INTERVIEWS | Playing Shakespeare

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Prologue
Shared Sonnet
Epilogue
Performance Interviews
Rehearsal Interviews
Themes in the Play

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The cast of Romeo and Juliet perform the Prologue with students coming to see the show.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

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Director Michael Oakley workshops the shared sonnet when Romeo (Nathan Welsh) and Juliet (Charlotte Beaumont) meet.

ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take…

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The cast of Romeo and Juliet perform the final speech with students.

PRINCE: A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Performances Interview: Nathan (Romeo)

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Performances Interview: Charlotte (Juliet)

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Performances Interview: Ayoola (Tybalt)

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Performances Interview: Stuart (Lord Capulet)

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Meet Our Hosts

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Rehearsals Interview: Nathan (Romeo)

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Rehearsals Interview: Charlotte (Juliet)

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Rehearsals Interview: Ayoola (Tybalt)

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Rehearsals Interview: Ned (Mercutio)

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Rehearsals Interview: Christopher (Paris / Prince Escalus)

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Rehearsals Interview: Jeff (Lord Montague)

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Rehearsals Interview: Debbie (Nurse)

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Rehearsals Interview: Shalisha (Benvolio)

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Rehearsals Interview: Hermione (Lady Capulet)

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Rehearsals Interview: Stuart (Lord Capulet)

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‘What you realise in this play is that they meet on Sunday night and they’re dead by Wednesday evening/Thursday morning…’

Michael Oakley (Director)

Michael discusses the theme of time, and just how quickly decisions are made in the world of Romeo and Juliet.

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‘They’ve often been portrayed as the ideal of love…
I would slightly question that…’

Michael Oakley (Director)

Director Michael Oakley discusses the theme of romance in Romeo & Juliet, and whether these ‘star cross’d lovers’ truly are the romantic ‘ideal’.