JULIE: A New Take on Strindberg's Classic is Coming to Shall See Theater

Shall See Theater and producer Zihe Tian present Julie, a world-premiere adaptation that reimagines August Strindberg's Miss Julie within the Asian community, holding a ruthless mirror up to the enduring, shape-shifting mechanics of class, power, and desire. Presented in English across all four performances, the production also offers a sensory-friendly Saturday matinee, welcoming audiences into a theatrical experience that's as accessible as it is electrifying.

Playwright-director Dejing Eloise Wang, co-directing with Topaz Gao, leads a cast of three: Victoria Chen as Julie, Jirachaya Kiri as Kristine, and John Jiang as Jean. Neil Wang, SST's Artistic Director, also designs the lighting for this show. This March in New York, Neil, Eloise, and Zihe reunite for their fourth collaboration, bringing audiences an urgent, seductive new production that asks: who gets to rise, who gets to survive, and what it costs when desire becomes a battlefield.

Julie says, "I run a charity." Jean says, "I'm a leftist." Beneath the polished facade of performative progressiveness, two people from utterly different worlds tumble into a seductive, strategic, and ultimately deceptive love affair, one where morality and lust become weapons sharp enough to kill. Reimagined in 2026, this is romance as warfare: intimate, volatile, and relentlessly contemporary. August Strindberg's Miss Julie is often framed as a story of seduction and collapse, an aristocratic woman and a servant crossing the line for one night, but the scandal is only the surface; underneath is an unflinching collision of class, gender, and survival instincts, grinding against each other until something breaks. Strindberg insisted Julie's tragedy was inevitable, that identity, origin, "what's in your blood" would always win. But today, we're not so sure. This production turns the classic into a live question: what does class look like now, who holds power today, and what invisible rules are still quietly deciding who gets to rise, and who doesn't?

There will be four performances, all performed in English, from March 6th to March 8th, 2026, with night shows at 8 PM on Friday and Saturday, and matinee shows at 2 PM on Saturday and Sunday. The matinee show on Saturday will be a sensory friendly performance. The performances will be at the 99-seat Chain Theater (312 West 36th St, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10018). The performance will run for 90 minutes without an intermission.

To Eloise, Julie's first concept came her as "what if Jean is a matcha-drinking, tote-carrying, clairo-listening performative male", but when she actually started writing, she kept circling back to "Why is Miss Julie relevant to the Asian community now?"

The answer is in New York's Manhattan Chinatown, Eloise says. Young Asian American would casually sign a petition that protest against 24-hour work day while walk past construction sites of gentrified apartments carefree. Yet those luxury apartments are owned by Asian American entrepreneurs who donate to Asian American museums to celebrate our legacy while driving out local residents for more profitable real estate. The dichotomy between speech and action is engulfing the community.

In the world of this story, Eloise wants to ask Julie "how does it feel to get money from unethical millionaires to help the people that they've exploited?" She wants to ask Jean "when you talk about equality, do you want equal rights for everyone or do you want the same opportunity for capitalistic exploitation?" Are we trying to eat the rich or become the rich? That's what the playwright and director has been asking herself when she created Julie.

Neil Wang, Shall See Theater's Artistic Director, chooses Julie to be the first production of the season. He says, "The title of Shall See Theater's 2025-2027 Artistic Season, Hold, reminds me of this beautiful word in biology: symbiosis. I was hunting for a play that has the idea of an ultimate ecosystem: a site of beautiful, desperate dependance on each other. Strindberg's Miss Julie, in our adaptation, Julie, is a perfect manifestation of symbiosis. I wanted to look at Julie and Jean through this lens: two organisms locked in a room, bound by a mutual, frantic need to survive, and a pursuit of happiness."

In the natural world, symbiosis isn't always kind. It is often a friction-filled clinging, a state where one cannot exist without the weight of the other. Neil says that Strindberg wrote these characters through the cold eye of "naturalistic determinism," suggesting they were brought down by their own biology, mere victims of their prewritten fate. But he wants to push back against that accusation. He's searching for the moment where the system breaks, where the "parasitism" of class and power gives way to a rare, mutualistic pulse of emotion. He wants to find that brief, authentic clearing in the woods where they truly care for one another. The tragedy isn't that they were born into a cage; it's that for one shimmering second, they held each other with a sincerity that the world outside simply wouldn't allow to grow.

Julie will be performed at Chain Theater, 99-seat (312 West 36 St, Floor 3, New York 10018). The venue is on the third floor of the building, accessible by elevator. For further accommodations, please email julie.shallsee@gmail.com at least 3 days before the event.

The Box Office opens 45 minutes prior to the start time of each performance. Seating is limited and provided on a first come, first served basis. All unclaimed reservations are released 30 minutes before start time.

Performances are scheduled as follows: Friday, March 6 at 8 PM, Saturday, March 7 at 2:30 PM and 8 PM, and Sunday, March 8 at 2:30 PM. The show will be performed in English. The show runs for 90 minutes without intermission.

"This is very exciting." Producer and Dramaturg Zihe Tian says, "It's great to be collaborate with this amazing team of artists and create something so relevant to the world, the city, the community we are living in."