‘Romeo and Juliet’ Are Cross-Dressed Lovers in New Staging

This is a story that begins on the boards of William Shakespeare’s theater, the Globe, where theater announced itself as it never had before.

Every kind of character--from king to clown, from barmaid to magician--came to life. Every kind of subject--political, historical, ephemeral--was allowed to take the stage.

Everything seemed possible in the theater, except one: Women portraying women. Even in a society ruled by a woman, Elizabeth I, women were barred from the stage. Necessity demanded that teen-age boys--old enough to master the dialogue, young enough not to be fully developed men--take on the roles of Desdemona, or Portia, or Beatrice, or Juliet.

Women have since taken over those roles, including--in a nice bit of revenge--some in which the women disguise themselves as men to get their way.

But just as feminism has invaded and upended the conventions of male-dominated Shakespearean scholarship, so a new, feminist Shakespeare performance ethic is invading theater. It asks a simple yet radical question: What would have happened if the players on the Globe stage had all been women?

The first serious attempt to answer that question began four years ago, when voice teacher Kristin Linklater and psychologist Carol Gilligan formed Company of Women, an offshoot of the acclaimed Massachusetts-based Shakespeare & Company.

Company of Women has organized several labs and workshops composed of actresses and preteen girls in Boston and Portland, Me., planning a touring production of “Henry V.”

But while Company of Women’s long-term project continues, actor-director-producer and Company of Women participant Lisa Wolpe couldn’t wait any longer. She is putting into practice the feminized Shakespearean style. The result is the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company. Its first production, “Romeo and Juliet,” opens Thursday at the Hollywood Actor’s Theatre, and “Measure for Measure” is planned for 1994.

Company of Women came to Los Angeles in January and held a workshop at Universal Studios. Even before that, Wolpe says, “Kristin and I talked about a satellite company.” At Universal, “43 women came, and they bonded. It was an amazing thing for a lot of women who are in L.A. for industry work, and not necessarily for Shakespeare.”

It’s a leap from a pleasant workshop, though, to a full production. Wolpe says she knows the difference.

“I have a gift for organizing, and the desire to bring together a group of artists. I see it as organizing a symphony orchestra for the stage.”

Some of those artists have strong links with Linklater’s Company of Women.

Amsterdam-trained fight choreographer Erica Bilder, on hiatus from Company of Women, is staging the many duels in “Romeo and Juliet.” Fran Bennett, a veteran of regional theaters from the Guthrie in Minneapolis to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, is a Shakespeare & Company voice teacher and Company of Women member. Natsuko Ohama has collaborated with Linklater in Shakespeare & Company, the Working Theatre and Company of Women, and has led provocative workshops on Shakespeare and male sexuality.

“There is a great misconception about macho behavior,” says Wolpe, “and Natsuko’s workshop has proven invaluable in helping us as women understand what it’s like to be in a man’s body.” It is the body, Wolpe stresses, where the voice is released--a central notion in Linklater’s influential book, “Freeing the Natural Voice.”

Wolpe explains that Ohama, while noting the connection between male phallus and a weapon, “doesn’t reduce this body part to another weapon. Rather, we have to think about how vulnerable men feel about protecting it. It’s an exposed area, after all.”

With the sword fights that punctuate “Romeo and Juliet’s” drama of the bloody feud between the Capulets and Montagues of Verona, “it isn’t simply a question of ‘behaving like a man,’ ” says Wolpe, “but incorporating how a man moves with how he thinks and talks. This is key to me, since I play Romeo, and the teen-age guys don’t talk a lot about their feelings, but rather, run away from them. Romeo, though, can confront his emotions almost as a poet would.

“If I had grown up in a tract home and had had an ideal life,” says Wolpe, 34, “I would have less to say with Romeo. But both my parents killed themselves, and it gave my life a great sense of sadness. I didn’t want pity, but understanding, which is what strengthens you.”

After editing her high school newspaper and majoring in journalism at UC San Diego, Wolpe says, she “left the cold, hard world of newspapers for a warm family in the theater.” She mentored with the late director Alan Schneider, who told her to go straight to New York and bypass graduate school.

Her acting roles have been eclectic. She has made clown performance something of a specialty and is one of the few American actresses of her generation to have portrayed King Lear.

“I’ve known Lisa since 1978,” says Linklater, “and it’s clear to me that she’s an extraordinarily capable and ambitious woman. I’m delighted that she has the chutzpah to form this company and get this show off the ground--which is difficult with Shakespeare under any circumstances, but with an all-women company, it would seem almost impossible.

“When you hear and see the relationships Shakespeare dramatized not through male voices, but through female ones,” Linklater adds, “you can’t take the characters for granted anymore. It’s not a man playing a man, and in an almost Brechtian way, it puts some distance between you and the play, asking you to take stock of the play’s meaning in a new way.”

Actually, Wolpe’s company is taking stock of “Romeo and Juliet” in two ways: not only with gender manipulation, but going to the original source. Shakespeare & Company associate Neil Freeman has provided the group with a copy of the First Folio edition (the facsimile of Shakespeare’s original version) of the play.

Rather than shun what may seem a hopelessly antiquated text, Wolpe and her women are using it as a clue to unlocking the play’s meanings.

“Look here,” she says, pointing to a line highlighted by the capitalized word, “Quarrell.” “The way it’s capitalized, the spelling, indicates its sound and importance. In the brief rehearsal time we have, we’re trying to study and use as much of this as we can.”

A group of girls from the Penny Lane organization, which assists homeless girls of all ages, has visited some “Romeo and Juliet” rehearsals.

Wolpe wishes she had more time, to employ some of the Linklater-Gilligan techniques of interactive exchanges, “so that girls are allowed to be expressive and strong and not censor themselves in the way they’re typically socialized to do, so the women can pick up the strengths of the girls.”

“Romeo and Juliet” opens Thursday at the Hollywood Actor’s Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood, and continues at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m. Sundays, through April 4. Tickets are $15. Call (213) 466-1767.