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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.