Five Questions for...Marin Hinkle; Juliet Talks About Passionate Love

BYLINE: Susie Linfield -- Romantic love in the age of AIDS? Of marriage counseling? Of computer dating? The 27-year-old who stars in the Shakespeare Theatre's new production of "Romeo and Juliet" has a few things to say.

Q. Where did you "find" the character of Juliet, so to speak?

A. As a child I was always pretty passionate and raw with my emotions. I'd jump from emotions easily. So I searched back in my past a bit and tried to that 13-year-old who used to react immediately to any impulse.

Q. How did the character develop during rehearsals?

A. At the beginning I saw her as very romantic -- her love had a poetry to it. But [director] Barry [Kyle] helped me to see how to make her applicable to an everyday teenager -- that she was very visceral. He tried to stray away from something gentle and sweet and soft and really find a very passionate, very aggressive young girl. She isn't someone who just prances around delicately desiring her love -- she's out there ready to fight for what she wants.

Q. People often forget that Romeo and Juliet are teenagers. How important is that in understanding who they are, and what happens to them?

A. It's crucial. As you get older you tend to censor your feelings, and sometimes you become so reflective that you lose sight of what's most truthful. When you're young, you just lunge for it. That's what gives these characters their strength. Those two don't think too much.

Q. But the play is, obviously, a tragedy. How do you think Shakespeare viewed their love?

A. I think I have to decline an answer to what he intended. I don't let myself think about that. I think about how, spiritually, Juliet found someone who answers everything she wants in life. The social prejudices don't mean anything to her: For her, love is conquering all those judgments. But I see [the play] as optimistic: Even though they die, they die for a cause. And there are people in this world who choose to die for their love: of their country, their religion, their family.

Q. How do you "sell" this play in the present, when romantic love has been picked apart, "scientifically" measured, analyzed, deconstructed ...?

A. Barry says that this is a play by which everyone measures their love. I agree; I believe this play will always be applicable to every person. There's nothing like first love, like the feeling of -- oh, I don't know -- that nothing else could ever be as important as this person is to you then. Even if we become more jaded about love, even if we don't have the same kind of openness, there's always room for that idealistic kind of first love.__The Washington Post(February 6, 1994)