Friday, July 22, 2016
The Tragedy of Mario and Juliet
DC Theatre Scene: Think you’ve seen all the Shakespeare you need to see? Think there is nothing more we can tap from this century’s old well of tales?? Can you possibly be even THINKING that we don’t need another retelling of R&J, but this time set in America at a confusingly vague time period?!
You’re probably right.
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4 comments:
Personally I think any re-imagining of Shakespeare deserves to be staged. The brilliance of Shakespeare is that his themes remain constant as part of human nature and so theoretically any context should work as a re-staging of Shakespeare. I believe that any time we re-imagine Shakespeare we continue to gratify the art. new generations should be able to interpret the art into their context or else they risk it becoming irrelevant. So when I read about this production I could only be excited to hear more about the way that the show changes with this new context.
Oh my god this show sounds amazing. I can’t tell if it’s the way the author described it or what, but it sounds like a professional high school production. There are show that need to stop being re-imagined and “Romeo and Juliet” is one of them. It is so overdone and cheesy that you get sick of watching them. However, this is seems like an amazing sort of train wreck that I could never look away from. I think the true gem of this article is the fact that the author tries to find some good in this show by describing how well the actors fleshed out their characters, only to go back and continue to describe how slow and unrehearsed this show was. Immediately when the author described how there were crashes that happened in the blackouts, I thought of the multiple times I have run into set pieces during an unrehearsed set change. If this show was still playing I might honestly drive out to see it purely for the laughs.
The themes of Shakespeare are so fundamentally human and so universal that there are an infinite number of ways Shakespeare can be reimagined. The themes of unrequited, and, to a larger extent, ill-fated love drive the plot of Romeo and Juliet, but also appear in our daily lives as well. Lots of people can identify with Romeo's love for Rosalind, a family's contempt for another family or group, or a relationship that failed because of external factors. Since these themes can be applied across the human experience, you can reimagine Romeo and Juliet in almost any way you can think of. One of the drama teachers/directors at my school has wanted to do a version of the play with two girls because I go to an all-girls school (the administration is against it though, which is a whole other thing that everyone is really upset about). I think my favorite part about re-imagining Shakespeare plays is that each rendition has the same underlying message, but because of the nature of the re-imagination, each rendition has different consequent themes and lessons to be learned. I think that's the greatest thing we have to benefit from by re-imagining Shakespeare.
I think this show is a good idea, but to some extent. I think the plot definetly grabs the younger audience's attention more than Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and has multiple themes that can be elaborated on. However I think that it also becomes confusing because of that. Also, I feel like he fact that they tied this in with "Romeo and Juilet" made it that much more complicated. Everyone who first reads Shalespeare's work gets a little flustered by it, so once you develope a show that has the same concept but even more themes and factors, it becomes a lot harder for the audience. Overall, I think it's risky to put on a show like this, but at the same time I would love to get the chance to see it, as it seems creative and sort of humorous to me.
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