Queer Voices, Short Plays: Pascale Florestal on 'The Balcony,' Her Queer Contemporary Take on 'Romeo and Juliet'

The Boston Theater company's "Queer Voices Festival" returns for a second year to center LTBQ+ voices with a collection of seven short plays by local playwrights from the queer community: "The Balcony or The Last Night," by Pascale Florestal (she/her/hers); "Halftime v. Intermission," by Michael J. Bobbit (he/him); "Left Overs," by Roni Ragone (they/them); "Limpia," by Leonard P. Madrid (he/him); "Oop, Can't Say That," by Tom Zhang (they/them); "Séance," by Dylan Reed Berman Horowitz (he/him & she/her); and "Zelda," by Haz Cady (he/him). (The festival runs March 21 – 23; tickets and more information are available here.)

Directing the plays are producing director Lyndsay Allyn Cox (she/they), as well as Shira Helena Gitlin (they/them), Hannah McEachern (she/her/hers), and Nathan Justiniano (he/him+).

Florestal, a busy director in her own right, tells EDGE about her contribution, a modern-day riff on "Romeo and Juliet" that sees two women, Manushka (Aurora Lee) and Michelle (Shannon Keelan), at a crossroads in their lives and their relationship. The balcony in this case is the site not of a lovelorn serenade, but romantic angst in a concise slice-of-life short play that reminds one of what it was like to be young and in love, but also in the midst of youth's changes and myriad possibilities.

Florestal also gives her take on Shakespeare, the current political moment, and how theater helps marginalized people remain visible and free.

EDGE: We last spoke in 2021 when you were directing "TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever" for SpeakEasy Stage Company. What have you been up to since then?

Pascale Florestal: Wow, 2021! I currently am the Director of Education and Community Engagement with the Front Porch Arts Collective, and I've directed more shows since then. I recently directed an opera with White Snake Projects called "Is This America?," a brand-new opera about Fannie Lou Hamer at the Strand Theater. Before that, I directed a production of "Next to Normal" with Central Square Theater and the Front Porch. Currently, I continue to support [Front Porch] as a full-time staff member.

EDGE: This is the second year of the Boston Theater Company's Queer Voices Festival. Can you tell me a bit about the festival?

Pascale Florestal: Yeah, so, the festival is a new play queer festival that highlights local playwrights, specifically queer and LGBTQI playwrights, and continues to show those stories in the city, and uplift the playwrights here in Boston.

EDGE: Which of the directors for this year's Queer Voices Festival is handling your play?

Pascale Florestal: Lyndsay Allyn Cox is directing. She's one of the producers for the festival.

EDGE: Things now are certainly different than they were one year ago, when the inaugural festival happened. Marginalized communities of all kinds, especially the queer community, are under threat in a way we haven't seen in at least a generation. Do you have a feeling that the situation today is lending a sense of renewed energy or urgency to the festival this year?

Pascale Florestal: Absolutely. I think it's so important that we continue to remind the world that queer and LGBTQI stories are important for people to see, and that representing them and continuing to uplift the artists and people who are part of that community is even more important now – and to remind the world that we're here and we're going to keep being here, and no one's going to change that.

EDGE: You describe yourself as "a Haitian American, queer, Black woman." As such, do the times we find ourselves in inspire you personally to speak out more forcefully?

Pascale Florestal: Yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and I moved here about 10 years ago, but I remember being a young person and not really seeing people like me on TV, in theater, in magazines – really, in anything. So, I always felt like I had to change who I was as a young person to be accepted. And it wasn't until I was much older and I was able to start creating my own work that I realized that I don't need to do that; that it's important to show people and the world who we are and our experiences, even if they are different. I think it's so great to be able to be part of this festival, be able to show another queer experience that I wish I saw when I was growing up. I hope that other people in this generation can see themselves in this and know that their stories are important, that people need to see them, and there's so many of them out there.

EDGE: In a sense, this play ties back to "Romeo and Juliet" – a classic play from the past – but this really is a play about the future, centering on people at a point in their life when their future feels uncertain. How did you begin to conceptualize and develop this?

Pascale Florestal: I've read "Romeo and Juliet" many times, and in the last few years it's been done [a lot]. There was this revival on Broadway; Huntington did a production a few years ago; Actors' Shakespeare Project did "Romeo and Juliet" [last summer]; A.R.T. did it. It's one of those plays that we always go back to.

Though I love theater, I'm not really a big fan of Shakespeare. I think he's great, I'm so appreciative of what he has done for our industry, but he's not one of my favorites. I think one of the reasons I never really gravitated towards Shakespeare was, I didn't feel connected to a lot of the things that the characters went through until I got older and realized the universality of the themes. I wondered, "What would it be like to have a 'Romeo and Juliet' that still felt that same way, but was in the world of today?" I was also inspired by the Baz Luhrman "Romeo + Juliet" with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. I was bored one weekend and I re-watched it, and I thought, "What if this was two people and they were queer?" And to also be a little honest, this is based on my actual wife. This is a real moment that happened to me and my current spouse. So, I thought about that, and I wondered, "What would it be like to put a real-life moment into a theatrical classic moment that we all know so well, but give it a little bit more of a modern vibe?"

EDGE: Something I like about "The Balcony" is there is a little bit of a wink at how Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" is a teen horndog. He's madly in love with Rosalynn, until he sees Juliet, and suddenly, she is the love of his life. It's like, if they didn't take the poison, how long would that have lasted?

Pascale Florestal: Right. I think something I really wanted to kind of explore is this thing of a new chapter in your life, especially when you're graduating from college, or you get a new job. The excitement of that thing sometimes makes you feel like the thing that you're experiencing right now isn't enough. I wanted to play with, "What if the thing you're exploring right now is also important? How do you deal with the new and the old and the soon to come?"

EDGE: Michelle and Manushka are the ones who are involved, but we start off with Manushka talking with another character, Sarah [played by Julia Hertzberg] – is Sarah a possible other romantic interest, or she more of a sounding board?

Pascale Florestal: Oh, I like that! She's the best friend that everyone has that is the sounding board and the word of wisdom, or maybe not wisdom all the time. She may not have the best ideas, but she just gets you to where you're supposed to be.

EDGE: How hard is it to write a short play that's going to take 10 or 12 minutes to perform?

Pascale Florestal: Oh my god. It's actually so much harder... this play actually started at 20 minutes, when I wanted to whittle it down to 10 there were a lot of things that I really didn't want to take out. It took, like, three or four drafts before I was like, "Okay, this 10-minute version makes sense, and I feel good about it." It's much harder to write a 10-minute play than it is to write a full-length play.

EDGE: I got a sense of Michelle that maybe she's non-binary, maybe she is a little more masculine in her affect. She has the sort of approach a guy would take to with the situation.

Pascale Florestal: I think that's definitely the vibe, and I don't think she knows that just yet. It's so cool that you pick that up.

EDGE: What is coming up next? You are so busy, there must be a dozen other projects you've got on the burner.

Pascale Florestal: You are not wrong. Up next, I'm directing another opera with White Snake this coming June, "For the People Like Us." It's a new original opera written by students in Boston about living in Boston and the gentrification in Boston. That goes up June 28 at the Strand Theater, and then I'll be directing a play called "No Child" by Nilaja Sun at Gloucester Stage in August.

"Queer Voices 2025" at the Boston Theater Company runs March 21 – 23. For tickets and more information, follow this link.