Will Wilhelm and Erin Murray’s “Gender Play, or What You Will,” with Will Wilhelm and cast/Photo: Zach Rosing

Calling all Bard baddies! Will Wilhelm and Erin Murray’s gender-bendy Shakespearean romp “Gender Play, or What You Will” will return to Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre May 15-24.

The one-person play follows a semi-fictional version of Wilhelm as they lead the audience in a seance designed to commune with the ghost of William Shakespeare. Along the way, Wilhelm introduces us to some of the Bard’s most iconic characters—Lady Macbeth, Juliet and Puck, to name a few—reinterpreting their stories through a genderqueer lens. In a political climate that seeks to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life, Wilhelm hopes to offer audiences a celebration of queer and trans joy—a night filled with spirit(s).

The queerness of Shakespeare’s stories has often been swept under the rug despite gender-bending being a major theme in his canon, says Wilhelm, who created “Gender Play” with their collaborator Erin Murray, debuting the play with a spectacularly successful run at About Face Theatre in May 2023.

Wilhelm began thinking: What would Shakespeare’s characters look like if they stopped paying attention to how everyone else performs the so-called “universal stories” and instead filtered the Bard through a lens that was one-hundred-percent their own, one that aligned with their experiences as a trans and nonbinary person? The result was “Gender Play.”

“Gender Play” introduces us to Wilhelm’s take on Juliet, the female lead of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” that ends in (spoiler alert) the young lover’s death. Throughout the play, Juliet is weighed down by the expectations heaped upon her, says Wilhelm. In Romeo, she finds a partner with whom she can finally be herself.

“I feel like that’s such a huge experience that we have as young queer people, when we find those first members of our chosen family. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, I can actually take off the mask with you.’”

Juliet’s suicide is often interpreted as a final act of love, says Wilhelm, in which she would rather die than live another day without Romeo. Wilhelm took a different tact.

“I think she’s killing herself because she finally found that pathway to her actual authentic experience, and then the door is closed in her face. You can’t go backwards after you learn something like that.”

Will Wilhelm and Erin Murray’s “Gender Play, or What you Will,” with Will Wilhelm/Photo: Zach Rosing

Through “Gender Play,” we also meet Wilhelm’s take on Helena of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Throughout the original play, Helena pines after Demetrius, a man who loves her in private but not in public, something many trans people, especially trans feminine people, can relate to, says Wilhelm.

It was important to them that “Gender Play” involved audience participation, says Wilhelm. Throughout the play, the audience is encouraged to interject comments or otherwise loudly react to what’s happening on stage. There’s even a rack of sparkly Elizabethan costumes for the audience to don upon entry.

The Bard himself was a fan of audience interaction, says Wilhelm. Shakespeare was often writing for the groundlings—the poorer audience members who would occupy the standing space of his famous Globe theater and yell their reactions to the actors on stage.

Wilhelm’s Steppenwolf run will be the second stop on their spring/summer tour of “Gender Play,” which includes showings in Washington, D.C. for WorldPride and the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in July.

The last time Wilhelm graced the Steppenwolf stage was in 2017 for their friend’s production of “Straight White Men” by playwright Young Jean Lee. The play marked the first time they felt comfortable publicly taking up space as a gender-nonconforming person on stage, says Wilhlem. Returning to Steppenwolf with “Gender Play” feels like a full-circle moment in their career as an artist and actor.

“I’m really excited, really grateful, to be back at Steppenwolf with a version of myself that that person eight years ago could probably only dream about. The play is all about dreams, exploring them and allowing them to come to fruition.

“I’m just really excited to share it with people and hope that I can offer the next step in that revolution for other people’s lives as well.”

“Gender Play, or What You Will” at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater, 1700 North Halsted, May 15-24. Showtimes are: Wednesday-Saturday at 8pm, Sunday, May 18 at 3:30 pm. Tickets are $38, available at steppenwolf.org.