When the World Crumbles, Where Do You Place Your Hope?
The streets of Verona are burning. Bombs fall. Young people move through rubble with the kind of reckless urgency that comes from knowing tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. And in the middle of it all, two teenagers fall desperately, impossibly in love.
This is Shakespeare for 2026 — raw, urgent, and uncomfortably relevant.
Opening April 9 at the Ent Center for the Arts, Theatreworks Colorado Springs presents Artistic Director Max Shulman’s bold reimagining of the Bard’s most famous tragedy, set against the backdrop of World War II. It’s a homecoming of sorts: Romeo and Juliet was Theatreworks’ very first Shakespeare production in 1976, 50 years ago. Now, in the company’s landmark anniversary season, Shulman returns to the play with a vision that honors its history while speaking directly to our fractured present.
Three Days That Change Everything
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet unfolds in just three days — from Saturday night to Tuesday morning. Shulman uses that compressed timeline to devastating effect.
“Shakespeare is obsessed in this play with what happens when people try to speed the world up to get what they want, and the world isn’t ready to move that fast,” Shulman explains. “By setting it during wartime, where every decision carries life-or-death weight, we understand why these characters move with such urgency.”
For Rakeem Lawrence, who plays Romeo, that urgency is both a challenge and a gift. A graduate of the University of Northern Colorado with a BFA in Acting, Lawrence brings a grounded intensity to Shakespeare’s most famous romantic lead. “I hope audiences leave feeling like they’ve experienced something real — something that connects to their own lives,” he says.
Rachel Schmeling, making her Theatreworks debut as Juliet, has been living with Shakespeare since she was ten years old. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, she’s played Juliet before — but never like this. “I hope people feel more connected to something,” she says. “To their emotions, themselves, the world around them.”
Together, Lawrence and Schmeling anchor a production that asks what happens when love collides with a world determined to tear it apart. Colton Pratt, who plays the swaggering, doomed Mercutio, has appeared in every Shakespeare production Theatreworks has staged since 2018. He describes Mercutio as “the embodiment of life being lived”—a loyal friend whose zest for life becomes both a lifeline and a tragedy waiting to happen. “Shakespeare’s words are bottomless pits and gifts that keep giving,” Pratt says. “How can a man who lived over 500 years ago continue to tell stories we so deeply relate to still today?”
The Music That Remembers
One of the production’s most striking innovations is an original character inspired by the Cellist of Sarajevo — a musician who played in the ruins of war to honor the dead and remind the living of their humanity.
Tommy Patrick Ryan, who plays both the Prince and the Busker, brings his cello to a production that asks: What is the ritual that moves us from trauma to healing? A former theater major at the University of Michigan returns to the stage after a 13-year hiatus. Now based in Colorado Springs, he’s found his way home—to Shakespeare, to the stage, to the power of art in dark times.
“We’ve created a character who plays live music throughout the production,” Shulman says. “He’s a witness to everything that unfolds, and his music becomes a kind of ritual — a way of carrying us from darkness into light, from grief into memory.”
When Life Meets Art
Some of the most powerful moments in this production exist in the space between the script and the lives of the people performing it.
Sarah Duttlinger plays the Nurse — Juliet’s closest confidante, a woman who has loved and lost a child of her own. Duttlinger arrived at rehearsals two-and-a-half months postpartum, actively nursing her infant daughter, Magnolia. “The full text talks about how the Nurse had a daughter she’s lost, but she tells Juliet she was ‘the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed,'” Duttlinger reflects. “That’s a tender relationship I now have an active, living relationship with.”
Marcin Mesa returns to Theatreworks as Tybalt, the play’s most volatile force. A Colorado Springs native who spent years working in Los Angeles, Mesa recently returned to Colorado. “Coming back to Colorado and returning to theater that stands for something more than money has been genuinely rehabilitating,” he admits.
For Mesa, Tybalt’s certainty—his belief that order must be enforced at any cost—feels uncomfortably current. “In a time when our culture is wrestling with polarization and dehumanization, it matters to me to play him as a fully real person, not a cartoon villain.”
Nickolas Ruíz is making their Theatreworks debut after thirteen years away from the stage. For Ruíz, a brown queer artist, this production represents something bigger than a role. “I hope people see a brown queer kid who just wants to make art—art that has felt inaccessible to people like me,” Ruíz says. “We belong in these stories too. We can carry the weight of these characters. We belong on the stage.”
A Question For Our Time
If audiences leave with one question, Shulman hopes it’s this: How do we move from darkness into light in a way that doesn’t cause catastrophe?
“It’s about recognizing that we live in a world that fails to pay attention, where the focus is only on ourselves,” he says. “This play reflects where we are. And maybe, if we slow down and truly see each other, we can find a different path.”
In a world that often feels like it’s burning, Theatreworks offers something rare: a space to witness our own urgency, our own capacity for both love and destruction, and perhaps — if we’re willing to look—a way forward.
Romeo & Juliet runs April 9–May 3, 2026 at the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theatre, Ent Center for the Arts, 5225 N. Nevada Avenue. Performances Thursdays–Saturdays at 7:00 p.m., Saturday matinees at 2:00 p.m., and Sundays at 4:00 p.m. UCCS students always free with valid student ID.
Tickets: entarts.org or 719-255-3232
Theatreworks Colorado Springs is the professional theater company in residence at the Ent Center for the Arts at UCCS.
