Papa is late for rehearsal. "Our Romeo would be late to his own funeral," laughs Jack, one of Papa's good friends. They're both aspiring rappers and even share a defense lawyer.

"Papa was all excited to play the lead in Romeo and Juliet," says director Amy Rider. "He called from the penitentiary and asked who Juliet was going to be. He started naming girls and I said 'Well, Papa, the cast decided they want Juliet to be a man. Jack's playing Julien.' Papa just laughed: 'No, no way. I'm not coming out of the penitentiary and playing a gay guy!'" How did these kids—all straight, all tough, mostly male—decide to queer Shakespeare? "Discrimination," Rider says. "They said: 'It's the same as being discriminated against for our race and class.'"

The seven students in Romeo and Julien come from the Interagency Academy, a last stop for students falling out of the school system. They deal with harrowing shit: friends getting shot, guns, jail, gangs. They are a little nervous about touring their homo-hiphop Shakespeare to Franklin, Cleveland, and West Seattle high schools. (They're not going to Garfield: "There's a war right now," Jack says. "One of our actors can't go there.") Their previous Romeo and Julien, set in 1920s Harlem, got mixed responses. "Your play is tight; your rhymes are tight," one student said during a post-play discussion. "But two guys? That's nasty." Jack drilled him: "What if you woke up tomorrow and everybody was gay? And people beat you up for being sprung on a girl? What then?" The student didn't respond. "I have the urge to know what they think," says Desmond, who plays Mercutio. "Maybe some of them sit quiet because they don't want to look corny for liking a play about two gay guys."

Jack raps the epilogue, rhyming "a story of real thuggin'" with "true love between a couple of husbands" with "I know you wanna judge 'em." He wasn't always so gay-friendly. "It's different in jail," he says. "You can't be in jail and be openly gay and survive. Period. I'm not going to lie to you, I did this project because my lawyer said it was gonna get me out of jail. I would've done anything to get out of jail."

The cast is comfortable with gay lovers in theory, but being romantic onstage still leaves a knot in their chests—not least because they don't know any queer thugs. "Gay rappers?" Jack asks rhetorically. "There aren't any gay rappers!"

"Not that you know of," Elizabeth, the cast's only woman, shoots back.

"Right," Jack says. There is a thoughtful silence.