In the last lessons of this term, we — twenty students of the English-LK and Mrs. Genau — acted out the “Ballroom Scene“ from Shakespeare‘s play “Romeo and Juliet“.
Our LK dealt with Shakespeare: We read some of his plays, analyzed two sonnets but also watched and interpreted film adaptations. Having compared different filmic versions of the “witches scene“ from Shakespeare‘s “Macbeth”, we finally decided to act out a scene from one of Shakespeare‘s plays ourselves. In class we also learned about the difficulties and problems when acting out Shakespeare‘s plays. Because of that we decided to give it a try and decided on „Romeo and Juliet“.
From Pit to Stage
Everybody knows that Shakespeare‘s language is difficult but unique, the conversation between Juliet and Romeo is puzzling but magnificient and the ballroom is glorious but magical.
Shakespeare hides his message in the beauty of his plays like hiding a precious diamond in a safe. How did we crack the code to transfer the ballroom scene into a modern version?
Our first step was to divide the scene into seven little parts. Every group worked on their own scene and became young playwrights. The most essential step was rewriting the scene and adding stage directions in order to make it understandable for today‘s audience.
These steps built the stairs to the stage.
From Chaos to Art
The actors for our play were five volunteering students from our course. The roles of Romeo, Juliet and Juliet’s nurse were assigned first and all three roles were cast with girls. They started by reading the script and chose to practice the end of the scene first. Thus, the actresses quickly became comfortable with their roles and immediately started thinking about how to use their surroundings as a stage.
After some brainstorming they already tried acting out the scene. This proved to cause some awkwardness among the students. It was an unfamiliar situation and having to act out the role of two lovers meeting for the first time did not make it easier.
After a while of practicing, all the members of the course came to join them, as they moved to the auditorium. With the help of our teacher we all put our ideas on how to design the stage into effect. Despite the awkward situation, the actresses performed their practised lines in front of the entire class. Of course, the performers had not memorized their lines yet, so they used their ipads for some support. After a first presentation and some feedback from the class, two students were supposed to further support and criticize the actresses in a friendly way.
The next step was to choose actors for the roles of Tybalt and Sir Capulet. While Tybalt’s role was also acted out by an actress, Sir Capulet turned out to be the only man in the play. The supporting cast and our main characters went on to practise their roles step by step. At this point, the situation was no longer too awkward, however the bigger cast lead to more challenges: How were they supposed to act out their roles and interact with each other without breaking out into chaos?
Luckily there was a lot of time to practice! By the time we performed the play on stage, the cast knew most of their lines by heart. This made it easier to navigate the play. Finally, we decided on which part would be acted out where on stage. After a few attempts we managed to pull off the play with no major complications. And with this, our project was completed.
Ballroom Scene
The action takes place in the great hall of the Capulets. The servants work for the well-being of the guests as they enter the hall. Capulet makes his rounds through groups of guests, joining with them and encouraging all to dance. He turns towards his cousin in surprise as they realize their last masked ball has only recently occurred. While the cousins are conversing on the balcony, Romeo notices a beautiful woman across the room and asks a servant who she is. After receiving no answer, he decides to wait after the dance is over to talk to her and confesses his love. Moving through the crowd, Tybalt hears and recognizes Romeo‘s voice and goes to tell his uncle (Capulet), hoping he becomes furious, but he seems not to care and tells Tybalt to behave and leaves Romeo alone. Romeo takes the risks and approaches Juilet. They flirt with each other but are interrupted by her nurse. Juilet wants her nurse to find out who the young man is and she soon learns t that the guy is her family‘s biggest enemy and her heart shatters into a million pieces.
