Mercutio, RuPaul, & Me.
When I first saw Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, I didn’t expect to see myself. Shakespeare was never written with me in mind, not a Black gay boy from Sacramento who, like so many of us, had to fight just to exist fully. And yet there he was — Mercutio, played by Harold Perrineau, the only Black character in a sea of white Montagues and brown Capulets. He bursts into the Capulet ball not in armor or street clothes, but in sequins and drag, glitter pouring from his body like prophecy. For once, I did not feel like I was outside of the story, looking in. I was there, center stage, too loud, too extra, and too complicated for anyone to dismiss.
Mercutio was me.
Let me explain. My name is Urias. Not John, not Michael, not Malik: Urias. A name that sounds like it was made for theater, as if someone was already planning to write me into a script I didn’t audition for. It has the same kind of strangeness and rhythm as Mercutio or RuPaul. It’s a name that forces people to pause, tilt their heads, ask questions. A name that says: you can’t just fold me neatly into your expectations. I come with weight, with complication.
And I share a birthday with RuPaul: November 17th. When I found that out, it felt like a cosmic joke, but also a kind of benediction. RuPaul, who built an empire out of drag, who took flamboyance and turned it into a spiritual practice. RuPaul, who taught us that exaggeration is not deception but revelation, that drag is the truth dressed louder. If Mercutio is the Shakespearean ancestor, RuPaul is the modern patron saint. And me? I’m somewhere in the middle, standing at that intersection where laughter and rage meet, where flamboyance and depth do not cancel each other out but demand each other.
Watching Mercutio in Luhrmann’s film, I was struck by how alone he was. He belonged to neither Montague nor Capulet, neither white nor Hispanic. He was caught between worlds that did not want to claim him. And yet he moved through those worlds with a wit sharp enough to cut glass and a presence too dazzling to ignore. That resonated. Because to be a Black gay man in America is to know what it means to live between categories; too Black for one room, not Black enough for another, too queer for family, not queer enough for community. I have lived that fracture. And like Mercutio, I’ve survived it by being dramatic, by being over-the-top, by refusing to shrink.
This is where queer silence comes in. Scholars in works like Queer Silence and Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology remind us that marginalized identities — especially Black queer identities — are often rendered invisible or silenced in mainstream narratives. Mercutio’s drag and theatricality disrupt that silence; he refuses to be unseen. As E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson note, Black queer individuals often navigate spaces of marginalization within both Black and queer communities. Mercutio embodies that very tension — he is a figure at the crossroads of race, sexuality, and performance, resisting erasure while claiming his voice in a world that insists he remain quiet.
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People think drama is superficial. They think glitter is distraction. They think being extra means being empty. But the truth is the opposite. Drama is how you survive when silence would kill you. Glitter is how you stay visible when the world would rather look away. And being extra is how you carve out space in a place that was not built for you. Mercutio knew this. RuPaul knows this. And, though I’m still learning, I know this too.
This is where Beyoncé comes in. And yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Urias, do you have to bring Beyoncé into everything?” The answer is yes. Always yes. Because Beyoncé is another blueprint for how to live loudly, how to turn your pain and longing into performance so exquisite the whole world has to take notice. Her work exemplifies the power of performance in asserting complex identities and resisting erasure. Incorporating Beyoncé into this narrative underscores the significance of artistic expression in navigating and asserting one’s identity.
Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech is one of the most haunting moments in the film for me. It’s manic, yes, but underneath it is fury and clarity. He is saying what I have often felt: that dreams can be dangerous when you live in a world that does not recognize you. He mocks Romeo’s romantic fantasies not because he cannot dream himself, but because he knows the price of dreaming when you live on the margins. That price, of course, is death. Tybalt’s blade does not only kill Mercutio; it extinguishes the one character who refused to obey the categories Verona Beach demanded. His “plague on both your houses” is not only about Montagues and Capulets. It is a condemnation of every world that cannot hold space for someone like him — someone like me.
And yet Mercutio refuses to die quietly. Even in his final moments, he insists on being heard. That is what stays with me. Romeo and Juliet perish because their love could not fit inside their families’ feud. Mercutio perishes because his very existence could not fit inside the rigid binaries of his world. His death is more than tragedy; it is revelation. It tells us that flamboyance is not weakness, that performance is not shallowness, that being dramatic does not mean being without depth. It tells us that those who live too loudly are often those who have suffered too deeply.
When I think about Mercutio, about RuPaul, about Beyoncé, and yes, about myself — I see a lineage of people who have insisted that the performance is not a mask but a mirror. We show you who we are by exaggerating it, by putting it under a spotlight so bright you can’t pretend not to see it. And maybe that is the work of survival: to insist on being unignorable.
I am 34 now, the same age Harold Perrineau was when Romeo + Juliet was released. I carry my name, Urias, like Mercutio carried his sequins — proudly, defiantly, sometimes with a wink. I share my birthday with RuPaul, which feels less like coincidence and more like inheritance. And yes, I will always drag Beyoncé into the conversation, because like her I know that drama is not an escape from truth but its delivery system.
Mercutio taught me that sometimes the most alive person in the room is the one the world tries hardest to erase. And so I live loudly. I glitter. I exaggerate. Not because I am shallow, but because I am deep. Not because I am hiding, but because I am insisting on being seen.
And if that is too much for the world, then so be it. Better to be too much than to disappear.
