"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life."
Carmen Khan Director
David Raphaely Romeo
Melissa Dunphy Juliet
A Message from the Director
"So through the eyes love attains the heart:
For the eyes are the scouts of the heart,
And the eyes go reconnoitering
For what it would please the heart to possess."
Guiraut De Borneilh (ca. 1138-1200?)
Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Paris and Helena, Orpheus and Eurydice, Odysseus and Penelope, Heathcliff and Catherine …
When we think of these stories, of the great lovers of the world, we are struck by their courage to trust what their eyes saw. In the face of the leviathan: tradition, they have a faith in their own experience, not just in what they are told.
Romeo and Juliet are prepared to live their own authentic lives, be it ever so brief, seeing their identity in the other and so, validating their own humanity and individuality. To them love is bigger than death; it is the recognition of their souls counterpart in the other. As Joseph Campbell says so poetically in The Power of Myth:
track, that has been there all the while, waiting for you,
and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are
living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss,
you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you all
the time."
Carmen Khan
Artistic/Executive Director