PICT's Juliet meets her Romeo in 1930s New York

woman flair to it, where she is very smart. She uses her resources to get exactly what she wants — which is Romeo,” Ms. Knapp said.

The text gives her license to illuminate Juliet as a young woman who “has a little playbook in her mind at all time,” Ms. Knapp said. “She even says in her first meeting with Romeo, ‘You kiss by the book.’ She knows what it is going to be like, and he is it. He motivates her to use her pretty extreme intellect for her age.”

In all of Shakespeare there are words and passages that have become inescapable in everyday speech, or as familiar as a favorite song lyric.

One of those lines is Juliet’s: “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

“Wherefore” meaning why — why does he have to be Montague, the family despised by Juliet’s Capulet crew?

“I want to make sure that is not cliche, or too close to what people are expecting, but also honoring it and making it understandable,” Ms. Knapp said. “As an actor, you yourself have to understand what everything means to make it so that the audience understands it, even if they have heard it all before.”

Ms. Knapp’s musical theater background is a plus because of the rhythms of Shakespeare’s language and her conservatory training on acting a song.

She will be calling upon all of her experience for this monster role.

“Juliet is like the female Hamlet, honestly,” Ms. Knapp said. “She manipulates her surroundings just like he does. She’s really complex, and I think that is what I am bringing to this character. Juliet is not just a teenage girl. She’s very smart.”