The performance of my group is based on a tragic play written by William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare was definitely one of the most successful English playwright in history, a lot of his pieces reflect his personal experiences. Romeo and Juliet is a classic demonstration of immature, naive love. The play basically illustrates a story-line which develops upon the feud between the two families - Montague and Capulet, and ends with a grieving scene that both of the young lovers died. Every Acts of the story are closely connected in Romeo and Juliet, a substantial amount of elements in the early parts of the play actually foreshadows the tragic ending. The performance of my group demonstrates the hatred of between the families, by showing the easy-irritating emotions of the two families, plus fighting and death. This hatred grants the inability of the families to treat the young lovers fairly. Under the pressure from that atmosphere, led to the final tragedy in the play. There are plenty of scenes that show the hatred of the families clearly. My group picked three of them that best strengthen the idea that mentioned above. In Act 1 Scene 1 and 5, Act 3 Scene 1, My performance used different colors' costumes to distinguish the two families, while the fight actions and language adaptations to present the theme of hostility.
The first scene I chose is shortened and adapted from Act 1 Scene 1. The setting of this scene is located among the Verona Streets. The two Capulet members, Gregory and Sampson entered the scene with weapons and started showing discrimination against the Montague family. Next, one of the underclass man of Montague, Abram came in and began arguing with the two Capulet. It ended up with a fight, Abram died from the Capulet's blades. In the original play, there isn't any instruction that shows Abram died during the fight. So his death is one of the adaptations in our performance - in order to show the overflowing rage. Another significant adaptation is that the fight stopped right after the two Capulet stabbed Abram. So the later scene which the prince conciliates the fight disappeared. Every adaptations that we did was under the purpose of maximize the expression of feud. There are a good amount of lines that are the straight clues of the insolvable conflict between the characters. In the beginning of the scene. Gregory and Sampson started the conversation like this:" I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw."(Act 1 Scene 1, line 3) So their obvious willingness of fighting is shown right at the beginning. Also, the line by Sampson:"A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the wall of any man of or maid of Montague's"(Act 1 Scene 1, line 12-13) is another perfect example of their discrimination to the Montague. The analogy of Montague members to the dog presents their attitude toward the other family. Followed by those provoking judgments, Abram responded to the "thumb biting" action of Sampson. " Do you bite your thumb at us sir?" (Act 1 Scene 1, line 45) Noticing that Abram here used the term "us" instead of "me", there were supposed to have more than one Montague members, but we decided to cut the other ones except for Abram, so the Capulet were able to overpopulate him and then kill him. And finally, after the line"Draw if you be man"(Act 1 Scene 1 line 63), Abram died under Sampson's sword.This first scene might looks non-related to the two lovers - Romeo and Juliet, but it actually plays an important role of setting up the background and establishing the tone for the entire play. This fight is only the beginning. One of the reason why we picked the theme of feud, is that the it is such a gigantic portion of the play. Performing the beginning part efficiently shows how the feud covers the entire play, Shakespeare really made effort on introduce the story background at the beginning. The fightings made people ruthless and blind. During the prince's speech, he expresses that:"If ever you disturb our streets again, Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace ."(Act 1 Scene 1 line 98-99). This line becomes a metaphor for the later incidents. The idea is always: No matter how deep Romeo and Juliet's love is, the feud is always going to cause a dead end in this story. The end is already settled at the beginning, a really complicated and vague connection.
The next scene was originated from Act 1 Scene 5, it was picked under a tough discussion. The scene took place in the feast held by the Capulet. In this scene, Romeo first met his "true love"- Juliet, everything started on track. However, one of the main character - Juliet did not appear in this scene in my performance, because it was adapted to show Tybalt's discrimination to Romeo. In our performance, the scene started with the entering of Romeo to the party After a relatively short monologue, Tybalt appeared and began pouring vicious words to the young man behind his back. Following that is the conversation between Tybalt and his uncle - Capulet, the head of family. At the end Tybalt leaves with unsatisfied and envious emotions. In Romeo's monologue, he just simply appraised the girl and expressed his overflowing love. "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night"(Act 1 Scene 5, line 51-52). His personalities caused a lot of troubles for him, including taking risk to go to enemy's banquet without invitation. What happened next is another foreshadow of the later fight. Our performance erased everything before Romeo's monologue to directly show this close connection to the next scene. When Tybalt noticed Romeo's appearance, the fury blinds his eyes, my performance kept all his lines. "Come hither covered with an antic face to fleer and scorn at our solemnity ? Now, by the stock and honor of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin."(Act 1 Scene 5, line 64-67), this line clearly indicates Tybalt's willingness to fight Romeo. The relationship between Romeo and Tybalt had been always the biggest person-to-person conflict in the play, their destinies are binding together, only one can survive. From the scene, we can tell that Tybalt's personalities are extremely different from Romeo's. Romeo is a young man that put too much focus on his love, his language is poetic and gentle. On the other hand, Tybalt is the representative of hatred. He just doesn't care, takes whatever he needs to slain his enemy. By performing Act 1 Scene 5, I not only established a straight link between this scene and Act 3 Scene 1, but also indicates how much trouble Tybalt will bring to Romeo and change him. Under the pressure, Romeo finally changed and revealed the dark side of him which will be shown in the next scene.
In my point of view, Romeo is neither a virtuous nor peaceable young man. He is kind of a unstable and tragic protagonist. At the beginning of the play, he's language brings readers an impression of innocent character, the young man is so overwhelmed by his love and life, that he is not possibly able to commit such murder in the later scene. However, showing the drastic change of Romeo is exactly my purpose in the last scene, the extraction of Act 3 Scene 1.
