Comedy & Tragedy.

Modern Version of Romeo & Juliet.

It has been busy this week! We had our monthly Friday Night Quest, which was exploring Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. As always, we were down in our little hideaway of SJ’s down in Coney Hall. It so lovely to be in a different space, and shoutout to St John’s church for letting us use their community space.

As a group we first made sure we got to grips with the story, and then created Tableaux’s. A tableaux is a picture of general themes and content, whereas a Freeze Frame is a ‘moment in time’. These help tell more than just the story, but capture the essence of the play too.

We read through one of my favourite scenes which was Act3, Scene 1, where Mercutio is slain. ‘A Plague on BOTH your houses!’. We examined the text and discussed how important it is to understand the meaning of every word and ‘turn of phrase’ in order to perform Shakespeare.

Now, the fun happened. I gave out the text from a modern ‘teen’ version of Romeo and Juliet written as if all FB updates and text messages. One participant said that Shakespeare would be generating electricity from all the turn in in his grave. LOL.

What I wasn’t expecting was how funny the whole performance was. Everyone really got in to the swing of the text, and embraced the silliness of the whole thing. It certainly made us appreciate the beauty of the original text! But we laughed, and it was just so cathartic. Personally , my face hurt from the experience. It was just wonderful.

Our next Friday Quest isn’t until June, but we are going to be looking at the ‘Greek Chorus’ technique. Tickets will be on sale soon, so please check back on the website to grab your space. x