Note On Rest of Act 2

Main Plot Review:

1. Romeo goes back to Capulet's house because he wants to see Juliet again.
2. Romeo finds Juliet stand in the balcony murmuring about him.
3. Juliet feels painful about the name and reputation of Romeo because they are the enemy.  Juliet loves Romeo.
4. Romeo appears, and Juliet asks Romeo to marry her.
5. Romeo goes to Friar Lawrence, a priest, and Romeo ask Lawrence to be the chief witness at their wedding ceremony.  As a result, Lawrence accepts the request.
6. When Romeo plays with his friends, Nurse comes and talks to Romeo.
7. Romeo makes a vow, and Nurse will tell Juliet.
8. They get married secretly.

Notes:

To be honest, I do not like Mercutio.  As Romeo's best friend, Mercutio is totally different from Romeo.  He says whatever he would love to say, which is really rude and impolite.  Someones would say he is a funny person, but I cannot get how humorous he is.  All I get is that he teases Romeo and sneer at Nurse.  Nurse and Friar Lawrence are two kind people, and I think they have a lot of identities in common.  For example, they are both the person who can get Romeo or Juliet's trust.  Secondly, they are full of conflict.  Nurse is a servant in Capulet, but she is also the best friend with Juliet.  They are so close that Nurse can tease Juliet, the precious daughter of the Capulets.  Lawrence is a priest meanwhile he makes herbal medicine.  He can poison others or heal others, which means he can control others' lives and death in some ways.  However, controlling lives disobey the beliefs in religion.  Therefore, the conflict makes the two character more real and interesting. 

10/3 Homework

Capulets and Montagues stand on the opposite side, so if I were to stage the play, I might set the stage, costuming, props and body language totally different even though they are all wealth.  First of all, for the stage, Capulets can live in the Baroque-style house.  The reason is that the buildings and architecture in Baroque period inclined to glittering and gorgeous style.  Their house in my mind can be like the house of Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.  It can emphasize Capulet' wealth while implying a feeling of showing off.  Moreover, because there is a scene of the party, it can also set off the craziness that the party is.  For Montague, they can live in a house that made of glass.  The glass house is also a symbol of wealth in the modern world, but comparing to Baroque style, the glass building give people more feeling of cold and calmness.  The reason why I want to set the Baroque house to Capulets and glasshouse for Montagues is that the Tybalt and Benvolio influence me so much.  I often think that if  Tybalt can be more objective at the beginning of the story or even before the story, it is possible to have a happy ending.  Tybalt's emotion is too aggressive and too impetuous to control, which is like the feeling of glaring glittering gold.  However, Benvolio is a peaceful person.  Even though he is still wealthy and honorable in his family, his personality is not theatrical like Tybalt, which is like a glass.  Glass is transparent; it does not conspicuous like gold, but it is still important.    

9/30 Homework

My first impression of Romeo is a straightforward boy.  He is in the Shakespeare's first scene with a dead face because he crashes into a girl, Rosaline, but the girl refuses him.  He uses a bunch of lines to describe love, to describe the feeling of being love.  He says, "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes, Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with loving tears.  What is it else?  A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet."  In Romeo's words, love is the strongest power in the world.  It is so strong that it can calm and erase hate.  Love can make people feel a deep sadness while they can find the happiness in love at the same time.  In a conclusion, Romeo believes that  love can drive people crazy, and people deeply enjoy the feeling of love.  From the lines, we can see that Romeo has a clear understanding of love.  It demonstrates that he has the experience, and he is brave enough to love someone even he knows the struggling of love.  On the party, when he sees Juliet, he falls in love with her immediately.  Even though it is unusual in reality, his behavior makes me think he is a brave and straightforward boy.  I admire him because I think that is what a man should do in front of love, even though the man at that time is acting like an impulsive boy.

Juliet in Shakespear's first scene is totally different from Romeo.  She is a tressure in her family, so she is protected so well that she hardly has a friend.  She is quite shy and quiet, and her words are few.  The language she uses is polite and appropriate.  When she is asked for founding love, she says, "I'll look to like, if I looking like move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly."  From the lines, it seems like Juliet does not know what the love is, or Juliet is really careful about the love.  On the party, when Romeo wants to kiss her, she is little unwilling.  I respect Juliet's choice because it is reasonable for girls to consider more and hesitate when they talk about love.  According to the tradition, girls should be more passive and restraining, so that they can be protected from doing any mistake, especially for love.  

If I compare Juliet and Romeo, I like Romeo better.  It is more straightforward and clear when you announce your love.  In my opinion, love can be simple, but it can be complicated as well, which all depends on people's movements.  Most of the time, people will regret not to confess, and they will miss the people they love because they missed them.  I like the person who is brave to love, and the person who has the ability to love.     

9/28 Notes

The Stage:
1. It was covered with a roof, "The Heavens."  While the roof protected the actors from the weather, the attic space above could hold machinery.
2.  It was small.  The open yard in front of the stage in one theater measured fifty-five feet across.
3.  The actual scenery may have been suggested through dialogue or may have included minimal set pieces such as a few trees to suggest a forest, or a rock to suggest a river bank.
4.  Had many built-in acting areas that could function in a number of ways.

Clothing:
1.  Based on the contemporary clothing styles of the time.

Play:
1.  Played by young boy (even female characters)

Language:
1.  The pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.  Each pattern is referred to as a foot.
2.  There are 5 feet to a line--Iambic Pentameter

Reflection on Romeo and Juliet Short Play

The three short plays on Romeo and Juliet were all great because it is difficult to condense a three-hour drama to such a short time.  The common in the plays is that the main characters are the same, Romeo and Juliet, and we all played out the love and death so the love and death would be the main theme or the play.  

However, the more time, the more plot the story will contain.  Then, the conflict between two families is told more clearly.  Actually, even in the 30 seconds story, Yun acted out the conflict by an abstract figure.  The conflict should be the second important theme or topic in Romeo and Juliet. 

Notes on Act 1 Romeo and Juliet

The electric book in iBooks increases my interest in reading the ancient English book.  I read Othello last year, and it is truly difficult to read because of too many confusing words.  However, when I read Romeo and Juliet today, I found out it is not necessary to know the meaning of each word.  After I read through the scripts, I can watch the short recording clips, and then I know what happens in the story and what the emotion of characters.  It is easy for people to understand the plot, and I think that is how fascinating that the performance has.

The first half of Act 1 explains the background that Capulet and Montague are wealthy powerful families that they are against with each other.  Our main character, Romeo is from Montague, and Juliet is from Capulet.  Then, one day Juliet's father hold a party for Juliet to let her knows Paris, a wealthy nobleman, and her father want Juliet to consider the marriage with Paris.  

From the story so far I am impressed by two characters: Benvolio and Tybalt.  Benvolio is one of Romeo's close friends.  He has a good temper, and we can see it from the fighting at the beginning of the story between servants.  He is also a wise man I think because when he helps Romeo out of the pain of love, he suggests Romeo to attend the Capulet's party to compare the girl that Romeo loved with other girls.  How sweet he is to ignore the biases and gaps between Capulet and Benvolio.  Every member came to the stage so far have their strong bias on the opposite family, so it makes Benvolio reveal that how smart and fair he is. 

Another character, Tybalt, has opposite personalities with Benvolio, and I do not like him.  He has a strong short temper, which can cause a big trouble both for his family and himself.  In fact, if we continue reading that, we can see the cause of death and the start point of tragedy are from Tybalt.  We really should treat others with our patience, even the people that we don't like.

Reflection on Devising and Performing

On the process of devising and performing, we all contributed many good ideas.  There were four ideas, two ideas were from me, and the others were from Cassidy.  My ideas were more toward the metaphors, and Cassidy’s stories are easier to act out.  Therefore, we used her story--a girl who has mental barricade and wanted to overcome her illness.  It is an attractive topic because we can emphasize the process that one breaks through his/her weakness or limit.  However, the inner conflict between the girl is difficult for us to act out, and the reason is that the audience will be confused to recognize the character.

As a leader, Cassidy did a great job.  Because the idea belongs to her, she created a basic structure and background of the story in the weekend.  She wrote a beginning of the story, and I personally continued to write the plot and finished the story.  I did not write Cassidy’s lines on the weekends because I would love to listen to her suggestion.  I think if it is a devising performance, the actors should write their lines by themselves so that they can be easy to go into the characters.  Therefore, we talked about the ending and wrote lines together.  However, when we practiced, Cassidy changed the lines almost every time, so it was a challenge for me so far.  I had to catch her point and answer her question.  Sometimes, I could not think that quickly, but I thought I would get used to it.

The practice on Tuesday was good, but there was some rush in the end.  For example, we did not act out the climax, the girl breaks her weakness, with our full emotion.  Then, we need to introduce Denny’s character more, and we have to give our characters’ names.  Therefore, Cassidy fixed the introduction part to make the characters clear, and I changed the climax that I stopped Cassidy and then she pushed me away so that we could act out the most intense scene.

The others’ performances were great as well.  Aaron, David, and Jacob used a freezing point to give each character a monologue so that they will emphasize the emotion of each character and their conflict.  The freezing point made the performance really fresh and made the characters active.  Secondly, I was surprised that others added a narrative in it, and I thought it might be good for us to help the audience to figure out the inner and outro of our main character.  After considering, I thought it would be unnecessary to add narrative if we could make a huge difference while making a close connection between inner and outro of character.  Even though the narrative is a good tool to tell the story’s background, I think we can try our best to let the audience figure out the character by themselves.