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Backstage Blog

Director’s notes and commentary

The Music of ROMEO & JULIET

romeo-juliet-logo

Having decided on a Renaissance setting for our production, it became the obvious choice to use music of the same period. Originally we had hoped to employ musicians to play all the incidental music live, but the nature of the black box theater is that live music too easily overpowers unamplified voices. Additionally, using the excellent sound system that the ArtsLab provides allows us to choose exactly where each sound comes from

For instance: during the dances, since there is important spoken dancersdialogue going on as well, the music is coming from speakers on the floor underneath each section of audience seating. Being near the floor allows us to keep it quite muted but still allows the dancers to hear well enough to not lose their place.

Ultimately, in this wonderful digital age, the sounds of drums, recorder, classical guitar and harpsichord on an

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Can a classic be unique? (Dramaturgy, part 2)

romeo-juliet-logoOf course each production–indeed, each performance–of a LIVE play will be unique.  Its actors are different, its stage, its costumes, scenery and props are specific to that production design, even if the script stays exactly the same. No two productions of any play will ever be identical.

In fact, although Shakespeare’s plays are among the very oldest “classics” that an American audience is ever likely to see, there is as much or more variation in the way his plays are mounted as in any other playwright’s work.

Public Domain 

Written works are protected by copyright for only so long (usually 70 years or so). After that, the author is presumed to have made all the money he or she is going to make on that piece of work.  In producing Shakespeare, therefore, our budget is helped by not paying royalties to a publisher.

[However, since we must either 1) purchase printed copies of the script or 2) print our own, there is still certainly some cost involved. In our Dramaturgy post (part 1), we explained how the script was shortened. But it is still 77 pages long, and in a cast of 17 with several production team members, that’s a lot of printing!]

Production Choices

middle-classShakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet during the Elizabethan era, in England. So should we set the play there and then?

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DRAMATURGY (part 1): Background

romeo-juliet-logoWho was Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, England, in 1564, and died in 1616. He lived  during the reigns of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I. He founded a company of players who called themselves the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and performed in London theaters, notably the Globe. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets, and is widely considered the greatest writer in the English language.

Did he really write all those plays?

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Of Capulets and Capitalism, part 2

romeo-juliet-logoA guest post by Nate Chen, who portrays Lord Capulet, Juliet’s father, in our production.

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When I sat down to consider how to best play the part of THE Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, I wasn’t thinking of commerce or mercenaries. But
after reading the script, one thing that bothered me was that I couldn’t put my finger on what Capulet’s place in Verona society was supposed to be. He’s important, of course, and he wants everyone to know it. But why is he important?

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ROMEO & JULIET: Of Capulets and Capitalism, part 1

romeo-juliet-logoA guest post by Nate Chen, who plays Lord Capulet (Juliet’s father)

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Nate first offers some background to the social and political setting of the play:

Shortly before 1000 AD an odd phenomenon started taking place in Italy. People started to immigrate into Italian cities in large numbers. Now in most feudal societies of the era that kind of mass immigration was impossible – you swore your allegiance to a feudal landlord quite early, and paid rent on the land you worked for the rest of your life when you weren’t serving as a foot soldier in your liege’s army. But in italyItaly, city denizens – or citizens for short – were freed of their allegiance by virtue of living behind really thick walls and the assurances of the city government. This, along with a handful of other guarantees, was one of the first instances of people having rights backed by government.

For most people, the principle of being free of a renter’s life wouldn’t be enough to convince them to uproot from the familiar and go somewhere else.

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Staging Shakespeare

romeo-juliet-logoI can hear the murmurs…”Why Shakespeare?”  “Why Romeo & Juliet?”  “Why in the round?”

I am so glad you asked!

–Shakespeare, because he is the high-water mark of English literature and English language.  Many words and phrases still in common use today can be traced to the Bard, and he is still consistently studied by high schoolers across the US and around the world.  Moreover, afO always desires to enrich as well as entertain,

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AN afO FIRST: SHAKESPEARE!!

romeo-juliet-logo      We have spent a number of years kicking around the idea of doing Shakespeare on our Home Stage. But it never seemed like the right time. Until now!  Having found the right show and the right concept to bring it to fresh life…God saw to it that we assembled the right cast, too. Young, enthusiastic and very hard working, they have risen to the challenge of Shakespeare’s language, AND playing him in the round, AND adding sword fights and Elizabethan dance.

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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS: ADAPTING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE TO THE STAGE

Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the Willows during what is known as the Golden Age of British children’s literature. Consider that between 1900 and 1930:

  • Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated her many picture books for young children, beginning with The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
  • A.A. Milne created Winnie the Pooh.
  • E. Nesbit wrote her wonderful children’s novels, including The Railway Children, Five Children and It, and The Enchanted Castle.
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
  • J.M. Barrie created Peter Pan.

And this list is not exhaustive at all. There was also an explosion of American children’s literature at around the same time, The Wizard of Oz, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Pollyanna, to name a few.

The wonderful thing about all these books, to my mind, is that they are not written “down” to children, over-simplified and dripping with moral lessons. Rather, they are strong original stories which are amusing, engaging and often thought-provoking, but which are most appropriate to the genre (fairly new at the time) of children’s literature.

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JANE EYRE and “Poor Orphan Child”

Jane Eyre graphic for FBWhen the playwright is also a musician and sometime composer of incidental music, it should surprise no one that she has strong ideas about the music for her own play.

One thing that struck me when I re-read Jane Eyre just before beginning to write the play, was a ballad that Bessie–a servant of Aunt Reed, and Jane’s nurse of sorts–sang to the young girl at a time when Jane had been especially mistreated.  Oddly enough, though I had read the book a score of times before, I had no recollection of reading the lyrics to that song previously!  I find it true in all my reading, that different aspects and scenes of a book will speak to us at different times in our lives. This is one

my first JE book cover
The cover of my first (paperback) copy of “Jane Eyre”–read until it fell apart.

reason I relish the chance to revisit a favorite book after a few years.

I hunted online to see whether “The Poor Orphan Child” was an actual ballad of the time (popular folk ballads were printed as cheap sheet music and sold on street corners or shops).

All evidence points to Charlotte Bronte herself as the author of the lyrics. Whether she had a melody in mind when she wrote them is anybody’s guess, as no tune is listed. But the words were quite evocative to me, and I found myself compelled to write a melody for them. The result will be heard in the opening moments of the play. Although the song’s origin (and singer) are not explained in the context of the play, they have a mournful quality which is appropriate to Jane’s orphan state. Indeed, orphans are a recurring theme, since not only Jane but Adele is (possibly) parentless; the school where Jane teaches later in the story also includes orphans (notably little Alice, Jane’s attendant).  Not only children but adults are without parents:  Rochester’s father died when he was a young man (no mention is made of his mother); the Rivers siblings have lost their parents. 

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