Romeo teiluJ*

Romeo and Juliet, written by Shakespeare, is well known for its portrayal of true love, but how does Shakespeare portray a believable love story? In my analysis, I chose to focus on the way Shakespeare uses a mirroring effect to show the genuine love Romeo and Juliet share for one another.   Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet display many similarities;  in my performance, I focused on the way Romeo and Juliet describe each other using similar language and the way the characters react similarly to Romeo’s banishment.    The three scenes I chose to focus on are Act II Scene II, more specifically, Romeo’s monologue in which he expresses his feelings  about Juliet, Act III Scene II, when the Nurse informs Juliet of Romeo’s banishment, and Act III Scene III, when Romeo learns from Friar Lawrence that his punishment is banishment.  The three scenes were combined into one scene with three actors instead of four.  In addition, the group made choices regarding gathering the same props, similar costumes to highlight Romeo and Juliet, deliberately splitting the stage into two sides to portray a mirror and creating similar blocking for Romeo and Juliet.  Deliberately portraying these similarities, especially in the creation of a double monologue, allowed me to prove Romeo and Juliet’s genuine love and its believability.  

The scene starts with Romeo and Juliet performing a double monologue.  There is not a double monologue in the play, but to highlight the similarities between Romeo and Juliet,  I chose to stage Romeo’s first monologue from Act II Scene II, and Juliet’s monologue from the beginning of Act III Scene II simultaneously.   While delivering the monologues, Romeo and Juliet sat back to back center stage facing the sides of the stage. The characters were represented back to back to visually show a mirror effect.  While Romeo and Juliet say different words, they similarly compare each other to the stars, heaven, the moon, and the sun.  When speaking an important part of the monologue, the actor shifted to face outward towards the audience. In addition, the actor’s voice crescendoed drawing the audience’s attention towards their important dialogue. During the double monologue, I drew attention to “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,/As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven/Would through the airy region stream so bright/That birds would sing and think it were not night” (2.2 19-23). Romeo is saying that Juliet is so bright she can turn night time into daytime.   The mirror image is similar, but not exactly the same. It is the inverse of what is seen.  Juliet makes an inverse point in her monologue. She says “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/And pay no worship to the garish sun” (3.2 23-27).  Juliet is saying that Romeo is so beautiful he should be turned into the best part of nighttime,  the stars.  During these sections of each character’s monologue, they both refer to brightness.  This is a metaphor for how stunning they are to one another. By referring to each other in the same way, the audience can see that Romeo and Juliet have the same amount of deep love for one another.  The monologues are significant because they portray the genuine love Romeo and Juliet possess for one another. Seperately, as seen in the written work, the monologues express strong love toward each other.  However, in our performance, the monologues were performed simultaneously by the characters to emphasize the similarity of their feelings. As these feelings are expressed in monologues, each character is sharing their emotions with the audience, knowing they will not receive a response from the other character. The audience is the only witness to these feelings.  In the written play, these monologues occur in different acts.  The decision to stage the monologues as a simultaneous double monologue forces the audience to see the mirrored relationship between Romeo and Juliet.  

    Our costumes and staging are also very important to the idea of Shakespeare’s mirroring.  Above I discussed the way Romeo and Juliet sat back to back.  Throughout the scene, center stage was kept as a boundary with Romeo and Juliet on different sides of the stage.  Following the double monologue, Act III Scene II and Act III Scene III were performed.  These are the scenes in which Romeo and Juliet hear about Romeo’s banishment.  In Shakespeare’s written work, Juliet hears from the Nurse and Romeo hears from Friar Lawrence.  In my group’s performance, we combined the Nurse and Friar Lawrence into one character referred to as the Councillor.  The Councillor appeared on both sides of the stage, first talking to Juliet and then Romeo.  This character changes from one part of the scene to the next.  He first appears as the frantic Nurse who tells Juliet that Tybalt was killed by Romeo, then he becomes the calm Friar Lawrence who advocates patience to a distraught Romeo.  Both the Nurse and Friar Lawrence serve as advisors to Romeo and Juliet.  Friar Lawrence and the Nurse were combined into one character to highlight the mirror image of Romeo and Juliet.   Another choice we made was to make the similarities in the characters stand out by displaying similarities between the actors playing Romeo and Juliet.  Traditionally, Romeo is played by a male and Juliet is played by a female.  However in our version, both Romeo and Juliet were played by females. In contrast, the role of the councilor was played by a male. This made it obvious to the audience which characters were similar.  While both Romeo and Juliet were played by females, the costume reflected the characters' written gender. Romeo wore a reddish-orange top with black pants and Juliet wore a red and gold dress. As you may notice, both characters wore similar colors. This, like the similarity of the actors, clearly portrayed our intent to the audience. The costumes and staging were added as finishing touches to our scene, but they drew the audience’s attention to important aspects of the mirroring effect that otherwise would have been missed. 

    After our double monologue, in the remaining two thirds of the scene,  we focused on utilizing the left and right sides of the stage as a mirror and its image in order to visually show our audience mirroring effect used by Shakespeare.  The scene started on the right side with Juliet hearing about Romeo's banishment from the Nurse, following this Romeo hears about his punishment from Friar Lawrence. In these parts we wanted to promote the reactions toward banishment of our characters- both have a similar reaction.  When Juliet is talking to the Nurse she says "Tybalt is dead, and Romeo - banished;'/ That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'/Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts" (3.2 ). In this quote, Juliet is expressing that banishment is worse than death. She is upset that Romeo is banished because she will not get to see Romeo again. Romeo similarly says to Friar Lawrence "Ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;'/ For exile hath more terror in his look,/ Much more than death: do it say 'banishment'"  (3.3 ).  Romeo, like Juliet, feels that death is much worse than banishment. This relates directly to their genuine love because they think banishment is worse because they will be separated.  To stage this idea all characters said the word ‘banished’ or ‘banishment’ louder than the rest of our dialogue. This also created an emotion to the word which allowed the audience to feel the characters emotions about banishment. In the scenes, both characters also mention killing themselves.  This demonstrates that they would rather die than be apart from one another.   It is true to say that they may be scared because they have never lived outside of Verona, however Romeo makes their motivation clear by saying that every unworthy thing may look at Juliet, but because he is banished he cannot see her again.  In our performance, we highlighted the angry and upset emotions of Romeo and Juliet after hearing about Romeo’s banishment to show their genuine love for one another.  In addition, the blocking was very important.  We decided to focus on the physical reaction as well as the emotional one.  For example, in the part between Romeo and the Councillor, the Councillor says “O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;/And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,/And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,/And then down falls again”  (3.3 ).  He is referring to the way Juliet reacts.  Our actress playing Juliet fell back on a mattress and looked very upset.  Shortly before the Councillor says this to Romeo, Romeo similarly falls down on a mattress.  However, Romeo’s reaction when he falls is different.  He falls in a manner that suggests he has given up hope.  This is suggested because he collapses with a look on his face of disbelief and boredom.   In contrast to Juliet who wants to believe the best of Romeo, Romeo is staring into the face of his punishment with less hope of mercy.  This relates to the idea of their mirrored reactions because they both wish they could be together, however slightly different because one still has a small amount of hope.   These last two thirds of our performance also strongly emphasized the genuine love Romeo and Juliet share.   Our emphasis on the word “banishment” and our blocking reinforced the same idea as the double monologue- to portray the mirroring effect and the effect’s ability to prove Romeo and Juliet’s genuine love to the audience. 

    In conclusion, the purpose of our performance of Romeo and Juliet was to emphasize Shakespeare’s use of mirroring to display Romeo and Juliet’s pure love for one another.  The similarity in the way they feel about one another and their reaction to banishment both prove that their love is believable.  They both express their honest perception of one another to the audience without the other person, and they also share the thought that the would rather die than be separated.  For these reasons Romeo and Juliet’s love is believable.  Specifically to our audience, these similarities were made much more obvious than in Shakespeare’s written work due to our attention to the mirror effect.  The scenes we chose had to do with their decisions regarding their relationship.  This is significant because when it comes to love, Romeo and Juliet are not the most rational characters, but they show a love so powerful, they both are willing to sacrifice everything to be together.  In addition to this passion, our Romeo and Juliet pay special attention to the lines we added emphasis to and our blocking to draw attention to the mirror effect because it has so much to do with their love.  For this passionate love to be true and believable to the audience, both characters had to demonstrate a similar level of love.  Our goal was to express this passion accurately through the similarity in blocking, costumes, props, and staging.  I think we accomplished our goal by causing our audience to notice the mirror effect and the believable  genuine love Romeo and Juliet share.

Citations

Shakespeare, William. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. N.p.: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d. Print. 

*Note: It was double spaced and blogger changed the format. It also changed some of the indentations and spacing of the paragraphs

Thank You Ms. Swift!

I visited the writing center about two weeks ago.  At this point, my paper consisted of about three paragraphs; an introduction and two body paragraphs.  During the visit Ms. Swift and I edited my introduction and first body paragraph.  My introduction needed only a little work. All of the analysis and performance pieces needed in an introductory paragraph were in the right place. My biggest struggle was accurately and descriptively telling my reader how the stage was set up.  This included lacking detail about where my audience was in relation to where the action on the stage happened.  In addition, I had to fix some of my ideas and sentence structures to make them more concise.  In my first body paragraph, I worked on describing the double monologues with the goal in mind that any reader, having seen our performance or not, would understand how the stage was set up.   Along with painting an accurate picture in the reader’s head, I wanted to accomplish an accurate analysis of the quotes from the double monologue and how it was related to the mirroring effect.  

Based on this visit to the writing center, I am working on adding many details, even if I feel the details are too much.  I have to keep in mind that most  people who will read my paper have not seen our performance.  In order for them understand the analysis and the connection that I am trying to draw between Romeo and Juliet, I need to describe the performance as clearly as possible in my paper.  My group’s performance was very abstract from Shakespeare’s written work.  As a result of this difference, it was difficult to describe it so the reader can grasp my analysis and how this analysis was examined through the performance.  In addition to adding these needed details, I found that I should look at my work after I am done creating descriptions because some descriptions were becoming cluttered.  To strengthen the draft of my paper, I need to reread through the rest of my work  that was not looked at during my writing center visit.  While rereading, I should ask myself two questions: “Is this descriptive enough for my readers to understand?” and “Can I find any clutter?”  From here, I will edit my paper accordingly.  

    In the future, I might visit the writing center to get helpful feedback on drafts of papers.  This may be difficult for me to do often because I’m full IB.  Not only do I have little free time, but I also am not allowed to get comments on many of my papers.  Besides Literature and Performance class, I also have to write a large amount of papers for high level English class.  However, many of these papers are supposed to be written and revised by the paper with minimal extra help.  In conclusion, while the writing center is a great resource and I would like to use, I can, unfortunately, only use it so often.

Romeo teiluJ- First Full Length Draft

Romeo and Juliet, written by Shakespeare, is well known for its portrayal of true love, but how does Shakespeare portray a believable love story? In my analysis, I chose to focus on the way Shakespeare uses a mirroring effect.   Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet display many similarities;  in my performance, I focused on the way Romeo and Juliet describe each other using similar language and the way the characters react to Romeo’s banishment.    The three scenes I chose to focus on are Act II Scene II, more specifically, Romeo’s monologue in which he expresses his feelings  about Juliet, Act III Scene II, when the Nurse informs Juliet of Romeo’s banishment, and Act III Scene III, when Romeo learns from Friar Lawrence that his punishment is banishment.  The three scenes were combined into one scene with three actors instead of four.  In addition, the group made choices regarding gathering the same props, similar costumes to highlight Romeo and Juliet, deliberately splitting the stage into two sides to portray a mirror and creating similar blocking for Romeo and Juliet.  Deliberately portraying these similarities, along with playing Romeo, allowed me to prove Romeo and Juliet’s genuine love and its believability.  

The scene starts with Romeo and Juliet performing a double monologue.  There is not a double monologue in the play, but to highlight the similarities between Romeo and Juliet,  I chose to stage Romeo’s first monologue from Act II Scene II, and Juliet’s monologue from the beginning of Act III Scene II simultaneously.   While delivering the monologues, Romeo and Juliet sit back to back center stage facing the sides of the stage. The characters are represented back to back to visually show a mirror effect.  While Romeo and Juliet are saying different words, they are similarly comparing each other to the stars, heaven, the moon, and the sun.  When speaking an important part of the monologue, the actor shifts to face outward towards the audience. In addition, the actor’s voice crescendos drawing the audience’s attention towards their important dialogue. During the double monologue, I drew attention to “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,/As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven/Would through the airy region stream so bright/That birds would sing and think it were not night” (2.2 19-23). Romeo is saying that Juliet is so bright she can turn night time into daytime.   The mirror image is similar, but not exactly the same. It is the inverse of what is seen.  Juliet makes an inverse point in her monologue. She says “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/And pay no worship to the garish sun” (3.2 23-27).  Juliet is saying that Romeo is so beautiful he should be turned into the best part of nighttime,  the stars.  During these sections of each character’s monologue, they both refer to brightness.  This is a metaphor for how stunning they are to one another. By referring to each other in the same way, the audience can see that Romeo and Juliet have the same amount of deep love for one another.  The monologues are significant because they portray the genuine love Romeo and Juliet possess for one another. Each character is sharing his or her emotions without the intent of getting a response. The audience is the witness to these feelings.  In the written play, these monologues occur in different acts.  By staging the monologues as a simultaneous double monologue, the audience is forced to see this mirrored relationship.  This staging decision reinforces Romeo and Juliet’s bond with one another.  

    Our staging is also very important to the idea of Shakespeare’s mirroring.  Above I discussed the way Romeo and Juliet sat back to back.  Throughout the scene, center stage was kept as a boundary with Romeo and Juliet on different sides of the stage.  The third character, a mixture of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence, appeared on both sides of the stage, first talking to Juliet and then Romeo.  This character, referred to as the Councillor, changes from one part of the scene to the next.  He first appears as the frantic Nurse who tells Juliet that Tybalt was killed by Romeo, then he becomes the calm Friar Lawrence who advocates patience to a distraught Romeo.  Both the Nurse and Friar Lawrence serve as advisors to Romeo and Juliet.  Friar Lawrence and the Nurse were combined into one character to highlight the mirror image of Romeo and Juliet.   Another choice we made was to make the similarities in the characters stand out by displaying similarities between the actors playing Romeo and Juliet.  Usually Romeo is played by a male and Juliet is played by a female.  However in our version, both Romeo and Juliet were played by females. In contrast, the role of the councilor was played by a male. This made it obvious to the audience which characters were similar.  While both Romeo and Juliet were played by females, the costume reflected the characters' written gender. Romeo wore a reddish-orange top with black pants and Juliet wore a red and gold dress. As you may notice, both characters wore similar colors. This, like the similarity of the actors, clearly portrayed our intent to the audience. The costumes and staging were added as finishing touches to our scene, but they were necessary to embellish our portrayal of Romeo and Juliet. 

    After our double monologue, in the remaining two thirds of the scene,  we focused on utilizing the left and right sides of the stage as a mirror and its image.  The scene started on the right side with Juliet hearing about Romeo's banishment from the Nurse, following this Romeo hears about his punishment from Friar Lawrence. In these parts we wanted to promote the reactions toward banishment of our characters- both have a similar reaction.  When Juliet is talking to the Nurse she says "Tybalt is dead, and Romeo - banished;'/ That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'/Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts" (3.2 123-125). In this quote, Juliet is expressing that banishment is worse than death. She is upset that Romeo is banished because she will not get to see Romeo again. Romeo similarly says to Friar Lawrence "Ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;'/ For exile hath more terror in his look,/ Much more than death: do it say 'banishment'"  (3.3 13-15).  Romeo, like Juliet, feels that death is much worse than banishment. This relates directly to their genuine love because they think banishment is worse because they will be separated.  To stage this idea all characters said the word ‘banished’ or ‘banishment’ louder than the rest of our dialogue. This also created an emotion to the word which allowed the audience to feel the characters emotions about banishment. In the scenes, they both also mention killing themselves.  This demonstrates that they would rather die than be apart from one another.   It is true to say that they may be scared because they have never lived outside of Verona, however Romeo makes their motivation clear by saying that every unworthy thing may look at Juliet, but because he is banished he cannot see her again.  In our performance, we highlighted the emotion of Romeo and Juliet to show this similar love.  In addition, the blocking was very important.  We decided to focus on the physical reaction as well as the emotional one.  In the part between Romeo and the Councillor, the Councillor says “O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;/And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,/And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,/And then down falls again”  (3.3 107-110).  He is referring to the way Juliet reacts.  Our actress playing Juliet fell back on a mattress and looked very upset.  Shortly before the Councillor says this to Romeo, Romeo similarly falls down on a mattress.  However, Romeo’s reaction when he falls is different.  He falls in a manner that suggests he has given up hope.  In contrast to Juliet who wants to believe the best of Romeo, Romeo is staring into the face of his punishment with less hope of mercy.  This relates to the idea of their mirrored reactions because they both wish they could be together, however slightly different because one still has a small amount of hope.   These last two thirds of our performance also strongly emphasized the genuine love Romeo and Juliet share.  The blocking as well as the word banished helped the audience to see and feel the way Romeo and Juliet feel about being separated. 

    In conclusion, the purpose of our performance of Romeo and Juliet was to emphasize Shakespeare’s use of mirroring to display Romeo and Juliet’s pure love for one another.  The similarity in the way they feel about one another and their reaction to banishment both prove that their love is believable.  They both express their honest perception of one another to the audience without the other person, and they also share the thought that the would rather die than be separated.  For these reasons Romeo and Juliet’s love is believable.  Specifically to our audience, these similarities were made much more obvious than in Shakespeare’s written work due to our attention to the mirror effect.  The scenes we chose had to do with their decisions regarding their relationship.  This is significant because when it comes to love, Romeo and Juliet are not the most rational characters, but they show a love so powerful, they both are willing to sacrifice everything to be together.  In addition to this passion, our Romeo and Juliet pay special attention to the lines we added emphasis to and our blocking to draw attention to the mirror effect because it has so much to do with their love.  For this passionate love to be true and believable to the audience, both characters had to demonstrate a similar level of love.  Our goal was to express this passion accurately through the similarity in blocking, costumes, props, and staging.  I think we accomplished our goal by causing our audience to notice the mirror effect and the believable  genuine love Romeo and Juliet share.

"The Second Star To The Right And Straight On Til Morning"

Peter Pan, written by J. M. Barrie and performed by the Cheshire Academy Varsity Players, was phenomenal.  Peter pan is the story of the Darling family and the children’s imagination.  The play starts in the nursery where Mrs. Darling tucks the children into their beds before leaving for a night out with Mr. Darling.  Nana is present in the scene to assist Mrs. Darling until Mr. Darling enters and acts rudely to nana.  He first feeds nana his medicine and then proceeds to put him in the dog house.  After Mr. and Mrs. Darling exit the stage, Peter enters the stage through the open window seeking his shadow with Tinker Bell accompanying him.  Wendy wakes up and Peter offers to take her and her brothers to Neverland to meet the lost boys.   He wants Wendy to be their mother and to tell them stories.  In Neverland, Wendy, Peter and the lost boys meet Captain Hook and his fellow pirates.  Captain Hook hopes to get revenge on Peter Pan for flinging his hand to the dreaded crocodile.  The pirates capture the lost boys and Wendy.  Peter Pan fights the pirate and rescues Wendy and the lost boys.  Peter knows Wendy, Michael and John must go home.  Wendy, Michael and John like Neverland and they don’t want to leave, but they must return home to their worried mother.  Their mother is pleased that they return.  Wendy asks to go back and her mother says she can return once every year.  Each year isn’t the same as the first because Wendy is growing up and Peter stays a young boy not wanting to grow up.  

I enjoyed the Cheshire Academy Varsity Players performance of Peter Pan.  I thought the casting was very well done.  Each actor did a great job at their part.  In addition, each actor looked like they were enjoying themselves both in the rehearsals that I visited and on the night of the performance.  The chemistry on stage was also apparent that all of the actors got along well with each other.  I especially liked William as Nana.  He is very fun and open to doing funny things off stage and it was fun to see him portray this role on stage too.  This idea of being funny and having a good time on stage stayed true to all of the class and was also extremely apparent in Michael (Maddy) and Peter (Erin).  I also loved the costuming.  From my experience working in the black box, I know how hard it is to come with the perfect costumes.  I was very impressed.  The costumes portrayed the characters well, from Wendy’s (Wiebke) giry nightgown to Michael’s (Maddy) plaid footy-pajamas to the lost boys and their camouflage colored shirts and pants. In addition, Smee (Abby) and Captain Hook (Charlotte) had very detailed color-coordinated  costumes.  I only have two negative things to say.  One is that the scene changes looked very chaotic to the audience.  I know there was a lot of difficult scene changes because of the amount of detail on the set, but it looked very unorganized.  Some changes were more organized than others but I would suggest that each person be assigned a particular prop of group of props that they are responsible for placing.  It looked like their wasn’t much communication or organization.  It looked, to me, like the crew brought out boxes of set pieces and props and everyone grabbed whatever they could to place.  The only other thing I have to say is the lighting and cues needed a little bit of work.  The lighting was good especially during the Captain Hook part with the red lights.  The timing and placement needs to be fixed.  There were a couple miscues, and the people sitting in the front row were blinded a few times when the spotlight moved.  I know I attended during opening night and these problems might resolve themselves over the course of the shows.  Also take into account that I am a stage manager, so I have a particular eye towards the crew.  Overall, the performance was very good. The cast and crew should be proud of what they accomplished.  

Body Paragraph

The scene starts with Romeo and Juliet performing a double monologue.  There is not a double monologue in the play, but to highlight the similarities between Romeo and Juliet,  I chose to stage Romeo’s first monologue from Act II Scene II, and Juliet’s monologue from the beginning of Act III Scene II simultaneously.   While delivering the monologues, Romeo and Juliet sit back to back center stage facing the sides of the stage. The characters are represented back to back to visually show a mirror effect.  While Romeo and Juliet are saying different words, they are similarly comparing each other to the stars, heaven, the moon, and the sun.  When speaking an important part of the monologue, the actor shifts to face outward towards the audience. In addition, the actor’s voice crescendos drawing the audience’s attention towards their important dialogue. During the double monologue, I drew attention to “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,/As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven/Would through the airy region stream so bright/That birds would sing and think it were not night” (2.2 19-23). Romeo is saying that Juliet is so bright she can turn night time into daytime.   A mirrors image is similar, but not exactly the same. It is the inverse of what is seen.  Juliet makes an inverse point in her monologue. She says “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/And pay no worship to the garish sun” (3.2 23-27).  Juliet is saying that Romeo is so beautiful he should be turned into the best part of nighttime,  the stars.  During these sections of each character’s monologue, they both refer to brightness.  This is a metaphor for how stunning they are to one another. By referring to each other in the same way, the audience can see that Romeo and Juliet have the same amount of deep love for one another.  The monologues are significant because they portray the genuine love Romeo and Juliet possess for one another. Each character is sharing his or her emotions without the intent of getting a response. The audience is the witness to these feelings.  In the written play, these monologues occur in different acts.  By staging the monologues as a simultaneous double monologue, the audience is forced to see this mirrored relationship.  This staging decision reinforces Romeo and Juliet’s bond with one another.  

In class thesis

Deliberately portraying these similarities, along with playing Romeo, allowed me to prove Romeo and Juliet’s genuine love and its believability.  


Outline-
Intro
BP1-Double Monologue A&P
BP2-Costumes & Props (Further Performance and Analysis)
BP3-Rest of Scene (Analysis and Performance)
BP4-How does this prove believability? Talk about family feud
Conclusion

Romeo teiluJ- First Draft

Romeo and Juliet, written by Shakespeare, is well known for its portrayal of true love, but how does Shakespeare portray a believable love story? In my analysis, I chose to focus on the way Shakespeare uses a mirroring effect.   Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet display many similarities, including the way they describe each other, and their reactions.  These are the two similarities I focused on and I did this by looking at three scenes.  The scenes I chose to focus on are Act II Scene II, more specifically, Romeo’s monologue in which he expresses his feelings  about Juliet, Act III Scene II, when the Nurse informs Juliet of Romeo’s banishment, and Act III Scene III, when Romeo learns from Friar Lawrence that his punishment is banishment.  The three scenes were combined into one scene with three actors instead of four.  In addition the group made choices regarding props, costumes, staging and blocking.  These choices, along with playing Romeo, helped me to further explore  Romeo and Juliet’s love and its believability.  

In the beginning of the performance, Romeo and Juliet are sitting back to back center stage.  Both characters are delivering monologues about each other.  The characters are represented back to back to visually show a mirror effect.  While Romeo and Juliet were saying different words, they were both comparing each other to the stars, heaven, the moon, and the sun.  When speaking an important part of the monologue, the actor would face out toward the audience. In addition, the actor’s voice would crescendo drawing the audience’s attention towards their important dialogue. During the double monologue, I drew attention to “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night.” 

Here, Romeo is figuratively saying that she is she is bright and she would make birds think it is daytime.  Romeo is making the point that Juliet stands out meaning she is special.  Juliet makes a similar point in her monologue, which is taken from Act III Scene II.  She says “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.”  Juliet is saying that when Romeo dies, his face should be in the stars because his face is so beautiful.  During these sections of each character’s monologue, they both refer to night.  By referring to each other in the same way, the audience can see that Romeo and Juliet have the same amount of deep love for one another.  Another important aspect to mention is that the monologues are not said to each other.  They are both delivering the monologues to themselves in the play and in my version, they are delivering them to the audience at the same time without noticing each other.  This also expresses the idea of true love.  Not only are they describing each other with similar emotions, in the scene, they never speak directly to each other.  

    Our staging is also very important to the idea of Shakespeare’s mirroring.  Above I discussed the way Romeo and Juliet sat back to back.  Throughout the scene, center stage was kept as a boundary with Romeo and Juliet on different sides of the stage.  The third character, a mixture of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence, appeared on both sides of the stage, first talking to Juliet and then Romeo.  This character, referred to as the Councillor, changes from one part of the scene to the next.  The reason these characters were combined was to emphasize the similarities between the other characters. This was easy because in the play, the Nurse and Friar Lawrence both play similar roles in Romeo and Juliet lives.  We also made the similarities more obvious to the audience by displaying similarities in the actors.  Romeo and Juliet were both played by girls while Romeo was played by a guy.   This was also shown by the costumes we chose.  The costumes worn by Romeo and Juliet were similar in color rather than style.  They were both dressed in orange/red. While Romeo was played by a female, the actress was wearing pants and a shirt rather than a dress to still display that he is Romeo. In contrast to Romeo and Juliet, the councillor wore all white.  This difference in color in addition to the fact that Romeo and Juliet’s costumes were a little more elaborate than the councillor’s costume.  The costumes and the staging were added as finishing touches on the scene, but they added a lot to the scene and added attention to the mirroring my group was attempting to portray.

  

Outline:

A. Focus and explore the part of the scene between Romeo and the councillor and Juliet and the councillor

        Mention mattresses

        “O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;

         And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,

         And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,

        And then down falls again.” -the Councillor

              Mirror same actions as each other

              Relates to love- Romeo stands when hearing about Juliet

             Juliet falls because she can’t see Romeo

       “'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo--banished;'

        That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'

         Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.” -Juliet

        “Ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;'

         For exile hath more terror in his look,

         Much more than death: do not say 'banishment.'” -Romeo

         Compare quotes above (idea that banishment is worth than death) 

               Relates to love because they would rather die than be without each other

               Both mention killing themselves and Romeo even draws sword

B. How this relates to the storyline- discovery about family feud

         SO similar

         Councillor character can exist due to similarity

              Character probably raised the same

              So why feud?

              Feud is irrational?

              Relate to believability

C. Conclusion

         Conclusions about mirroring effect

         Is it believable?

Two Lovers of a Feather

http://youtu.be/asocO6UX3J4

Mirror, Mirror

In our scene, we were attempting to draw attention to Shakespeare's mirroring of Romeo and Juliet.  The scene turned out well, but given more time to specifically work with Maddy on our blocking and reactions, it could have gone better.  We did a good job with the time we had to learn to act similarly on stage and to express similarity in the double monologue.  If we had more time, we could have expanded on our reactions, our facial expressions and our blocking.  We tried to react upset in the same manner.  This was not easy because our dialogue portrayed slightly different reactions. For example, the Nurse had to tell Juliet what happened, while Romeo already knows he killed Tybalt and will most likely have a severe consequence.  The similarity is that both characters think banishment is worse than death.  We chose to portray this similarity by putting emphasis on the word "banish." This is one aspect that we added to our acting between the first and final draft.  

We also edited the scenes to make them one big scene.  This included making the stage look similar to a mirror.  By this,  I mean that Maddy and I started back to back during our double monologue. From the monologues, we moved to opposite sides of the stage and Adler moved from one side to the other performing a part of the scene with each of us.  Having him play the Nurse and Friar Lawrence, also showed the similarity between the scenes.  

The costumes used and the mattresses created more emphasis on the mirroring.   Romeo and Juliet's costume were similar in color adding to the audience's perception of the mirror.  Adler was wearing white, which fit both the role a nurse and a friar. In addition, the white was different from the orange/red color of Romeo and Juliet.  

At first, the mattress was only going to be  used on Juliet's side of the stage, but as we practiced the scene, we decided to add the mattress into Romeo's blocking.  Not only does it add to the drama of the scene, it also displays the mirroring.  When Friar Lawerence is telling Romeo about Juliet, he says "O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; And now falls on her bed; and then starts up."  This is exactly the way Romeo has just acted.  Romeo tells the Friar off, saying that he does not understand what Romeo is going through then falls on the mattress, and as soon as Friar Lawrence brings up Juliet, Romeo rises to ask about her.  

I think that my part went well. I forgot one line during our final draft, but that was also the first time I  ran the scene without my script.  I also think our timing was good during the double monologue.  In the beginning, I thought that the double monologue was going to be too hard to pull off.  Considering it was my first monologue and double monologue, I am proud of what Maddy and I accomplished.  While, the timing was good during the monologue, I still need to work on talking slower on stage and following the pacing of the people I'm acting with.  My acting has changed dramatically from the beginning of the class to now.  Before taking the class, I had always worked backstage and never onstage.  I can tell that I am becoming more used to acting and more confident in myself onstage.  Overall, I think our scene went well, we could have focused more on blocking, but we had a limited amount of time.

Scene 1, Take 1

The first draft of our scene went well.  Personally, I need to work on slowing down.  I have a tendency to talk quickly especially with Shakespearian language.  My group members are doing a good job pacing their dialogue and I need to match their speed.  This will also make the scene more cohesive.  The goal of our scene is to highlight the similarities between Romeo (Me) and Juliet (Maddy).  We do this by showing a mirror through our staging and by acting similarly.  Maddy and I need to work on becoming even more similar.  One way to start is to perfect our motions during the double monologue.  By this I mean working on when we turn and what motion we do.  This will add the effect that we are effortlessly moving from one person to another like we are the same person.  The cleanness of our perfected motions will also make us look like we are on side of a mirror shifting the angle.  This will add to the mirror effect.  We can also work on our reactions and our facial expressions to portray similar emotions as the scene continues.  If we continue to work on this as we learn our scripts this will effectively show the mirroring.

    Another part of our scene that needs a lot of work is our blocking.  Due to the fact that we are still dependent on our scripts, we cannot focus on blocking.  It is important to show our emotions using our hands and our facial expressions because throughout the scene the emotions change.  We progressed on our blocking today and it will only get easier once we know our lines.  This ties back to what Maddy and I need to work on.  There is an important line in Adler’s dialogue where he is telling me about Maddy and I think it would be a good idea if we  not only make sure that Maddy fits the description, but that I also react as the description says she is acting.  This will make the mirroring even more obvious to the audience.  In addition my next line consists of Romeo asking Friar Lawrence how Juliet is.  This should express lots of curiosity and love to Juliet.  This is important because it connects the idea of true love to the way Shakespeare mirrors the characteristics of Romeo and Juliet.  In conclusion, our first draft of the scene went well and I am sure that we will do even better once we memorize our script.

In Class Writing

During our double monologue, I am focusing on speaking clearly especially when I am louder than Maddy.  I am also trying to contrast my behavior when I am loud and when I am quiet.  When I am loud, I am turned toward the audience using hand jest urges and body language. In addition, I raise my voice and speak slow and clear.  This is to show and tell the audience the ideas that I am trying to portray and to also draw attention to the words I am saying rather than the words Maddy is saying.  When I am quiet, I am facing away from the audience and having fewer hand gestures this allows the attention to float to Maddy and her important ideas. Also, I am still clear, but I am quieter.  This allow more focus to shift away from me.  The goal of the monologue is to mirror each other, so I think an important improvement would be to work on not only setting up the stage to portray a mirror, but also working with Maddy and the way that we portray both characters.  Overall, my group is trying to show Shakespeare's mirroring.  To accomplish this, I need to work on timing and work with Maddy on creating an image that both of us can act, while still being a little different.