My Role
I was the Director for my scene in this project. I made sure everyone in my scene was on task and memorized their lines. I helped push my actors to put emotion into their words when they acted the scene on the stage.
Director's Choices
My scene was the marriage scene, this is where the Nurse goes and asks Romeo what he plans to do with Juliet, Romeo says he wants to marry her and the Nurse warns him not to play with her emotions. The Nurse then goes and tells Juliet what Romeo said but prolongs telling her for dramatic reasons. Juliet goes to shrift (church) where she marries Romeo in secret.
I wanted the audience to laugh at the Nurse for being over dramatic to Juliet and I wanted them to see how much Romeo and Juliet care for each other to defy their families and get married against all odds. I think that Romeo was the one to convey the love struck-ness towards Juliet with his facial expressions, and although Juliet was in love as well, I wanted her to use her lines to be persistent and a little bit annoying when she is insisting the Nurse to tell her what her Romeo says.
The Nurse is the character that will make the audience crack up laughing. I wanted this character to be a crazy older woman that craves attention and loves Juliet with all of her heart. Mercutio would also be an entertaining character because I really pushed the actor who played Mercutio, to play him as a loudmouthed, annoying, and in-your-face character.
I wanted the audience to laugh at the Nurse for being over dramatic to Juliet and I wanted them to see how much Romeo and Juliet care for each other to defy their families and get married against all odds. I think that Romeo was the one to convey the love struck-ness towards Juliet with his facial expressions, and although Juliet was in love as well, I wanted her to use her lines to be persistent and a little bit annoying when she is insisting the Nurse to tell her what her Romeo says.
The Nurse is the character that will make the audience crack up laughing. I wanted this character to be a crazy older woman that craves attention and loves Juliet with all of her heart. Mercutio would also be an entertaining character because I really pushed the actor who played Mercutio, to play him as a loudmouthed, annoying, and in-your-face character.
Reflection
My favorite part of the play was when the Nurse yelled "JULIET!! JULIET!!" because it was such a romantic scene and it was really funny to have the Nurse break it up like that. Based on my experience with this project, and watching other representations of Romeo and Juliet, I wanted to be a great director by having my actors open up to their emotions and really understand and relate to the character enough so that they can play the character to the best of their abilities onstage. I think I could have been an even better director by keeping in mind that everybody has different learning speeds and styles than me. I am a person who can memorize things really quickly and I think I put too much pressure on my actors with their memorization. I don't think that directing or acting would be my chosen career path, although I do have a passion for it. I want to do something in the medical field and/or with animals, rather than a performance career because, and this is going to sound boring, but I would rather have a steady income than a play by play income. I learned that teamwork requires communication. I was constantly letting my group members know what I was doing before I did it, and whenever I would change something in the script, I would ask my group members first to make sure it was OK with them.
Answering the Essential Question: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was written over 400 years ago. Based on your specific acting scene, how have relationships changes since that time? How have they stayed the same? Where have we improved in our relationships? What problems do we still have when it comes to dealing with each other?
Relationships have changed so much since Shakespeare's time in regards to messages (we use text and emails rather than our Nurse), meeting your S.O (we meet online and through dating sites or school rather than a party), but the one thing that has not changed is Marriage. We romanticize the story of Romeo and Juliet but most people don't understand the context of the lines in the play, and they cannot translate each line and most do not understand why they killed themselves. At the beginning of this project, I was one of those people. When we started close reading the script, a door opened for me and I was empathetic to Juliet. She was forced to marry Paris and would be disowned by her family if she did not. But she fell in love with her "only hate". She was an independent and not at all naive character, who let her feelings dictate her actions.