Romeo and Julia

Only 10 days to go.....

 An excerpt from the ‘Directors Notes’...
by Mr Frank Walmsley

I was pretty much told, when I said I would take over as director of this year’s secondary drama production, that a musical would be expected, as this was the tradition at the school.  I must confess that I would not class myself as a fan of musical theatre.

We decided that we should produce our own musical and so I had a chat with Mr Bennett to see if he had any ideas and we came to the conclusion that we should try something new. Mr Bennett and Mr Woolley then sat down and came up with the idea of taking the story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and adding the songs of The Beatles.  When they told me this I thought, ‘Yeah, you know, this might actually work’.

Having never attempted a project like this in a school with a new script, live music, singing and dance, it soon became clear that this was going to be no easy task.  We decided that the best way forward was to split rehearsals so that we would have singing and dance rehearsals separate from acting rehearsals.  You can’t exactly rehearse an intimate scene of young love with Helter Skelter blaring away in the background you can’t hear the actors whispering sweet nothings! Mr Bennett and Pacharee kindly agreed to direct certain scenes so that we could cover as much of the play as possible in rehearsals.

The main advantage of having the Head of English write a script is that it is very clear from the script how they visualise the scenes.  We had discussed setting the play in a soi in modern Bangkok, Soi Verona.

After reading the script I had a pretty good idea what the production would look like.  With the design I had some very clear ideas.  I did not want to clutter the performance space with set and furniture as there was going to be a number of set choreographed dance pieces and we needed as much space as we could get, especially since we had a band on stage too.

I also decided that we should try and highlight the differences between the two families using colour and costume. The idea of elements came to mind thinking about the lyrics of some of the Beatle’s songs used in the production.  Julia in the song of the same title is described as an ocean child.   This suggested that the Capole family had some connection with the sea, possibly merchants.  The colours for the Capoles would be sea colours, blues, light greens and so on.  Romeo sings Mother Nature’s Son, another Beatle’s song and that suggested that the Montags are connected with the earth.  They possibly own farmland growing rice or other crops.  The Montag colours would be earthy colours, browns and dark greens.

I wanted to have the words love and hate prominently incorporated into the set as they are major themes in the play and are referred to by the characters a number of times.  I found the word love in the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine movie and liked the style, so we decided to use that font in the design. I also wanted to get the feel of a Thai street and so we have a street cafe and food hawkers stand on stage and we will have a Thai style Soi Verona sign on set.

I also have to thank Kristina, Terry and all the parents that worked on the set.  I have worked with the parents on the designs for three productions now and I am consistently impressed with the high standard and quality of their sets. A special thanks to all the students and staff that have committed themselves to the project.  It’s been an interesting and frustrating few months.  Hopefully you’ll all feel that your efforts have been appreciated. 

You’re all stars to me.

A word about ‘Julia’
by Mew

As part of the cast of ‘Romeo & Julia’, I am very proud that I was selected as one of the main characters. To act as Julia is harder than I thought it would be. It is all about love and romance and in contrast the character’s emotions change throughout the play as she experiences anger and fear. However, we are practicing more frequently and everyone has put in a lot of effort over the past 4 weeks.  As a result the production has grown bigger and the image has become clear; we’re heading for success!

This year’s Production will be one of the best productions over the past school years at Saint John’s. We have a live band playing, with real singing and professional sets and props. I’m very glad that the school chose the play ‘Romeo & Julia’ for this year’s production because every time I attended rehearsals, I learn more about elements of Drama and many other techniques. I have learned new dance moves and developed my singing skills. Furthermore, I am learning how to co-operate as a team because by missing only one person at a rehearsal it seemed as if a body part was missing! Without him/her the play could not be fully run.

I hope that many people are looking forward to our play. Please come a watch our amazing performance, because if you don’t I’m sure you’ll regret it!