This multi-award winning play won great critical acclaim earning a Lortel Award as the longest-running, Off-Broadway version of Romeo and Juliet in New York history. Calarco’s R&J is the story of five senior boys living in a rigid, religious boarding school in the 1950s. One night, they discover a copy of the “banned play” Romeo and Juliet: saucy, raw, decadent, and dangerous. At first, the boys laugh at the sexual innuendos but things begin to change as they act out the characters in the play. For some, the roles become very real, but for all the boys, the story becomes an awakening, a chance to learn about themselves, each other, and their emotions.

Calarco has said this adaptation was about uncovering the passion, defiance, and violence in Shakespeare’s text but it is also about young men, how they interact when confronted with sex and sexuality.