Li had only scant exposure herself to Shakespeare until last year. She was born in St Kilda to an Australian mother, Tracy, who had met Li’s father, Ming, while studying Chinese literature and working in Beijing.

When Li was seven, Tracy moved her and her brother, Justin, to Beijing. She attended an international school where she encountered no trace of the Bard, although at 12 she was cast in the school’s Wizard of Oz.

“Apparently I was a very depressing Tin Man,” she laughs. “I remember being quite proud because I thought, ‘He doesn’t have a heart; of course he wouldn’t feel’.”

The road to Oz prompted her to begin drama classes, her parents excited that these would help her overcome her innate shyness.

“Working in theatre has helped me,” she reflects, “because you don’t want to get in your own way, walking around with your tail between your legs.”

Moving back to Melbourne, at 15 she read Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth in class, mostly to pluck themes to write school essays, and naturally saw Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet feature film.

In 2024, Li finally got her “crash course in Shakespeare’s greatest hits”, when Peter Evans cast her in his Poetry of Violence at Sydney’s Neilson Nutshell.

Between his lecture on Coriolanus, Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet and the like, a clutch of actors including Li performed excerpts, showcasing the Bard’s enduring messages about ancient enmities and violence begetting more violence.

She auditioned, then, to play Juliet in the national tour this year. “Peter was talking to me about his vision, and how minimal he wanted to make it, to put the emphasis on the language and make it as intimate and vibrant as possible,” she recalls.

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“That was exciting to me because I would want to see real people on stage, not Shakespearean archetypes, which is how you’re taught learning from a book.”

Evans has suggested Romeo & Juliet “becomes Juliet’s play, she becomes the lead. She becomes the one voice talking to the audience, and she takes over. I believe that Shakespeare got more and more interested in her”.

In Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays, the British-born theatre director Tina Packer writes that by the time Shakespeare began Romeo & Juliet, circa 1594, he was writing “as if he were a woman. Embodying them. Giving them full agency”, with the result that he “writes about Juliet with as much insight, nuance, detail as he writes about Romeo”.

Li says Juliet, who we learn in the first act is “not yet 14”, knows her mind as she declares her love, lust and excitement with lines such as “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep”.

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In her later soliloquy, Juliet traces her fears, bravery and determination, says Li.

“She’s a young woman who’s vulnerable and very emotional but look at the language and you see the strength that underwrites all of that, that her romanticism is in partnership with her pragmatism and intelligence.”

Romeo & Juliet is at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House November 19 to December 7.