Written and Produced by: Nigel Semaj

Director: Jane Skapek

Choreographer: Nigel Semaj 
Set Design:Tessara Morgan Farley & Luke Farley

Scenic Production Builder: Adam Harper
Costume Design:Becca Janney
Lighting Design: Juan Juarez

Assistant Lighting Designer: Niya John
Sound Design: Jay Shovan 

Rehearsal Assistants: Sean DiGiorgio & Lukas O’Boyle

Fight: Nigel Semaj & Gil Mitchell

Marketing by Nigel Semaj

Marketing/Production Photographer:Kiirstn Pagan

Company Management: Stephanie Schuster & Marcus King

Assistant Producers: Mady Sims & Griffin DeLisle
Stage Manager: Morgan Decker

Lighting Assistant: Malaak McDonald

Overhire: Enzo Leone

Featuring: J PURNELL HARGROVE, CAYLA HALL, FRANCHESCA PARKER, CLIFF DOBY, IFFY ALACHEBE , JAUCQIR LAFOND, SHAQUAN PEARSON, VICKY GRAHAM, PABLO AKIRA RICHTER, JOSHUA ALLEN, and MICHAEL DUFFY

CALL ME BY ANY OTHER NAME… JUST AS SWEET is a queer reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set in the pulsing heart of Club Verona, ruled by our illustrious drag queen and host, Mutha Laurence.

Inspired by the electric energy of the ballroom scene, drag culture, and underground club life, this immersive production plunges into the complexities of queer love, grief, pleasure, and mortality. CALL ME boldly questions the very purpose of love itself. What unfolds is a fierce, poetic, and unapologetically raw night of dance, intimacy, and theatrical rebellion—exploring the edges of queer utopia while asking: what does it truly mean to love—and to lose?

Part party. Part drag show. Part nightclub. Part play.

Filled with love, sex, drugs, and grief, we invite you to spend a night of debauchery, tenderness, and unapologetic queerness at Club Verona.On a camping trip, three friends discover the stories they are sharing might have some ghostly truths to them.

“Nigel Semaj’s Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet, up now at the Voxel, demands reviewing in layers. The drag show/queer club one is 10/10, no notes, ate and left zero crumbs. I’ve been to worse actual clubs (in my youth). Way worse.”

—The Bad Oracle (REVIEW: Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet) 

—-

“Semaj isn’t too fussed with keeping the text pure, which is a relief, sometimes the fusion of Olde Englishe with common vernacular ends up absolutely tortured. Instead, they use it where it makes sense, drop it where it doesn’t. This results in an intentional pastiche, emphasizing a fascinating slip slide along timelines that are at points sweeping (like, the 1400s) and other times much more intimate (the sweet beginnings of a doomed relationship). The dialogue succeeds because it sounds like the sorts of conversations you hear out in the alley, feet killing you during a smoke break, funny and weird, and just a little bit heartbreaking.”

—The Bad Oracle (REVIEW: Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet) 

—-

The audience that finds Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet is going to return to it again and again. There have been other queer Romeo and Juliet takes, sure, but has there been one as queer, defiant, raw, fresh, and unapologetically fierce? Doubtful. Verona is burning, baby. Burning.

—The Bad Oracle (REVIEW: Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet) 

—-

“Semaj’s great strength is pulling us in with this ecstatic queer joy and then showing that it springs not only from pain, but from incredible internal fortitude in a world where, still, almost nothing about being queer (especially queer and Black) is scaffolded or supported.”

—The Bad Oracle (REVIEW: Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet)