Modern Tragedy

Title: Modern Tragedy

Group members: Ryan, James, Joseph, Olivia

For this scene, our group will totally change how people think the “tragedy”, Romeo and Juliet. First of all, we will adapt the tragedy to a comedy; sarcasm, hyperbole, and contrast are the whole scene’s “souls”; hyperbole and contrast are actually the ways to express sarcasm. Normally, people feel sad for this unfortunate couple, but does fate really cause the tragedy? Our answer is no. Actually, we incline to blame Romeo and his irrational love; we believe that his personalities and behaviors cause the tragedy. As far as I am concerned, Romeo is an extremely immature, but interesting character, so most of the sarcastic and funny plots will be in his lines and acting. For example, Romeo is a changeable person, and this is one of his funniest characteristics. We are going to express this point by the hyperbolic acting when he sees Juliet. 

We will combine three scenes together, Scene1.5, Scene2.2, Scene 3.1. Our goal is to make the scene logical and funny for modern people, and we stage the scene in modern time. In this scene, Romeo is a irresolute and immature boy; Juliet is a rebel, and hip-hop girl. This makes a big contrast. After they meet, Juliet become a clean and kind girl, but Romeo remains the same. Also, actors will wear funny costumes and act hilariously. In addition, I think the more hyperbolic the acting is, the more funny the scene will be. Thus, this requires actors to read lines and behave extremely hyperbolic. For instance, I think the fighting scene can highly express Romeo's irrationality. To make the scene sarcastic and funny, Romeo will say some romantic words to Tybalt, such as "I love you" or "I don't wanna kill you", but as the mean time, Romeo just grabs the gun and shoots Tybalt. After this, Romeo is so terrified that he runs away, and he finds an excuse for himself. 

In this performance, our group has four members. Ryan plays Romeo; Olivia plays Juliet; Joseph plays Tybalt; James plays Mercutio. To be honest, the lines are not perfectly equal, so for some characters, such as Mercutio and Tybalt, they will have more acting part.