This is the third time I am directing the Lower School Shakespeare project. It is always a great way to start the year, meeting the new talent in Year 7 and seeing the Year 8s grow into more confident and focused actors. Often Shakespeare can be seen as intimidating, but I hope that by abridging the original text and adapting it into a new location and time period, the students get to see a more creative and accessible side to his work.
Previously, I have directed Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet for this project: a comedy and a tragedy. So this year, choosing a historical play seemed appropriate, not to mention, it includes one of my favourite scenes in all of Shakespeare’s work.
The directorial concept of the play was largely inspired by two other adaptations. Ever since seeing Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet I have wanted to bring a Shakespeare play into modern day London, just as Baz brought his version to the beaches of California.
The second inspiration is Jamie Lloyd’s Romeo and Juliet, which I saw in the summer on the West End. Lloyd is known for his deconstruction of elaborate sets and props, going instead for minimalist and expressionist concepts. He is also famous for having live mics on stage, in stands, which we too have used for the narrators and for characters to use to say some vital lines. Instead of portraying explicit scenes of violence, we have used Lloyd’s expressionist style to portray deaths with a motif of red confetti and the popping of balloons for gunshots. Music is always a really important part of a production for me, and so I’ve decided to use different British rock bands to set the tone of our gritty production.
