An hour before curtain, Oscar Diaz and his fiancée Janelly Mendoza both look a little shell-shocked as they're being ushered onto the stage of the Delacorte Theater, the Central Park home of Free Shakespeare in the Park.
"I'm Francis," says actor Francis Jue. Tonight, he not only plays Friar Lawrence in the Public Theater's production of Romeo and Juliet — he's also going to be the officiant at Mendoza and Diaz's real, legal wedding.
The couple, who have known each other since they were children, live in Laredo, Tex. — that's where they met the Public's associate artistic director Saheem Ali.
Ali was in Laredo because his Romeo and Juliet is set at the U.S. Mexican border. In it, Romeo's family is Latino; Juliet's family supports the border patrol. Ali wanted to see for himself the wall there that separates the two countries.
Mendoza and Diaz "introduced me to the culture," Ali says. And they told him about a special ritual in border cities. A Mexican citizen and a U.S. citizen will marry on a bridge— each standing in their own country — with an officiant in the middle.
"So I thought, 'Oh, wouldn't it be beautiful to actually have a real wedding at the end of the play to mirror Romeo and Juliet's wedding?'" Ali says. "That marriage didn't get to see the future. But if we had a real couple who we married at the end, and they got to go into the future, it just gives us all some hope."
He mentioned the idea to Mendoza and Diaz at the time — they just brushed it off.
"Just regular people like us don't do that stuff, you know?" Mendoza says. "But then Saheem messaged us. And then it's like, 'Okay, it's happening!'"
This is Diaz's first time in New York; Mendoza came once before, when she was 8. They filled their days before the show with all the touristy things — Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square.
Just two months ago, they met Ali. Now they're about to be married on stage.
But they're not the only couple to get married at Shakespeare in the Park this summer. There's a real wedding, or vow renewal, after every performance this summer: 32 in all.
"One of the greatest gifts I've ever received was being asked to [officiate these weddings]," Jue says. He adds that, in this time of deep divisions in America, "that strangers come together for a communal experience in the theater . . . is a modern miracle. And we reflect that back to the audience every show by actually marrying a couple."
After Romeo and Juliet concludes, Jue asks for the audience's attention as Mendoza and Diaz make their way back onto the stage. He's wearing a brown blazer and cowboy boots. She's in a long ivory dress and sparkly shoes.
"Romeo and Juliet didn't get their lifetime together," he says. "But tonight, there is a couple who came all the way from the border wall at Laredo, Texas, who would like to commit to their lifetime together with all of you as their witnesses."
Mendoza and Diaz kneel and face each other and say their vows. The audience explodes.
After, the couple are glowing as they show off their rings and sign the wedding license. "I'm going to make sure you stay married," Ali jokes, after he signs as a witness.
"It's real now," Mendoza says, smiling.
"Is it what you imagined?" someone asks.
"Better!" she says.
This story was edited by Luis Clemens for broadcast and digital. Eleana Tworek mixed the audio.
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