Romeo & Juliet
by William Shakespeare
March 1 - March 18, 2012
How often do you get to see a professional production of Romeo and Juliet with teenagers playing the teenagers and adults playing the adults? Stoneham Theatre's first foray into Shakespeare is motivated in part by the opportunity to pair up actors from the young company - our year-round education program - with a stellar collection of professional actors. The setting and dress is contemporary - perhaps somewhere in the mid 1990s? - but the language is unchanged. The result is a Romeo and Juliet that loses none of the romance and tragedy but discovers new insights into how contemporary families function and how they fail.
Running time two hours, including an intermission
Appropriate for middle school students and above.
Deep discounts available for students of Stoneham, Wakefield and Melrose. Ask the box office for details.
Events
Pay What You Can Night
Thursday, March 1st, 2012 7:30 PM
Thanks to Melrose Cooperative Bank, we offer at least one Pay What You Can performance for every production. This is typically scheduled for the first Thursday of the run. It is a first come first served offering with tickets available one hour before the performance.
Student Matinees
Wednesday, March 7th - 10:00 AM
Thursday, March 8th - 10:00 AM
Tuesday, March 13th - 10:00 AM
Wednesday, March 14th - 10:00 AM
Stoneham Theatre offers 10am student matinee performances of select mainstage and young company productions. Each performance is followed by an optional talkback in which students can ask questions of the actors, director, and designers who bring our theatre to life. All arrangements are handled directly through our group sales department.
Contact Carol Dempsey at 781-587-7905 or carol@stonehamtheatre.org.
Click here for more Student Matinee information.
Special Thanks to the Massachusetts Cultural Council
Give your Star-crossed love dinner and a show
Thanks to Melissa Symes Patalano, a member of our six-person Boston Marathon team, we are pleased to announce a Dinner and a Show package for Romeo and Juliet. Priced at $100, this package includes two tickets to Romeo and Juliet and a $50 gift certificate to Melissa’s Main Street Bistro (some restrictions apply). Call the Box Office at 781-279-2200 for more details.
Extras
Spoiler alert, there’s a fair share of violence to be found in Romeo and Juliet. It’s Shakespeare, after all. To make sure that the violence portrayed on our stage is both stylized and safe (for the actors), the Theatre has employed Adam McLean as its fight choreographer. Below is an interview between Adam and Producing Artistic Director Weylin Symes.
1. What is a Fight Director?
A Fight Director is an individual that stages/choreographs violence and fight scenes for the stage and the screen. The focus of this individual foremost is the safety of those involved in the scene and the audience in addition to telling the story that needs to be told through the illusion of violence. My official title is Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD). Much more information can be found at www.safd.org Fight Directors and Certified Teachers have extensive training in the art of stage combat and are endorsed by the SAFD which is an internationally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to promoting safety and fostering excellence in the art of stage combat. Our ranks included skilled Actor/Combatants all the way up to Fight Masters who work on Broadway and in Hollywood films. It's an honor to be part of such an organization to to continue training with folks who come from such a varied background and carry the experience that they have to the rest of this stage combat community.
2. How many different productions of Romeo and Juliet have you worked on?
I think I've lost count! I remember at one point working on three high school productions during the same two month period! I've done touring productions, high school productions, college and professional productions and two operas! It's a show that is done a lot and for good reason. I am very fond of the text and the story is so compelling. The violence is not gratuitous at all, and there is a definitive consequence for those that chose to engage in violence. The story shows how far reaching the effects of violence can be and our responsibility towards that as adolescents and adults.
3. What’s different about Stoneham Theatre’s production?
I think what is unique about this production going in is that all the actors are age appropriate. I've never quite had that before. Usually, the "teens" in the story are too old (opera) or the "adults" are too young (high schools). It will be very interesting to work with a group that is fully age appropriate. Also, the directors and I have discussed how incidental and almost accidental the violence will be rather than the skilled swordsmen walking the streets. That to me is always an interesting challenge and aesthetically grounds the violence in something a little more close to home as it were. Swords are almost other worldly... we just don't see that in our culture today so we can separate ourselves from how scary an actual sword fight could be! However, using nothing but your natural tools (hands, feet, etc.) and being pressured by peers into engaging in violence I think we can all relate to! Especially if something as ordinary as a knife appears as well! We've all cut ourselves chopping vegetables before and know how painful and shocking that can be. And to see teens who are not sure how or why to engage in a fight... that makes for a much more compelling story!
4. What’s your favorite fight moment that you’ve created?
That's a tough one! I tend to celebrate moments where actors go above and beyond themselves and achieve something they didn't think possible. I have many moments I like for a variety of reasons! I do remember choreographing the violence in a production of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA that was set in the 1950's and involved a lot of boxing matches. That was a huge challenge and the actors were very physically gifted. There were some amazing things that they were capable of doing that borderlined stunts as opposed to fights! And then recently I did a production of JULIUS CAESAR where we literally tore apart the poet Cinna! Sometimes I see the work in rehearsal and it is excellent, the director is happy, the actors are safe and then when we put it on the stage, the lights and costumes bring it to life in a way that the rehearsal hall cannot. I did a production of Handel's GIULIO CESARE that had a huge battle sequence all in slow motion timed out to the music... and the lighting designer had a blast doing some very intricate work during the slow motion highlighting specific moments and allowing areas of the stage to be in darkness so soldiers would "emerge" into the battle... it was so much fun!
5. What’s the last book you read?
THE WORLD IN SIX SONGS by Daniel Levitin and CONTACT by Carl Sagan (which is MUCH better than the film, and I think the film is terrific).