Jordan Harris Group 10 10-02-13 Theatre 103

Romeo and Juliet is a classic Shakespearean play that has been done time and time again, and always with the same result. The challenge of a director is to take one of the most well known plays in the world and make it into something an audience has never seen before. For the Ball State University production of Romeo and Juliet, the director was Michael Daehn and he had this extremely difficult challenge on his hands. Audience members knew the outcome of the play and its characters when they took their seats in the theatre. Most of them knew the name of every family member, their back-stories, and their ulterior motives. And of course, they all knew the over lying theme of the play; two lovebirds torn apart by their feuding families. However, at the end of the night most audience members seemed to walk away pleased with what they had just witnessed on the stage. It is easy to bore an audience with the same story they already know but this production put a unique spin on it by using different theatre elements to create something new and wonderful. Not only were there strong acting choices made, but strong directing and costume choices were executed as well. Much like the 1996 movie version of the play with Leonardo DiCaprio, the director must present something that will shock the audience members and leave an impression in their minds. While Ball State Universitys production of Romeo and Juliet did not go quite as far as making Mercutio a crossdresser, there were other ways in which the production strove to give something memorable to the audience.

Jordan Harris Group 10 10-02-13 Theatre 103 Costume design is always a very important detail in any Romeo and Juliet play. Most people know the Capulets are associated with the color red and Montagues with the color blue. In Ball States production, this was the same case. However, there were also many other colors used to symbolize other things in the play. For instance, Juliets nightgown is solid white. Yes, we usually think of this as a typical color for a nightgown to be, but in this case it also symbolizes Juliets innocence, both when it comes to Romeo and also in the case of the feud between her family and the Montagues. White is also the absorbance of every color, symbolizing Juliet as an element that brings the Montagues and the Capulets together, the red and the blue. In the scene with Romeo and Juliet in Juliets bedroom, Romeo is also seen wearing a solid white blouse, symbolizing the same connection between the Capulets and the Montagues. The use of real swords was also unique and many people in the audience were probably very satisfied with the soft chiiiiing sound of the sword sliding into its holder. Adding even more intensity were the duels that the swords were actually used for. Many blows given by Tybalt, Mercutio, and Romeo were sharp but also sporadic, deliberate and random. Moves like the ones made on the University Theatre stage were some that had never been chanced before and it served its purpose of keeping the audience enthralled. The set design was also very simple, but still not lacking in any way. A Verona skyline with a church and some other buildings was used for the duration of the play to show more of the setting and time period. The repeated backdrop was a way of showing how alike the two feuding families really were. In many scenes, there is a cardboard cutout

Jordan Harris Group 10 10-02-13 Theatre 103 of a moon in varying stages of fullness displayed against the Verona buildings. This shows the importance of night to both Romeo and Juliet, a notion that is voiced by both throughout the play. Many of their pivotal scenes happen during the cover of night. The easiest way for the audience to connect with the story of Romeo and Juliet was through the wide range of facial expressions used by the actors. The actors did a wonderful job of portraying the characters they were playing while also bringing their own life into it. The clear acting choice that many of the performers made symbolized feelings they had inside that we might not have picked up on in the text or in another production of Romeo and Juliet. For example, in the balcony scene, Joe Lino (the actor who portrayed Romeo) and Jessica Ervin (the actress who portrayed Juliet) both showed many emotions during their dialogue. Romeo showed pride, anxiety, and compassion while he hid behind the tree and listened to Juliets famous monologue. When the two finally met and were speaking to each other, Juliet showed her anxiety and anxiousness in her sporadic movements and wide-eyed glances at Romeo. During the scene in the Capulet tomb, the whole cast did a wonderful job of showing their remorse for the loss of the two star crossd lovers. The emotion in the scene was something that was easily felt by the audience, and it can be assumed that there were probably quite a few wet eyes in the audience, shedding tears along with Juliets mother. Ball State Universitys production of Romeo and Juliet strove to be very different from other showings of the same play, and they succeeded in taking

Jordan Harris Group 10 10-02-13 Theatre 103 something that had been done so many times and molding it into something new. With elements of real sword fighting, carefully planned costume choices, and the emotions the actors portrayed with their facial expressions of pain, joy, and love, the play left the audience with intense amounts of sympathy for the young lovers. While no one in the audience could really know what it was like for Romeo and Juliet, they could at least get a clear idea of the pain they faced, along with the pain their families experienced as well. It makes it not quite as difficult to put ourselves into that time period and way of life. We got a completely new sense of what it was like to be Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, their intense love torn apart by their own families.