Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a timeless script that depicts young love. And it’s not a production that Calgary has been unfamiliar with this year. Monster Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit took on the script as part of the High Performance Rodeo and put a feminist spin on it, examining why the Bard’s female characters are always the ones to die. Alberta Ballet just presented a classic take on the star crossed lovers, with a few spins. This time, it’s Sage Theatre and The Shakespeare Company, with support from Calgary Young People’s Theatre who are telling the tragic tale. But this telling is completely different, as Joe Calarco’s script features four males, set in a Catholic boarding school in the 1950s. The group find a copy of Shakespeare’s play, and put the play on themselves.
“We’ve been exploring the script in a brand new way, which has been so rewarding, very productive, and a ton of fun,” Joel David Taylor, an artist in the play says.
Calarco’s script features a bit of a story within a story. It tells the story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but the bigger envelope is the story of these four college students spending the night together, reading the play.
“What’s cool is that [Calarco] isn’t precious about the text at all. He’s flipping things around, he’s taking things from other plays, he’s putting in his own text. This re-contextualizes so many moments of the show […] So it’s Romeo and Juliet, but it’s fresh,” Taylor states.
He says that one of the challenges of this production is coming into the script without the assumptions from Shakespeare’s script. Approaching the characters and the script with a whole new interpretation is a huge mental exercise.
It’s the practice of art of shaking off the old assumptions to create something new. To create something that potentially feels more inclusive to more people.
“I am hoping that people walk away feeling inspired, I hope they feel seen. Taylor says.
“I think this one is more of a story of hope and of change in spite of tragedy. It’s nice to have a glimmer of, change is slow and it’s painful, but it happens, and it happens within us and it happens between us,” Taylor says.
It’s a hopeful idea. If we change the lens in which we look at something, maybe change is possible.
Sage Theatre and The Shakespeare Company’s presentation of R&J is directed by Javier Vilalta, featuring Brett Dahl, Jamie Cesar, Bernardo Pacheco, and Joel David Taylor. It runs from February 20 – 28. More information and tickets are available online.
Photo Credit: Morgan Laidley