Producer Tim Errickson had encountered Gina's work at a writers workshop and sent it to me to gauge my reaction. My reaction was immediate and overwhelming — I was moved to tears. This was a play I needed to direct.

Mercutio Loves Romeo Loves Juliet Love is set in an all-girls Catholic high school in 2005, where the drama club is mounting a production of Romeo & Juliet. Behind the scenes, three teenagers — Ellie, Britt, and Amber — are navigating first love, missed connections, and the particular intensity of being young and queer and not yet having the words for any of it. The world sees them as girls. Not all of them are comfortable with that.

What Gina captures so precisely is how enormous everything feels in high school. Every look, every audition, every moment in the wings. The play holds all of that feeling completely seriously — and then, near the end, it telescopes out. We see these characters in the future, and all those things that felt so seismic have become whispers of memory. It's quietly devastating in the best possible way.

What surprised me in the rehearsal room was how vividly 2005 registered as a period. You wouldn't think fifteen years would be enough distance to make something feel like history — but it absolutely did. The friendship bracelets, the flip phones, the specific texture of that cultural moment. Our sound designer and I had enormous fun mining 2003 to 2005 for the music that underscored our transitions. Every song choice felt like a small act of time travel.

This is a love letter to theatre kids everywhere — especially queer theatre kids. To everyone who fell in love for the first time in a rehearsal room, who found themselves in a play before they found themselves in life. I was one of those kids. Directing this felt like going home.