Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy thinks girl is dead and kills himself. Girl awakes, discovers boy and kills herself.
Though it perhaps does not have the happiest ending, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has met ongoing success and continues to be, arguably, his most well-known play.
It is has survived many adaptations, including the recent Oscar-winning short film West Bank Story. This weekend at Live Arts, audiences can see another adaptation of this famous romance.
In Joe Calarco's Shakespeare's R & J, four Catholic schoolboys secretly perform the forbidden Romeo and Juliet and discover tales of love, violence and humanity.
In this version of the play, the directors, fourth-year College students Jonathan Green and Brin Lukens, made a slight change. They chose to cast two plays -- one entirely male and one entirely female. Performing in the shows are fourth-year College students Scottie Caldwell, Matt Fletcher and Mindy Miller; third-year College student Nathaniel Whelden; second-year College students Julia Debo, Matt Marcus and Greg Steinbrecher; and first-year College student Caroline Ryon.
As in Shakespearean times, the show is cross-cast. Calarco's reconfiguration of Shakespeare's text is open to interpretation, whether one feels the play is about gender politics or the suppression of self-expression in the Catholic learning environment.
Steinbrecher, who plays Student Four, said, "There's been no talking about the characters [between the two casts]. They wanted from the start for the shows to take on different characters and personalities; they haven't wanted any influences to change our performances."
The show will run March 31 and April 1 at Live Arts on the Downtown Mall, and each cast will perform once each day. Partly because of the script and partly because the cast has very little time to rehearse at Live Arts, the set is minimal. The cast uses one prop and two set pieces; the bare set allows the actors to embrace the vision of Shakespeare's text.
Green notes that as the four Catholic schoolboys (and girls) start identifying with Shakespeare's characters, they begin to relate more to the stifling lives of Romeo and Juliet.
"I can't think of more of a parallel to what Romeo and Juliet had to face than two Catholic schoolboys kissing," Green remarked in response to the forbidden nature of their love.
Though the nature of the show does perhaps raise questions about sexuality, Ryon said the focus is not entirely on gender. She said the focus is more on the concept of the forbidden and how society makes these students conform. In the end, the play leads them to self-realization.
As the characters find themselves within the play, the directors also found their own interpretations of the text.
In preparation, the directors did quite a bit of research about Shakespearean text and performance. Green and Lukens also researched gender and sexual studies, reading a book called Still Acting Gay, which discusses how to deal with homosexual politics on stage.
It's interesting that the characters in Calarco's play can look back on a text that seems so dated and find in it emotions that transcend 400 years of history. Additionally, the advantages of having two casts will give the audience two vastly different performances. Seeing both versions of the play will allow audience members to form their own conclusions.
"There is no direct reference to today's culture and political environment," Steinbrecher said. "People can take whatever they want to from the show.
For tickets, call Live Arts at 434-977-4177.
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