featuring interviews with actors Alejandra Escalante and Naire Poole
and University of Oxford professor Sophie Duncan

The podcast relaunches with an episode all about Shakespeare’s first tragic heroine. In the season 2 premiere, we explore what makes Juliet extraordinary: she’s brave, confident, and resourceful — all at age 13. Also discussed: Romeo and Juliet’s popularity among Latinx theater-makers, Juliet’s relationship with her parents and the Nurse, whether Juliet is really a character who exhibits agency, and the Taylor Swift song “Love Story.”

Guests on this episode are Naire Poole (she/they), who played Juliet for Shakespeare & Company’s Northeast Regional Tour earlier this year; Alejandra Escalante (she/her), who starred in an 1840s Alta California-set Romeo and Juliet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012; and Dr. Sophie Duncan (she/her), Research Fellow and Dean for Welfare at Magdalen College, University of Oxford and author of 2023 book Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine.

This episode contains explicit language.