Words in the Wild: A “Romeo & Juliet Experience” with the English and Creative Writing Department
By Peyton Williamson ’27
After the success of a completely sold-out two-weekend run of A Romeo & Juliet Experience, The Words sat down to discuss it with English and Creative Writing major Asher Younger ’27, who was the sound designer for the play, directed by Randy Reyes.
I had the privilege of being the soundboard operator for the show and got to work with and observe Asher’s hard work throughout the rehearsal and tech process. The show kept all the classic dialogue of Romeo & Juliet that the audience knows and loves, but Reyes decided to allow the audience to move freely within the world of Verona and interact with the characters. The Words was thrilled to hear all about the experience of working on such a timeless show with a modern twist!
Younger first got into sound design during his junior year of high school when he was selected for a show called The Memory Eaters, written specifically for his high school. This first ignited his passion for design, “mainly because I got to use a song by The Amazing Devil for one of the fantasy fight scenes,” Younger joked. After The Memory Eaters, he did three more shows throughout his high school career, his favorite being Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle. Sound designing by himself for the first time, that show confirmed that he wanted to work with sound in some medium post-high school.
Younger has always loved music, and says he is very lucky to have sound design be something that he “enjoys both the artistic and the technical side of.” As he’s learned to work more with sound, editing, and processing, he finds it more interesting, and it’s a skill set he’s been able to perfect.
He especially enjoys making Qlabs (a software used during shows to control, cue, and automate audio and sometimes video in real-time) “and especially the work of sitting down to actually find files and editing them and putting it all together into one big project and then applying it to a show.” Although tech week—the week-long stretch of rehearsals right before a show opens—is particularly work-intensive for him, “it’s so rewarding to see it all come together by opening [night].”
For A Romeo & Juliet Experience, Younger’s role as designer started back in November 2025, even though rehearsals weren’t slated to begin until January. The designers met with the director to discuss visions for the show. Younger described the experience as “having two jobs, being the artist and the technician. In the beginning, it’s just the artistry.”
He kept a running playlist, which ended up with over a hundred songs, consisting of music he liked or associated with the show, and would present it to Reyes to see where their visions did and didn’t align. Once they had settled on the best music to use, Younger’s job shifted to the more technical aspect. He made a big draft of the songs to be used during the show and ran through them during rehearsals, making cuts and edits until he had a finalized Qlab.
Younger said that his main goal with his design was to “avoid other Romeo & Juliet depictions. Nobody can beat the Radiohead song in the credits of Leonard DiCaprio’s version!” He explained that throughout a lot of his process, he was trying to recall the idea of “being 16 and in love for the first time” and find music and songs that evoked that feeling. He used a lot of music from video games, which he joked “was beautiful, but a lot of people recognized it, so I won’t be doing that again.” Reyes had the caveat of only wanting one vocal artist to be used in the whole show, which Younger had to factor in and navigate around with his own ideas during the designing as well.
When asked about the most difficult part of his job, Younger had a specific answer and a broader one. In terms of A Romeo & Juliet Experience, the dance sequence in Act I was very difficult to put together, involving timing the sound and lights to coincide with each other and with the actors themselves. Having to run it over and over again during tech week and slightly changing the timing and sound levels each time got very tedious very quickly. Broadly, being a designer usually means working on your own, so figuring out how to manage collaborating with others pretty heavily on this show was something Younger had to manage as well. It was such a joy for me to get to work alongside Asher and watch all of his hard work come to fruition, and then enact it myself as the soundboard operator during the show. The Words wishes a warm congratulations to Asher Younger and the rest of the Romeo + Juliet cast and crew for such a successful run and doing The Bard justice!