First Look: How Broadway Is Reimagining ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ for the Stage

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When 10 Things I Hate About You opened in multiplexes in March 1999, it distinguished itself from an unusually crowded pack of teen comedies. Directed by Gil Junger and written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, the film reset Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew amid the social hierarchies of suburban Seattle. It also launched the careers of Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger, turning the fiercely independent Kat Stratford and charismatic outcast Patrick Verona into defining archetypes for a generation of moviegoers.

The film survived the collapse of the teen comedy cycle because of its specific tone: sharp, literate dialogue grounded in genuine adolescent friction. Kat was not an antisocial caricature but a feminist teenager reading Sylvia Plath, blasting Joan Jett, and actively rejecting the performative popularity demanded of young women. Transferring that perspective into a Broadway musical requires preserving the edge that separated Padua High from typical teen melodrama, avoiding the trap of softening Kat's abrasive conviction into generic Broadway cheer.