The Final Switch Up

The Final Switch Up

In my written task I want to analyse how the roles of Romeo and Juliet in their relationship, evolve throughout the play. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, was first published in 1597. Thus men and women were pictured in a specific way. In the beginning of the play, Juliet is a typical girl one would find in the late 1500s. She is calm, quiet, and does what her parents tell her to do. Romeo is a typical man, or teenager for that time, he is a bit melodramatic. Before falling in love with Juliet he has a crush on Rosaline, who he believes to be his true, one and only love until he meets Juliet. Throughout the play, the role of Juliet and Romeo in their relationship evolves to a point where it is flipped. Juliet takes on the part of the man, she makes important decisions that will influence both of their lives, while Romeo is waiting in Mantua for whatever will happen.

My group choose several scenes that showed Romeo and Juliet before and after that transition. The characters included were Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence and the Nurse. To symbolize the transitions we had one actor play the girls side of Romeo and Juliet (this was me, the only girls in the group) and another actor play the guy side in both Romeo and Juliet (John).

The scenes that we choose (Act II Scene II, Act IV Scene I+II, and Act III Scene III) worked well with our argument. We also had the right people to perform those three scenes. One thing that would have been helpful is if I had been completely off script. Thouh I was familiar enough with our lines to only take brief glances at my paper from time to time, acting is false easier to me if I don’t depend on my script. For our scenes we didn’t use music, and didn’t require a big amount of props, but costumes had a big impact. As having two people playing both Romeo and Juliet could cause confusion for the audience we decided that the two actors when playing Juliet would wear one costume, and when playing Romeo would wear the other costume. This also added a funny aspect as it was hard to find costumes fitting both of us, and we both were wearing a costume for the opposite gender at one part.

Through this project I tried, and believe to have succeeded in a way, to really go out of myself when acting, for instance the scene in which I was Romeo I had to add a funny, melodramatic effect to it as I had to show the girl (from thee late 1500s) in Romeo. Also as another group lost their actor for Juliet I spontaneously jumped in. This meant I had to learn the part in two less than two days which was definitely an interesting experience. I think my performance skills also improved because I took on a big aspect of directing our scenes. This gave me a good view of the choices an actor could and should make in specific situations when on stage.