UCLA Students Rewrite Romeo and Juliet as Gay Latino Love Story

UCLA Students Rewrite Romeo and Juliet as Gay Latino Love Story

Shakespeare’s works get reinterpreted all the time but this is a complete change of the story. Students think they’re being edgy by doing things like this.

The College Fix reported:

UCLA grad students create gay, Latino Shakespeare play ‘Romeo and Julio’

A trio of graduate students at UCLA have “adapted” the Shakespeare classic “Romeo and Juliet” to tell an “inclusive” love story between a white man (Romeo) and a Latino man (Julio).

As reported by The Daily Californian, creator Oscar Emmanuel Fabela said he was inspired by “Hamilton: An American Musical,” and by often having been typecast as a gangster or thug due to his sexuality and ethnicity. (Gays are typecast as gangsters?)

Other than the play’s title — “Romeo and Julio” — some pronouns and a few gender-specific terms, Fabela, along with co-producers Lesley Elizondo and Beth Lane, didn’t change much else.

“This story, being put through an immigrant, gay lens, still works,” Fabela said. “We can use this over 400-year-old text and change nothing but the pronouns and it’s still relevant.”

From the story:

The timelessness of the text gives the play enough flexibility to be adapted for LGBTQ and Latino communities, Fabela said. The original play features a scene in which Romeo must flee the country after killing a man. In the students’ version, graduate student and cinematographer [Lesley] Elizondo directed Fabela not to let go of his on-screen lover Romeo, who must leave Verona, Italy, forever after being banished for his crime.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.