I bought my ticket in advance: general admission. I was running late. I expected to sit in the back. 

The intimate black box space was arranged in a thrust: three sides of audience surrounding the performance space. The front row of seats were resting on the stage floor. Two more rows were elevated on black platform risers. Seats were filling quickly by the time I arrived. The performance was sold out. I managed to find a seat in the front row next to a woman who claimed to have taught the actor portraying Romeo. “You’re in for a treat,” she leaned in towards me, “He took to Shakespeare like a fish to water.”

Romeo and Juliet was the first play by Shakespeare that I ever read. I was fourteen. Romeo and Juliet was the first play by Shakespeare that I ever saw performed live. I was nineteen.

The lights went black and I saw the dark silhouettes of bodies take their marks on the stage floor. Three bodies entered immediately to my right then hit tableaux in the blackout. My chair was on the stage floor. Our feet were almost touching.

The lights went up, revealing the entire company standing on stage in silence, breathing in the moment, anticipating the prologue. That’s when I cried.

Almost every actor on stage was Asian.

Under the humming of the stage lights, the Nurse moved to deliver the first lines. 

Two households both alike in dignity… I followed her with my ears as she moved across the stage floor. Meanwhile my eyes were enraptured by the bodies like mine which crowded the corners. I laughed a little when I cried. I had expected Romeo and Juliet, but I had not expected it to look like this. As the Nurse moved through the prologue, I eyed the costumes of the three men standing next to me: contemporary. No samurai. No geisha. No ninjas. No gimmicks were needed to validate the bodies on the stage. I was not prepared. What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The lights dimmed for a transition. I shifted again and wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

Romeo and Juliet was the first play by Shakespeare that I ever saw performed by people who look like me. I was thirty. And I wept on the stage.