R & J Questions

What's Fiair Lawrance's plan of letting Juliet avoid to be married to Paris.

How many people did Romeo kill? For what reasons?

How does the Prince find out the truth after all these events happened?

Why Romeo is banished?

Why Romeo returns to Verona?

What causes this tragedy? Who is the one to blame

Should Juliet listen to her father's arrangement for her marriage?

How do you what to stage the scene of Romeo seeing Juliet's "dead Body" and suicide?

Is the tragedy inevitable?

Do you think the tragedy will actually let both houses remain in peace? why?

Analyze the power of love in the play.

Compare and contrast Juliet and Romeo in hlove.

Knowing and Practice

Performance and staging are always part of the class, and we are gradually learning them from the beginning when we acted as animals or pretended to be in certain emotions and ran to other classmates’ position. Undoubtedly, as a novice, there are quite a lot flaws in the first scene that I perform, but fortunately, by watching others’ performance and introspecting, I thought it is relatively easy to improve.

When I  am adapting the play to performance, it is quite easy to decide what emotions we should express, what actions we should show and how to condense or expand the original lines in the play. After all, we all have seen so many performance whether through media or theaters. We can judge what makes a good performance and which ones are better. We can realize the emotions from the text through the instinct and we know which lines, if they are performed on stage, will be viewed as verbose by the audience. What is challenging for me though is how to apply these theories into practice, because now it is the time for me to change my position from viewer to actor and director.

I am always struggling with how to really show emotions on the stage. Knowing the emotion does not ensure that I can reveal the emotion through acting and some degree of nervousness always accompany with me when I act on the stage. The way to address this problem for me is maybe to put my focus on where it belongs, not on what “should” the character feel or on the audience, but on my partners. I know to overcome that is never easy, but by practicing more and working more on moment to moment, it won’t be that hard. Time is needed for achieving that.

One of the another main difficulties that I am facing is how to use limited items in the black box theater to revision the scene.It seemed to me that the only tools that I could really use are those boxes. However, after watching others’ performance and staging, I realize firstly I don’t need to find tools to adapt the scene but I can let the scene adapt to the tools I have. For instance, although the characters are talking to each other while standing, I can make them sit on chairs having coffees and seem like chatting intimately. Besides, it is still possible to use these tools to convey the ideas in the original play. Adler’s group inspired me when I was watching their balcony scene. The way Romeo secretly listen to Juliet’s speech through showing only head from the curtain perfectly display the idea that the original play wants to show.

Incident Before Parent's Weekend

Setting: VDP third floor during Study Hall

Enter Old Capulet and his Wife.

Capulet:

For what cause has VDP become such a noisy and chaotic place? I heard from the teacher that it is now study hall time. My wife, please give me my stick.

Lady Capulet: 

Why do you need your stick?

Capulet: 

Quickly, I see that old Montague is coming. He must be the one who instigates his nephews to start the fight against the nephews of mine.

Enter Old Montague and his Wife.

Montague: 

Capulet, you such a old villain! Don’t stop me, my wife!

Lady Montague: 

If you are going to argue with Capulet, I will not let you move even one foot towards him because the dorm parents, Mr. Porter, is coming.

Enter Mr.Porter, the dorm parent of VDP third floor.

Mr. Porter: 

How dare you guys to start the chaos again and again during study hall time. Stop, all of you! Mr. Capulet and Mr.Montague, your nephews in this school have already started the unforgivable violent incidents three times and all those innocent hardworking students have been all negatively influenced and entangled. It seems to me that three detentions are not enough to deter all your bad students. If you guys start the fight anytime in the school again, there won’t even be a C.C. for you and you guys will all be directly expelled from Cheshire Academy. Mr. Capulet and Mr. Montague, since today is already planned for having conversation between parents and teachers, come with me and let’s have a really serious communication. Dismiss and go back to your rooms, now.

Montague: 

Benvolio, who really started the fight? It is those bastards of Capulet did it, right? Tell me, are you those presented when the fight started?

Benvolio:

Before I came, two students funded by you to read this school and another two students funded by Capulet were already in fight. I did try to stop them, but that is when that irritable Tybalt holding a thick book joins in the fight. He accused me of being the one who always not flushes the toilet in VDP. During the time when Tybalt and I tried to use the book to hit the other in the head, more students were dragged in the chaos.

             

Death

“Death” is never a word including positive spirit and it is against anything that is “alive”.The word “death “ itself repeats several times in Act 3 scene 2. It represents a distinct transition of the story: Juliet suddenly changes from anxiously waiting for Romeo to helplessness when she knew Romeo killed her cousin Tybalt and was banished from the city, “Death” foreshadows the ending of the story as well. The sentence “and death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead” forebodes the ending that the lovers will be separated by death, and death will be both of their final destinations.

In class writing

Staring at the moonlight, I see my home.
The hazy path remind me my past.

The spark of post-modernity and classic

The Film version that I watched is “Romeo + Juliet” directed by Baz luhrmann in 1996 (Wikipedia). The film does mostly keep the original Shakespeare’s language , yet it completely subverts the original background setting of the story. Although the change is bold and not traditional, the film itself is indeed a perfect fusion of classical Shakespeare play and modern elements.

First of all, the adaption of Shakespeare’s initial play is well-done. The story of Romeo and Juliet is deeply familiar to me; however, due to the time period when the story takes place is unfamiliar to the reader, many delicate details cannot be conveyed. Besides, combining with long poems in the dialogue, it is hard for modern viewers to “digest” the plot. What does the director do is he cuts some parts of the poems and condense it into a few sentences. His decision is brilliant in my point of view, because if those poems had been copied exactly into the film, those poems would have only weakened the grief that Romeo shows and let the viewers think Romeo to be affected and long-winded. For instance, in the play, before Romeo buys the poison, he says a 24 lines poem, but in the film, Romeo simply says “O Juliet, I’ll lie with thee tonight, I will fence tonight”. In addition, the director adds a lot of modern plots into the film. The film takes place still in Verona, but it is a completely different city which is more like Rio de Janeiro rather than the actual Verona. Chaos is the eternal theme in this city and to the modern viewers, the setting will seem to be more interesting.

Secondly, the bold attempt of setting the story in the modern times is attractive and the essential part of the story does not change at all. The sword fight became the gunfight; the prince became the police officer; the decent party became much more fancy. Although the background is completely different, the film does keep the main theme of Shakespeare’s play. The difference between Montague and Capulet is apparent: Montagues are more like bludgers wearing colorful clothes while Capulets are more decent and wear suits. More importantly, the love of Romeo and Juliet does not change and both of the characters remains pure and innocent. The director uses several plots to reveal and emphasize their pure love. The encounter of the sights between the two through the fish tank and the gaze in the swimming pool are really cogent scene to let viewers feel the love between them.

Last but not the least, the film has a powerful background music. The music is expressive and sensational. When Romeo and Juliet marry, the song is full of blessing and love. When Mercutio dies and repeats the sentence “ A plague o’ both your houses”, the music is low and horrified, combining with looming darkness.

In conclusion, the film “Romeo+Juliet” is a great adaption of Shakespeare’s original play and it combines classic smoothly with modern elements.

Anger

Anger is such a powerful emotion because anger can make people become unaware of what they are actually doing and it impulsively leads to incontrolability and possibly later regrets.  There are quite a lot of cases in which a angry get out of control. Angry itself is often one of the the reason that trigger the story in whether the film or novel. Take an example of the Fire and Ice. The young price was bitten by the wolf of Aya Stark when he was fighting and humiliating a son of a carpenter. After he was bitten, he becomes hatred toward the Stark family. When he becomes the king, he still remembers the past and kills the leader of stark family without accepting others opinion of exiling the leader. His action triggers more anger. The house of Stark rebels and the daughters and sons of the leader try to kill him and subvert his family's ruling position.