The design was deeply personal for me. Much of my early inspiration came from stories told by my late grandmother, Lois, about her childhood growing up in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. Those memories—of hardship, resilience, family, and making a life with very little—became an important starting point for thinking about the world of the play. My grandmother passed away during the design process, giving the work an unexpected additional meaning for me.

Visually, we looked toward rural Central Kansas and the Great Plains during the 1930s. Rather than creating a literal historical environment, I wanted to reduce the landscape to its essential qualities: openness, distance, scarcity, and a sense of a world shaped by difficult circumstances. The minimalist scenic design allows the actors and Shakespeare’s language to remain at the center while the environment quietly establishes the pressures surrounding the characters.

The Great Depression setting also offered a different way of understanding the conflict in Romeo & Juliet. In a community where resources are limited and survival is uncertain, family, reputation, and loyalty can carry enormous weight. Against that austerity, the relationship between Romeo and Juliet becomes a moment of possibility—a glimpse of another life within a world that often feels predetermined.

Designing the production for New Swan’s outdoor, in-the-round theatre made restraint especially important. Instead of trying to reproduce the vastness of the Great Plains, the scenery suggests it, allowing negative space and the surrounding environment to become part of the composition.

Ultimately, this Romeo & Juliet became one of my more personal scenic designs. It connects Shakespeare’s story to the visual history of Great Depression-era America, but it also connects to stories that were passed down through my own family. In that way, the design became both a landscape for the tragedy and a quiet tribute to my grandmother and the world she remembered.