William Shakespeare’s one of the most famous pieces Romeo and Juliet is a tragic fiction play that depicts the unattainable love between Romeo and Juliet. When I was reading Romeo and Juliet, the first thought I had in my head was that this story was highly ridiculous as a reader who had the modernized view at watching world. What I thought next was perhaps I could re-make this story to be more believable, but the problem was how am I going to re-make the scene to be more believable. Little after, I came up with a few ideas inspired by these day’s comedy shows. They used modern setting as a background to make not humorous story into humorous story. Although I might not be able to make it “believable”, I thought I could at least make a jocular parody of a few scenes and show that these scenes are not believable. To do that, I had to come up with some comedic factors, and the scenes that I thought irrational and chose to reveal the quixotic features were Act 1 Scene 5, Act 2 Scene 2, and Act 3 Scene 1. If the story of Romeo and Juliet were put into the real modern world, the plot would be perceived as irrational and implausible. Therefore, I tried to portray the ridiculous aspects of the scenes by using exaggeration and sarcasm on characters’ action and played various musics to set the atmosphere of the scenes.
In Act 1 Scene 5 was about the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet and its background was a ball party. Starting from the line 104, which was Romeo’s first attempt to attract Juliet by his poetic words, Romeo and Juliet’s crush on each other grew rapidly and eventually turned into a strong love. This scene was immensely unrealistic to me. Considering their age and the way they charm each other, I thought this scene needed to be amended urgently. First and foremost about lines, I thought there was too much unnecessary description and they had gone too far as unsettled teenager lovers. What I did was cutting out all the poetic language and leaving only essential parts of the lines. Fundamentally I just left the words that were needed to convey the meaning. “If I propane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” (line 104) was changed into “My lips, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” because I felt like it was too wordy and too descriptive which could sound boring to the audiences. Also, I thought that in the real world, the background like a ball party which has really loud and chaotic atmosphere makes hard to hear each other speaking, and I thought it could be used as a comical factor of this scene. Therefore I set up the background as a modern dance club and played some electronic music. Most importantly, to make the scene hilarious, I added a direction; Romeo and Juliet had to ask for pardon to each other since they could not really hear each other speaking. By getting rid of all the poetic language and leaving only the practical words, and by setting the background as a dance club and adding the specific humorous stage direction, I could effectively show that Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting scene was highly unrealistic.
Then in Act 2 Scene 2, which was the balcony scene, there was a significant deepening of their hopeless love by talking in poetic words and checking each other’s mind. However, when I tried to imagine this scene happening nowadays, I simply could not imagine in my head because it was way too romantic and beautiful unlike reality. In the reality, if two lovers fall in love, their mind goes out of their mind and can not restrain themselves. Thus while the soliloquy of Juliet in original scene proceeded calmly and feebly, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet”, which was lamenting passively Romeo’s identity, I changed Juliet’s action hugely but kept the whole line. I asked Juliet to be more obsessed with Romeo and act like a child who really wants to get something but her mother does not let her get it because that is what I thought as an actual Juliet’s mind in the scene. In my scene, Juliet portrayed her obsession by exaggeratedly stumbling around the stage, sitting down and screaming out Romeo’s name, and grabbing anything on the stage and throwing. It showed Juliet’s strong feeling towards Romeo in another way and it helped audience easily grasp what was going on in the scene. Next, Romeo was eavesdropping Juliet under the balcony and when he realized the way she thought about him, he tried to climb up the wall to reach her. I thought I could make that as a comical scene. Consequently, I played the mission impossible theme song while Romeo climbed up the wall and prepared sunglasses. Also I asked Romeo to rumple his clothes and spoil his hair after he finished climbing up to show the harshness of reality. By doing that, I tried to be sarcastic to the particularly imaginative scene. Lastly, Romeo seemed decidedly brave that he could take all the risky situations coming from the feud between two families, but I thought this will never happen especially for teenage lovers who are not capable of refusing parent’s opinion. I demonstrated the ironic stage direction to stress the fact that the feud was impossible to avoid. For that reason, when nurse called Juliet within the house, Romeo, who said that he was not afraid of Capulet family, was shocked and trying to hide somewhere. The using of exaggeration and hilarious stage directions helped me successfully complete my goal which was to make audience laugh and show other chimerical aspects of the scene.
My last choice was Act 3 Scene 1, which is Tybalt, Mercutio, and Romeo’s fighting scene. This scene seemed to have no room to make it humorous, but I figured out something extraordinary. Throughout the story, majority of Romeo’s lines were exceptionally long due to his aesthetic modifier and poetic flowery words. Act 3 Scene 3 had a huge tension between Montague and Capulet family; in other words it had to be very serious and tight scene in terms of the atmosphere. Nevertheless, Romeo’s line in that scene was still so long. From “Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting. Villain am I none. Therefore farewell. I see thou knows me not” (line 63) to “I do protest I never injured thee but love thee better than thou canst devise till thou shalt know the reason of my love. And so, good Capulet, which name I tender as dearly as mine own, be satisfied” (line 73), his lines were so long that honestly he could have been stabbed before he even finished his lines. I thought Romeo’s lengthy line simply did not fit in the scene. As a result, as a background music for normal lines which was said by Mercutio and Tybalt, I played the music that sounded urgent and strained, and as soon as Romeo started speaking, I played relaxing, sleepy, and peaceful music. Also to show that Romeo’s extremely long line was tedious, Tybalt and Mercutio put down their swords, yawned, dozed off, and took a good rest while Romeo was speaking his lines along the slackening music. Lastly, when Romeo kills Tybalt by stabbing him, he actually did not mean to kill Tybalt according to “O, I am Fortune’s fool!” (line 142). Romeo was likely to kill Tybalt impulsively and he might have been shocked that he actually killed a person. I felt like I could make it funny by taking Romeo’s emotion into the scene and making it into slow motion. As a result, in our scene, when Romeo killed Tybalt, they did slow motion by themselves for example making a shocked face and roaring sound. The using of two completely different sounding musics effectively showed the contrast of atmosphere which emphasizes the unrealistic aspect of Romeo’s ridiculously lengthy lines and how it did not fit in the scene and exaggerated stage direction such as nodding off and slow motion strengthened the effect.
Even though the play Romeo and Juliet is famously known as one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, it has a lot of irrational qualities when looking from the modern perspective. As an impressed and admiring reader of it, I wanted to adapt it into the modern setting and employ a few comical factors to make it hilarious to manifest the unrealistic qualities. I used mostly exaggeration and sometimes sarcasm on actor's’ action and various sounding musics to set and sometimes contrast the ambience.
After the location of the writing center had changed, I did not go there, for I had no time to go (maybe not). However thanks to Lit&Perf class, I made one step into the amazing world of writing. Last year, the writing center was just the room in the library that had "writing center" sticker on the glass wall and it only had one teacher per period. Sometimes it was even not open when the teacher was busy on that day. In contrast this year, it actually is a pretty big office that has a few rooms. Ms. Swift is very dedicated boss (I guess), and there was no one when I visited but I think usually there is one student writing fellow sitting down. My experience this time was pretty good and I think I need to go there one more time to get it done fully.
