Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

UnDisciplined: Romeo and Juliet — an age-old tale of love, death and pandemics

Shakespeare is constantly being reinvented with contemporary interpretations intended to offer modern relevance. So it's probably not surprising that a contagious outbreak, masks, and simmering anger over lockdowns are at the center of some new productions of Romeo and Juliet. Except those aren't actually new elements. This play has always been about life in a pandemic.

Isabel Smith-Bernstein is a dramaturge with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, which this year is staging four Shakespeare works — Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. The festival runs through early October and you can learn more about those plays and the other being staged in Cedar City at bard.org.

Stay Connected
Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.