo & Juliet blazes a trail of bold reinvention, an example of the boundless possibilities when tradition meets courageous exploration—exploration that acknowledges fear, yet pushes forward regardless, transforming hesitation into artistic breakthroughs. It celebrates the spirit of collaboration, of art that not only reflects life but transforms it, inviting us to question, to feel, and to rediscover the extraordinary within the familiar.
Reinvention Demands Courage
It’s often the intensity of unrestrained emotion that sparks transformation. Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire shocked audiences with its raw realism in 1947, shattering the polished veneer of the traditional acting of that generation and those that came before. Brando’s performance redefined acting—and the audience’s role too, making them complicit in the rawness of the experience.
Brando’s performance marked a definitive turning point away from a Hollywood defined by the charm and polish of actors like Cary Grant—into an age of deeply immersive, emotionally volatile performances that broke from tradition. Brando embodied the character’s primal, flawed humanity, turning acting from a stylized craft into a visceral confrontation with truth. This paved the way for subsequent “Method” actors to inhabit their roles by fully immersing themselves in a character’s emotional and psychological state, “living” the character, to create a deeply authentic performance.
Chan and Luque’s Romeo & Juliet delivered a transformative jolt, redefining theatrical storytelling with Brando-like raw intensity and fearless artistry, and in doing so has opened up new creative possibilities for theater at Harvard and beyond.
In the hands of its two leads, Sachiko Kirby ’26 and Elio Kennedy-Yoon ’25, this production radiated a raw intensity, unfiltered and strikingly authentic. Their performances claimed Shakespeare for us, for today, with emotion and authenticity taking center stage. Like Brando’s Kowalski, Kirby and Kennedy-Yoon broke down the barriers between actor and audience, revitalizing the text into a visceral portrayal of the human condition that demanded attention and connection.
It was clear that Kirby and Kennedy-Yoon were not just acting; they were living, feeling, and daring us to join them in their journey. Their embodiment of young love crackled with energy—overflowing with an honesty that refused to be diluted and an intensity that commanded presence. It was a fearless confrontation with the peaks and valleys of human experience, making Shakespeare’s characters undeniably real.
Kirby’s Juliet, rooted in fierce independence, redefined the character as a force of modern autonomy. Kennedy-Yoon’s Romeo, infused with disarming optimism and emotional openness, reflected the courage required to hold on to hope in uncertain times. Together, they embodied the core of the production—an unapologetic celebration of love and loss as transformative forces, redefining the possibilities of theater.
A Collaborative Vision Realized
This production was far more than the sum of its parts—it was a testament to gesamtkunstwerk, where every contributor plays an integral role in bringing a bold artistic vision to life.
The cast, a dynamic blend of Harvard and other students, delivered extraordinary energy, with performances deeply connected to the narrative that dissolved the line between acting and storytelling. The set, costumes, lighting, and makeup helped this all fit seamlessly together. The sound design subtly underscored pivotal moments—not too big, not too small, not too loud, not too soft…just right—blending tension with Prokofiev’s vivid and lyrical music, reinforcing the emotional arcs of the story.
Behind the scenes, precision must have aligned nearly perfectly with creativity. The result that wowed all of us points to seamless integration of stage management, dramaturgy, and production coordination, to give us all a performance that felt flawless.
This dynamic collaboration collectively brought Chan and Luque’s vision to life, creating an electrifying, immersive experience that made Romeo & Juliet feel vibrantly alive and undeniably painful.
Shaking the Dust Off Shakespeare: A Revolution in Storytelling
For centuries, Romeo and Juliet has endured countless retellings—beautiful and grand, yet often perfunctory productions that fail to ignite the raw human spark at the play’s core. Too often, audiences leave unmoved, the language lofty, the tragedy distant. But Chan and Luque’s Romeo & Juliet shattered these expectations. It wasn’t merely performed—it was lived. It bled, breathed, and insisted its audience feel every moment of its urgency and humanity.
In the production’s program, Chan described this project as one of her ‘heartbeat ideas,’ filling her with an indescribable rush of hope, fear, risk, and longing to create something where every element, from choreography to costumes, stands as a masterpiece in its own right. Each of these pieces are essential to the whole—reinventing what Shakespeare could mean to a 21st-century audience. Through its bold creativity and unrelenting immediacy, the production awakened Romeo and Juliet, bridging centuries to connect with the audience through its raw, unrestrained humanity.
Liberating The Classic
Chan and Luque dared to liberate Shakespeare of its dusty conventions, leaving us with a raw, visceral embodiment of the human spirit. They reanimated Shakespeare’s work with an immediacy that made it pulse with new life. As Chan shared in the production’s program: “There is nothing more liberating than the earnestness of dance, and only with this earnestness can I navigate the wind and weather of being human. Only with liberation can we love and live as we deserve to, and will.”
Like Stein’s Paris or Brando’s transformative leap in Streetcar, this Romeo & Juliet will be remembered as a watershed moment—when Chan, Luque, and the entire crew dared to redefine Harvard theater. For those in the audience, it was a journey that commanded our full attention.
Chan and Luque’s vision is pure artistic courage—a spark to inspire this generation and the next. It makes us wonder: What does happen when artists step up and take risks (when they feel the fear and move forward anyway), and push boundaries—not just in the stories they tell, but in how they tell them? What happens when they flip the script on classics or dream up something totally new? How could Chan and Luque’s bold approach inspire others to dig deeper and create work that deeply connects with others?
Chan urged in the Romeo & Juliet program notes: “Feel with us.” And feel we did, with every heartbreak, and every impossible hope. Chan and Luque’s Romeo & Juliet hasn’t just rewritten this classic—it’s rewritten its audience, leaving us ruined for anything less than extraordinary.
Todd Bida ’87 (toddbida@alumni.harvard.edu) is a member of the Lowell House SCR, P ’26, and an alumni of the Harvard Independent. He is a lifelong fan of the arts at Harvard and is inspired to share the brilliance of this groundbreaking production—one that uniquely stands out from the hundreds of different performances he’s experienced at Harvard and beyond.