Interview with the Director Sarah Barker-Doherty

Romeo & Juliet: Love Across a Divided City

From Shakespeare's Verona to Cold War Berlin, director Sarah Barker-Doherty explains why a 400-year-old tragedy still speaks to today's teenagers—and why the conflicts of the past remain uncomfortably familiar.

Three years, three productions, and a return to Shakespeare. After A Midsummer Night's Dream and ALICE, Sarah Barker-Doherty is directing her third production at the International School of Hamburg. This time, she and co-director Clayton Doherty have chosen Shakespeare's most famous tragedy, Romeo & Juliet, relocating the story from Renaissance Verona to the politically divided Berlin of the late 1940s.

For Barker-Doherty, Shakespeare's enduring appeal lies in his ability to speak across generations and cultures.

"The thing about Shakespeare is that they are really good stories," she says. "The themes in Romeo & Juliet are as relevant today in 2026 as they were when they were first written."

At an international school, she argues, familiar stories provide valuable common ground. They can be interpreted in different ways, but their purpose remains the same: to connect with students and audiences.

The decision to tackle Romeo & Juliet also reflects the growing ambitions of the school's theatre programme. Having worked with some students for three consecutive productions, the directors wanted to offer them a new challenge.

"The idea is to stretch and challenge those students, take them on a journey with us," Barker-Doherty explains. "We're pushing the bar much higher in terms of their approach to the text and the characters."

From Verona to Berlin

The idea of setting Romeo & Juliet in post-war Berlin emerged partly from the directors' visits to the city and their interest in Germany's turbulent history following the Second World War.

For Barker-Doherty, the connection is also personal. Her father was stationed in Berlin after the war and witnessed the Berlin Airlift. His experiences, alongside conversations with others who lived through the period, helped shape her fascination with a city struggling to rebuild while being pulled apart by competing political systems.

"We wanted our students to look at their local history, but also look at how history can repeat itself."

In this interpretation, the Montagues and Capulets are divided not simply by an ancient family feud but by competing visions of Germany's future.

The Capulets are aligned with the emerging socialist East, embracing the promise of order and stability after years of destruction. The Montagues look westwards, towards economic reconstruction, American cultural influences and greater personal freedoms.

Both families have survived the war. Both are rebuilding their lives. Yet their contrasting ideologies reinforce the divisions between them.

Against this backdrop, the romance between Romeo and Juliet becomes more than a forbidden relationship. It is a challenge to the political loyalties and inherited prejudices of the adult world.

When music becomes rebellion

Music and dance play an important part in bringing this historical setting to life.

The production incorporates classical dance, swing and the emerging sounds of rock 'n' roll, reflecting the tensions between tradition, conformity and a new generation's desire for freedom.

There is also an unexpected local connection.

Just a short distance from ISH stands the Christianeum, which was a centre of Hamburg's Swing Youth during the Nazi era. Young people embraced jazz, swing and international culture at a time when such expressions of independence could bring them into conflict with the authorities.

Barker-Doherty already knew about the Swing Youth movement, but its close connection to the school's neighbourhood came as a surprise.

"What I hadn't realized is how personal it was to Hamburg," she says.

Although the production is set several years after the Nazi era, the directors see a cultural continuity between the Swing Youth and the post-war generation experimenting with new music and forms of expression.

In one particularly telling scene, swing music disrupts the Capulets' formal party—a deliberate clash between established authority and youthful rebellion.

"It's another way of gatecrashing someone's party and pushing your own ideology onto them," Barker-Doherty explains.

Teenagers will be teenagers

For all the historical and political context, Barker-Doherty insists that Romeo & Juliet remains fundamentally a story about adolescents.

"Teenagers are teenagers," she observes, regardless of the historical period in which they live.

In this production, Romeo and Juliet are young people who have grown up amid war, destruction and uncertainty. Their sudden, overwhelming love is shaped by their desire for freedom and by the intensity of their experiences.

Barker-Doherty sees their relationship as both impulsive and sincere.

Romeo's earlier infatuation with Rosaline is deliberately portrayed as superficial—he enjoys the idea of being in love. His relationship with Juliet, however, is something different.

"They are, to all intents and purposes, head over heels in love with each other. Nothing else matters."

Their secret meetings and the danger of crossing boundaries add another dimension to the story.

"Is it more exciting when someone says no?" she asks.

For young people who have spent much of their lives surrounded by restrictions, love becomes inseparable from rebellion.

Shakespeare beyond the classroom

Making Shakespeare accessible to young performers is another important part of Barker-Doherty's approach.

Rather than beginning with unfamiliar vocabulary, she asks students to explore the characters' motivations, relationships and emotional conflicts.

"They have to know the meaning and objective of what the characters are feeling, what the characters want."

Only once students understand the story from the characters' perspective do they begin examining Shakespeare's language in detail.

Drawing on her experience working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Barker-Doherty sees the rhythm and structure of Shakespearean verse as particularly valuable for young actors, including students learning English as an additional language.

The aim is not simply to understand the words but to make them meaningful on stage.

The other performance: what happens backstage

For Barker-Doherty, the success of a school production cannot be measured by what happens on stage alone.

"We believe in company," she explains. "You're only as good on stage as you are backstage."

Students take responsibility not only for acting but also for lighting, sound, technical cues and the coordination of the performance itself.

During ALICE, for example, the production involved more than 100 lighting cues, approximately 45 sound cues and multimedia elements. Students helped manage and operate this complex technical programme.

For Barker-Doherty, one of the most rewarding moments comes when the production begins to run independently of the adults.

"They have ownership over it. They're passionate about it. They care."

The experience can also change students' educational paths. She recalls one student who initially joined the technical team for A Midsummer Night's Dream, subsequently took drama classes, performed in ALICE and is now studying IB Theatre.

Two years earlier, theatre had not been part of his plans.

The cross-age relationships are equally important. Students from Grades 6 to 12 work together, with older students mentoring younger performers and friendships often continuing long after the final curtain.

The school community plays its part too, particularly parents who help with costumes, meals and the many practical demands of putting on a production.

This collective effort, Barker-Doherty believes, is one of the great strengths of school theatre.

Breaking the cycle

Ultimately, Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy about young people caught in conflicts they did not create.

Barker-Doherty hopes the production will encourage audiences to reflect on the human consequences of division, whether in Shakespeare's Verona, Cold War Berlin or the contemporary world.

"There's never any conflict without casualties," she says.

The play also raises uncomfortable questions about how attitudes and prejudices are passed from one generation to the next, often without being questioned.

"Someone's got to break the chain," she argues. Otherwise, societies risk repeating the same divisions and hostilities.

But the director does not want audiences to mistake the production for a history lesson.

"It isn't a history play. We're setting it in a context. It's still the same Romeo & Juliet."

Her hope is that students leave the experience having developed new skills, discovered new interests and formed connections with artists and professionals beyond the school community.

And what advice would she offer the Montagues and Capulets if she could summon them to a parent-teacher conference before tragedy strikes?

First, she laughs, she would tell Romeo and Juliet to concentrate on their homework. They have plenty of time for romance.
Then she would remind the families of the values that underpin the ISH community: empathy, responsibility, resilience, inclusion and the importance of working together.

Would the families listen?
"No, I don't," she laughs. "I wish they would."

Perhaps Shakespeare knew a thing or two about parents and teenagers after all.