Sam Gold is a Brooklyn-based director who received critical acclaim for his work on Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” “Hamlet” and “Othello.” On Sept. 26, Gold is bringing “Romeo and Juliet” to the Circle in the Square theater, starring Kit Connor as Romeo and Rachel Zegler as Juliet. 

“I’ve been cycling through major tragedies. I’ve been going through all of them, and this is the last one for me,” Gold said. “I’ve been on an eight-year exploration of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. They speak to the world right now, and they feel like the best way for me, as an artist, to explore what it means to be alive right now.”

Gold’s adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” which features music by Jack Antonoff of The Bleachers and choreography by Sonya Tayeh, is the director’s way of connecting to a younger audience through theater. Gold’s directorial work on “An Enemy of the People,” starring Jeremy Strong of “Succession” fame and Michael Imperioli from “The Sopranos” and “The White Lotus,” drew a younger crowd and was well-received online, which ignited an interest in Gen Z theater-goers for Gold. 

“We had a very young audience for ‘Enemy of the People,’ and I was really moved by how a play that was thinking about an older society, but which had major cultural, social, political ramifications about today, was really hitting young people,” said Gold. “I felt that young people needed a meaty exploration of the of some of the large things that people are going through right now. Theater provides something a lot of other cultural mediums aren’t providing — this very deep, intense, full, complicated, nuanced exploration of what it means to be alive right now, and I could just feel young people really hungry for it.”

Since the youthful reception to “An Enemy of the People,” Gold developed “Romeo and Juliet” to target the fears and anxieties of modern times while searching for truths in the past experiences of humanity. 

“‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a younger playwright’s play. I see grief being explored in the fireworks of pain, the aching and longing of the way that love is so alive in Romeo and Juliet,” said Gold, noting that Shakespeare’s later tragedies have a clearer note of nihilism and the catastrophic.

Gold says he starts every project with writing, and finds his connection to the themes of the content through that creative process.

“I’m an avid reader. I love writing, and I start with writing,” said Gold. “If I fall in love with a piece of writing, I connect to it emotionally, and I want to bring it to the stage.” 

Gold continued, “All the productions I’ve done have kind of come from the same basic gesture on my part, which is this is a very deep piece of writing from a very long time ago. Let’s go through something together, and let’s see how it makes us feel about the world. They’re all contemporary productions that use the play to dive deep into some feelings that reflect on the culture we live in.”

In “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare’s writing is uniquely poetic and embedded with layered messages about the human condition. 

“It’s a play where people use words in joyous ways,” said Gold. “[The poetry] connects them to the other characters. It’s like a sport, and that’s important to the play. We started with investigating the language and the sport of playing with it. From there, we started to stage the play where their physical life would be added. There’s a lot of movement and physicality, so the movement has to be wedded to all the joy they find in the poetry.”

Not only does Gold want to connect to a younger audience, he also connected with young actors to bring his vision to the stage. 

“It was very important to me that we have a very young Romeo and Juliet,” Gold said. 

Zegler, playing Juliet, is only 23. Zegler rose to fame from playing Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (2021) at only 17. Since then, she’s played lead roles in films like the “Hunger Games” prequel and is set to play the live-action Snow White for Disney in 2025. Zegler has spoken out about the misogyny and controversy she’s been exposed to since rising to notoriety. Zegler’s Broadway debut as Juliet makes sense, especially considering the themes Gold captures in his version of the play. 

“Juliet is a very full human, and that is a very bold and surprising gesture on Shakespeare’s part. [Petrarchan lover] was a genre that everyone in Elizabethan England knew. You’ve got this young man who’s speaking beautiful poetry about a girl he’s in love with, and you take that story and instead of giving him a love object, Shakespeare does this huge move and provides the Petrarchan lover with a human — a full blown, intelligent, brilliant, thinking, three-dimensional young woman,” said Gold. “It’s taking the genre and blowing it out of the water. With Juliet, the way she grows up over the course of the play, during Shakespeare’s time it was jaw-dropping, exceeded all expectations and forced the audience to reckon with the fact that women are not lesser than men.”

Connor is also only 20 years old, but has already accumulated several credits to his name. The pair are experiencing their Broadway debuts together, making the fresh take on an old tale even fresher and promising audiences a unique chemistry.

“Shakespeare is really trying to say something about young people, people who haven’t grown up to see the way the world works and haven’t lived in the violence of not getting along,” said Gold. “People don’t get along long enough to know and have hope and have the sense that they can fall in love and change the world. The world might turn out better for them than it did for the people before them.” 

Gold lives in Prospect Heights and has lived in Brooklyn since 2004. Gold said he moved to Brooklyn as soon as he broke out on his own, and described the youthful neighborhoods as the place that felt most like home. 

“My mom grew up in Brooklyn; my mom’s from Flatbush. I was born in the suburbs and moved into Manhattan when I was 16. I’ve always been very connected to the city,” Gold said. “Brooklyn was the neighborhood of New York that felt most like my people and felt like my community. All my friends are out here, it just always was an obvious place for me to be.” 

When at home, Gold spends his time immersed in the community surrounding Prospect Park. 

“I live right across the street from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Brooklyn Museum and Prospect Park. I couldn’t speak more highly of those locations, and I’m always there,” Gold said. “That’s why I live where I live, because I love the park. I love the gardens. I love the museum. I love getting delicious food at the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market and the Park Slope food co-op. I love the restaurants out in Prospect Heights, and there’s amazing playgrounds for kids. It’s a really wonderful place to have a family. I love my neighborhood.” 

Living in a younger part of the city, Gold draws connections between the issues and media that younger people connect with and is thrilled to see younger people experiencing theater. Gold said his goal with “Romeo and Juliet” is to “help young people fall in love with theater.” 

“I’ve been working on Broadway for a long time, and I’ve never felt this strong of a connection between a young audience and plays on Broadway,” said Gold. “I feel that in our age of technology and the way generations younger than me have grown up with so much of their world mediated by technology, they come into a theater and they’re available to the live experience.”

“Romeo and Juliet” opens for previews on Sept. 26 at the Circle in the Square on West 50th Street, and will officially run from Oct. 24 to Feb. 16, 2025. Tickets are available at the show’s website.