At Cal Shakes, we’ve worked to center community care, dignity and trust in all we do. Regrettably, with our production of ROMEO Y JULIET, we were not able to support an environment where all the artists could bring their full selves to the creative process. As such, we made the difficult decision to make some changes to our acting company, in the hopes that we might offer a path forward for the production as a whole.

We take full responsibility for this decision. While we respect the confidentiality that prevents us from sharing further details at this time, we acknowledge that some of our protocols and practices were not sufficient to meet everyone’s needs. We recognize that the time it took to make our decision impacted many individuals. We thank all involved for their patience and grace through these past few weeks. We commit to fully reviewing and examining our practices around communicating with and supporting guest artists and will share out our learnings at a later date.

We know that the values that lead us, lead us not away from conflict but often towards it; and we are grateful for all the learnings we encounter that teach us to be a better organization.

Thank you to the company and creators of ROMEO Y JULIET for the continued blessing of this production.