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“Contemporary imaginings of Romeo and Juliet frequently play to the tragedy… In fact, the play is filled with humor that is often either excised for time or lost to an unfamiliar image or syntactical choice that challenges the 21st century ear.” Aaron Malkin, Dramaturg
Playwright
Hansol Jung
Hansol Jung is a playwright from South Korea. Productions include Wild Goose Dreams (Co-production: The Public Theater and La Jolla Playhouse), Wolf Play (NNPN Rolling Premiere: Artists Rep Portland, Mixed Blood, Company One), Cardboard Piano (Humana Festival at Actors Theater of Louisville),Among the Dead (Ma-Yi Theatre Company), and No More Sad Things (co-world premiere at Sideshow Theatre, and Boise Contemporary Theatre). Commissioning institutions include The Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theatre, National Theatre in UK, Playwrights Horizons, Kennedy Center, Artists Repertory Theater, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation grant with Ma-Yi Theatre and a translation of Romeo and Juliet for Play On! at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her work has been developed at The Public Theater, Royal Court, New York Theatre Workshop, Victory Gardens, Berkeley Repertory’s Ground Floor, Sundance Theatre Lab, O’Neill Theater Center’s New Play Conference, Lark Play Development Center, Salt Lake Acting Company, Boston Court Theatre, Bushwick Starr, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Asia Society New York, and Seven Devils Playwright Conference. She is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship at Lewis Center for the Arts, Whiting Award, Helen Merrill Award, Page 73 Playwright Fellowship, Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop Fellowship at the Lark, 2050 Fellowship at New York Theater Workshop, MacDowell Colony Artist Residency, and International Playwrights Residency at Royal Court. She has translated over thirty English musicals into Korean, including Evita, Dracula, Spamalot, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, while working on several award winning musical theatre productions as director, lyricist and translator in Seoul, South Korea. Hansol holds a Playwriting MFA from Yale School of Drama, and is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab, NYTW’s Usual Suspects, and The New Class of Kilroys.
Dramaturg
Aaron Malkin
Aaron is the Literary Director & Dramaturg at New York Theatre Workshop and has been on the Artistic Staff at the theatre since 2012. At NYTW, he serves as the resident dramaturg, oversees the literary office, co-administers the 2050 Artistic Fellowship, and works extensively on the theatre’s public programming initiatives. Before moving to New York, Aaron worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and Arena Stage as a dramaturg and producer. As a freelance dramaturg, Aaron has worked with the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ma-Yi Theater Company, and People’s Light and Theater Company. He has collaborated with Ayad Akhtar, Hammaad Chaudry, Sibyl Kempson, Anaïs Mitchell, Rachel Chavkin, Colman Domingo, Nathan Alan Davis, Mfoniso Udofia, Hansol Jung, Heidi Schreck, Jeremy O. Harris and Lucas Hnath, among others. He has been published in HowlRound: A Journal of the Theater Commons, Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Asides Magazine, and Arena Stage’s Sub/Text: Your Virtual Dramaturg. Aaron is a graduate of Brown University.
In Print
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare’s famous play finds new life with a translation into contemporary American English.
“For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” In this new version of Romeo and Juliet, written in accessible modern English, Hansol Jung breathes new life into Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. By closely examining the familiar language and focusing on the subtleties of the text, Jung illuminates a surprising and more nuanced world than many of us have come to expect from the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers.
