"Against Interpretation": Actor-Driven Shakespeare and a Love for Scholarship

Abstract: This article argues that José Zayas's 2022 production of Romeo and Juliet at the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) used Carla Freccero's essay "Romeo and Juliet Love Death" as a touchstone, and that this decision was an enormous departure for the ASC, which has made avoiding productions with clear directorial intention central to its brand. The essay takes readers through the history of that avoidance by finding an animosity toward critical theory, especially that related to gender and sexuality, in the scholarship of J. L. Styan and John Russell Brown that inspired the ASC's founding. I find, to the contrary, that Zayas's queerly focused production articulates a new step for the ASC which opens new doors for collaboration between directors and scholars. This production marked not only a new moment of directorial intervention at the ASC but is also a call for scholarship that explicitly aims itself toward production.