Welcome to Mojave

A Note from the Director

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most known and beloved plays; a piece of romantic history woven into the fabric of our cultural quilt. For some; a fantasy of the most powerful romantic love, beautiful, luminous, earth-shattering, worth dying for. For others, a painful and maybe humiliating experience from high school English class. Whatever the case may be, be prepared to experience this story in a completely different way.

I have chosen to set Shakespeare’s story in the here and now, against the landscape of the heat, beauty, and history of our Mojave desert home.

Romeo and Juliet are not wide-eyed teenagers: they are fully formed adults with history, baggage, stories of their own to tell of heartbreak, disappointment and joy. They are you and me. The characters surrounding them are those who’ve loved them in their darkest hours, those who’ve held them when they were in pain, those who celebrated their successes in life and love, those who know all of their secrets. Their people. Our people. Many will seem familiar, not just from high school English class, or a film you may have seen in the 1990’s, but from your very life and desert community.

While the world surrounding the play has changed, Shakespeare’s language has not. I have not re-written or modernized Shakespeare’s text. I have simply re-shaped the circumstances in which the words are spoken, allowing the characters to inhabit a world familiar to you. Shakespeare’s story of the star-crossed lovers has been told and retold throughout centuries. This one is for you.

TownSquare, a fictional social media platform, will allow you to get a peek into the people of Mojave’s lives as they exist outside of Shakespeare’s words. Please enjoy exploring their worlds and getting a glimpse of their ordinary—and extraordinary—lives. We cannot wait for you to meet them on stage.

Welcome aboard! Let’s have some Shakespearean fun!

Liz Wessel
Director, Reimaginer, Romeo & Juliet: A Desert Reimagining
Joshua Tree Shakespeare Company