{"id":11953,"date":"2026-03-31T15:21:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=11953"},"modified":"2026-03-31T16:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:38:15","slug":"a-romeo-and-juliet-experience-words-in-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-march-26\/a-romeo-and-juliet-experience-words-in-the-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Words in the Wild: A “Romeo & Juliet Experience” with the English and Creative Writing Department"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Peyton Williamson ’27<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the success of a completely sold-out two-weekend run of A Romeo & Juliet Experience<\/em>, The Words<\/em> sat down to discuss it with English and Creative Writing major Asher Younger \u201927, who was the sound designer for the play, directed by Randy Reyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had the privilege of being the soundboard operator for the show and got to work with and observe Asher\u2019s hard work throughout the rehearsal and tech process. The show kept all the classic dialogue of Romeo & Juliet<\/em> 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<\/em> was thrilled to hear all about the experience of working on such a timeless show with a modern twist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Younger first got into sound design during his junior year of high school when he was selected for a show called The Memory Eaters<\/em>, written specifically for his high school. This first ignited his passion for design, \u201cmainly because I got to use a song by The Amazing Devil for one of the fantasy fight scenes,\u201d Younger joked. After The Memory Eaters<\/em>, he did three more shows throughout his high school career, his favorite being Tom Stoppard\u2019s On the Razzle<\/em>. Sound designing by himself for the first time, that show confirmed that he wanted to work with sound in some medium post-high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A behind-the-scenes glimpse of rehearsals from the sound table.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Younger has always loved music, and says he is very lucky to have sound design be something that he \u201cenjoys both the artistic and the technical side of.\u201d As he\u2019s learned to work more with sound, editing, and processing, he finds it more interesting, and it\u2019s a skill set he\u2019s been able to perfect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He especially enjoys making Qlabs (a software used during shows to control, cue, and automate audio and sometimes video in real-time) \u201cand 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.\u201d Although tech week\u2014the week-long stretch of rehearsals right before a show opens\u2014is particularly work-intensive for him, \u201cit\u2019s so rewarding to see it all come together by opening [night].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For A Romeo & Juliet Experience<\/em>, Younger\u2019s role as designer started back in November 2025, even though rehearsals weren\u2019t slated to begin until January. The designers met with the director to discuss visions for the show. Younger described the experience as \u201chaving two jobs, being the artist and the technician. In the beginning, it\u2019s just the artistry.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t align. Once they had settled on the best music to use, Younger\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Younger said that his main goal with his design was to \u201cavoid other Romeo & Juliet<\/em> depictions. Nobody can beat the Radiohead song in the credits of Leonard DiCaprio\u2019s version!\u201d He explained that throughout a lot of his process, he was trying to recall the idea of \u201cbeing 16 and in love for the first time\u201d and find music and songs that evoked that feeling. He used a lot of music from video games, which he joked \u201cwas beautiful, but a lot of people recognized it, so I won\u2019t be doing that again.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>, 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<\/em> wishes a warm congratulations to Asher Younger and the rest of the Romeo + Juliet<\/em> cast and crew for such a successful run and doing The Bard justice!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201927, who was the sound designer for the play, directed by Randy Reyes.  I had the privilege of being the soundboard […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1199,"featured_media":0,"parent":11937,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11953","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11953"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12127,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11953\/revisions\/12127"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}