Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens can’t help but play the “this time last year” game, but you would, too, if your swing was as jarring as hers.
“This time last year I was sitting in the middle of the Delacorte for the first time ever,” Aikens says from a picnic table behind the legendary theater in Central Park. “I saw Lupita [Nyong’o] and Sandra Oh and Peter [Dinklage] and all these people and the curtain call happened and I just jumped out of my seat. It solidified in that moment — because I already knew that I of course wanted to do Shakespeare in the Park. But in that moment I was like, ‘oh, I’m here and it feels tangible and maybe one day it’ll happen.’”
The actor now is leading this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of “Romeo & Juliet” as Juliet, just one year after she completed her MFA from New York University.
The audition for Juliet was one of the first ones Aikens received after her mom’s unexpected passing in December.
“When you’re met with those real-life things, it’s so hard to get yourself to care about things. It feels very frivolous,” she says. “This is one of the first auditions that I got where I was like, ‘oh, I care. I feel that spark again.’”
