Bwog Arts Staff Writer Amy Meng recently sat down with Jessica Liu (BC ’26) to discuss her adaptation of Timon of Athens as the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe (KCST) Spring 2026 production and role as the show’s director. 

KCST will be performing a 1973 adaptation of Timon of Athens by Shakespeare. Originally set in ancient Greece, Jessica Liu’s (BC ‘26) adaptation, set in 1970s Chicago, explores the meaning of home and the theme of gentrification. This free production will be showcased three times, on April 16, 17, and 18, on Havemeyer Plaza. 

This interview has been edited slightly for clarity. 

Could you give me a brief introduction about yourself?

I’m Jess, a senior at Barnard graduating this semester. I major in English on the Urban Teaching Secondary Education track. I transferred from Syracuse after my freshman year. I was born in Chicago, and I’m currently living in Detroit, so I’m pretty solidly from the Midwest. 

What is KCST, and what does this student organization do? 

We perform early modern theatre for free—anything from before 1900. We just recently updated the cutoff dates, as it was previously just many canonical European authors, and we didn’t want to limit ourselves. 

Can you tell me about your involvement in KCST? How did you first come across the club, and why did you decide to join?

In my senior year of high school, I did a production of Twelfth Night for a Competitive One Acts competition. It was so fun; I got to play Feste the Clown. I never thought that Shakespeare would be something that I would perform seriously. I always thought it was something that happened in the past. I fell in love with performing Shakespeare through this. During freshman year at Syracuse, there were no student theater options, much less so one that did Shakespeare. That was not even a thing there. 

After I transferred to Barnard, I saw that there were a lot of other theater groups on campus. I started thinking about doing Shakespeare, since I had so much fun my senior year of high school doing it. I joined KCST in the fall of 2023. I’ve made a lot of friends through KCST, and I’ve been a KCST ride-or-die-er ever since. 

Can you tell me about the original play, Timon of Athens?

The original play is set in ancient Greece, but obviously, Shakespeare is writing from an Elizabethan English understanding of ancient Greece. It was originally characterized as a tragedy, but now it’s considered a “problem play” by some critics. In the original, Timon is a wealthy, nobleman of Athens, and there is this juxtaposition that is created between misanthropy and philanthropy. In the beginning, he is very generous and gives away substantial amounts of his money through fancy gifts to these ‘friends’ who only keep him around for his wallet. He ends up giving away all of his money, which sends him into a pretty deep depression. He then self-exiles to the remote forest of ancient Greece, and pretty much swears off humanity, becoming very misanthropic. He then dies of misery in the woods, broke and alone. 

It’s quite depressing. It’s also famously considered to be one of Shakespeare’s weakest works because people think it was a collaboration between him and another author, Thomas Middleton. The play was also one of his last works that Shakespeare wrote in the Folio. It’s also considered to be unfinished. The first scene in our show is 30 pages long, which is considered to be very uncharacteristic. We have another scene in our show that is pretty much three separate character sequences spliced together into one scene, which people also consider to be evidence of a collaboration, and also something that weakens the work. 

Why did KCST/you decide on producing an adaptation of this play? Is there a specific procedure when it comes to deciding what you guys will produce?

We have a procedure called A-Board, or Advisory Board, where current members of the troupe show up and vote on next semester’s production. They just happened to choose me, by the grace of God. It’s a pretty democratic process.

How does the setting of 1970s Chicago change the meaning of the original play? 

A big reason why I pitched this show is that I was born in South Chicago, in a neighborhood where gentrification has a big presence. Its impact on the neighborhood is quite large, as it is the neighborhood where the University of Chicago is located. For a little bit of personal context, you can criticize the way UChicago behaves in the neighborhood they are located in a lot of the same ways you might be able to do so for how Columbia University acts with residents in Harlem and Morningside Heights. A lot of the same practices are seen, such as with new dorms being built in a neighborhood that has already existed for a really long time and just pricing out its original residents. 

I was born into a setting like that, and when I read Timon of Athens for the first time, I began to think about how, if we contemporize the setting, it would change a lot of the reasons why he is forced out of society. In the original, it is completely his choice because the way that ancient Greek housing functions is completely different from how it functions today. I began to really tackle the concept of homesickness and what changing the setting and location would mean for a show like Timon of Athens, for something that happens to a character like Timon, and what that means for the town that he lives in. Coming at it from my perspective, there’s a lot more these days that might make a neighborhood or a town unlivable than just one’s own quest to be misanthropic. 

What parts of the original did you feel like you needed to preserve, and what were some of the significant changes?

The biggest change, (spoiler alert!) is that in the original, Timon dies offstage in misery in his quest to be misanthropic. But in my adaptation, I am leaving his death out; I am actually having it implied that he moves away to a new town because he can’t afford to stay in the one he is currently living in. 

Some of the things I wanted to keep intact are many of the elements of the problem play. In Shakespeare, one accepted definition of the problem play is that it tackles a social problem. In a quite paraphrased way, another definition is one that highlights deep tragedy and juxtaposes it with pretty humorous comedy. I found those elements really important to keep in this adaptation of Timon. I kept a lot of the comedic characters and jokes in because I think that despite the fact that a lot of people focus on the tragic and pitiful way to look at neighborhoods that are being gentrified, I think that that doesn’t represent them in a holistic fashion. I think that they aren’t just helpless victims of the world around them. Although their victimization is very sad, I think that these are still people who have the ability to feel joy, live full lives, and find joy in circumstances that are definitely less than desirable. 

Gentrification is a pain that deeply hurts, but I think that you are still a complex human being who is experiencing a bad thing, and that you still have a full life outside of the bad thing happening to you, is something I find very important to represent, especially because I grew up in a neighborhood with a similar experience. The people around me, the people that I knew, we all still had friends and playdates and laughter, all of these good, happy things that a child should grow up feeling. I felt like it was very important to keep that part in because neighborhoods are complex, and the people in them are complex. They should not just be defined as the bad thing that is happening to them. 

What have your experiences as the director been like? What do you enjoy about being a director, and what are the challenges? 

We started in January, and a personal thing that has been very big for me is that seniors in their spring semester, when they do the urban teaching track at Barnard, actually teach full-time. I’ve had basically 6 AM to 10 PM days, and usually later, as there are many fires I have to put out as the director. I’ve had a lot of very long days. 

The KCST spring show is a show that has a lot of different moving parts. It’s a very unique show—no other troupe on campus does a show like the KCST spring show. It takes place outside and is also a moving show. Usually, it features scene transitions from one place to another. Essentially, that makes the show very close to the model of a one-act competition, in which you bring everything with you and have to assemble from the ground up. You have to tear everything down at the end and bring it all back. Everything that our audience might see was assembled earlier that afternoon and will be gone by the end of the show at night. That’s why we start in January and go all the way to April. Because the show is outside, another big thing for actors to work on is projection; it’s often very hard to hear during the KCST spring show. The creative process is long, but very fulfilling, especially for such a beautiful product in the end. 

Since the show has no cuts, how do you approach directing students who may have vastly different levels of experience?

 I wanted to use my experience as someone in education to approach this production. I’ve thought a lot about my company space as one giant classroom because a lot of things are similar in nature. Most of the schools I’ve taught at are public schools; those are very similar to the no-cut aspect because anyone who lives in the district can go there. In my average classroom, I will have students who have vastly different amounts of experience, especially in something like the English language arts. Many people dislike the English language arts because it wasn’t taught to them in a productive manner, and it’s often because that’s just not their skill set. They were somebody who had a different level of experience from other people in the class, and they just didn’t feel seen or heard. 

Knowing that, I tried to make the rehearsal process a space where I used a lot of pedagogical practices; I used verbal call and responses, classroom management techniques, and community-building techniques for classrooms. There were many things that I did in an effort to make as diverse a company as I have, and the most inclusive experience throughout this show. 

What do you hope the audience takes away from this show?

The single biggest thing I hope is for the audience to remember what home is, not just for themselves but for everyone around them as well. The single biggest theme throughout all of Timon of Athens has been the concept of home, especially what it means when it changes. When people watch Timon, I want it to remind them of where home is for them, and more importantly, if home is somewhere that is a more stable concept for them, I hope that they remember those currently around the world where home is not stable at all. 

From Harlem to the countless countries that are currently facing humanitarian crises, where people do not have a home. There are also people in our country and at our borders who are being persecuted and afraid to leave their homes for fear of losing their homes forcefully. There are people in our train stations who are experiencing homelessness. I not only wish for the audience to remember what home means to them, but I also hope that they remember that home is not the same for everyone in our world.

Image via King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe’s Eventbrite Page for Timon of Athens