~ Rehearsals for 'Romeo and Juliet' {casting onwards} ~

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Rehearsal Process


When the casting was done, I was given the role of Lady Capulet. So I looked at the characters that I interact with and I thought about what Lady Capulet would think of them. For example, she would be respectful towards the Prince, and not dare to question what he has to say.

At the back of the script we are using there is a list of characters and a short description of each character. The character notes for Lady Capulet are "she is anxious for Juliet to marry Paris, despite her daughter's personal wishes. She is rather uncomfortable in her position as a mother, and relies on Nurse for support in raising Juliet." I took the information that Lady Capulet 'is rather uncomfortable in her position as a mother' and I decided to deliver the line "tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your disposition to be married?" with an awkward pause and hesitant step towards Juliet before I said 'daughter' in order to show her discomfort.

We worked on staging the play, blocking entrances and exits, and staging scenes 11 onwards. We then went back and worked from the beginning of the play. Recently we have been focusing on the first few scenes up until the end of the party scene, which we performed in front of other performance and production arts students, and worked on in a workshop at the Conway Hall.

Workshop with Shakespeare School Festival at Conway Hall


We started the day with a vocal and physical warm up in order to get the energy levels up and be able to articulate our lines so the audience can understand. We then focused on the first 10 minutes or so, up to the party scene. We performed our section in front of another school who will be performing at the Shaw Theatre as well. We received feedback saying that we had good use of the entire stage, good characterisation and clear delivery of lines.

We then worked on the opening scene. Originally, we started upstage an walked downstage into two lines facing each other (Capulets in one line and Montagues in the other), and when the line 'two households' was said we struck an aggressive pose. I started with miming biting my thumb at Lady Montague, but I decided that this was too aggressive for Lady Capulet as at the start of the play she has a more passive role in the conflict. I chose to have her stand with her hand on her hip and staring at the Montagues suspiciously, this shows that although she does not actively want to harm them, she is wary of them because of their feud.
As a group, however, we decided that simply walking into position was not a very strong opening for our piece. So we experimented with walking on from the sides with the Capulets stage right and the Montagues stage left, as if we were coming together about to have a fight. We also tried entering the space from the opposite side and cross paths with the other household as we went into position. This was better as we could show the tension between them with glares, glances and purposefully bumping into each other. We decided to use this in our final piece.

We also watched part of the performance of Macbeth from another school performing in the Shakespeare School Festival. They had good use of physical theatre in their piece, especially with the witches, they had an interesting idea of starting near the end of the play with the death of Lady Macbeth and then going through the events of the play.

At the workshop we learnt 5 guidelines:

  1. Cheat with your feet - turn your feet to face the audience and adjust your position onstage so that you can be seen.
  2. Embrace the audience magnet - don't perform too far upstage, bring the action downstage so it is easier for the audience to see and hear what is going on.
  3. Kiss or kill position - only stand face to face, or really close, to someone unless you are either going to kiss or kill them. Spread out and use the stage, and open up to the audience.
  4. Land your lines - make sure to project so that the audience members at the back and can hear.
  5. Stay in character - make sure that even when walking on and offstage you stay in role.

[Rehearsals continued]


Following the workshop, we started work on the rest of our 30 minute adaptation of 'Romeo and Juliet'. This was from the party scene at the Capulet household, until the end of the piece. I didn't now my lines as well for this section as we hadn't rehearsed it in weeks. This meant that the first run through was shaky and uncoordinated as many others were in a similar situation as me. However I learnt my lines more after having someone frequently prompt me, this was useful as I could focus on my character's physicality more without a script in my hand.

While some people were focusing on the fight sequences, I was working on my scenes with Juliet. As mentioned above, the character notes of my script mentions Lady Capulet's uncomfortable nature towards her daughter. I wanted to show this in my interactions with Juliet, and felt that it wasn't coming across as clearly as I would like. So, whenever I addressed Juliet I would say her name in an overly cheerful tone in a higher pitch than normal to suggest her discomfort. Also, when I said the line 'tell me, daughter Juliet' I wanted to use more of a variety in my voice and physicality. Therefore, I hesitated, took a half step towards her and reached out my hand as if to put my hand on her shoulder but stopped at the last second. I then smiled politely and somewhat awkwardly to show her uneasiness. My teacher confirmed that doing this made my intentions more clear to the audience. My teacher also made sure that Nurse was in the scenes in the background or standing with Juliet to show that Lady Capulet relies on Nurse to take care of Juliet.

We also looked at the various conflicts within the play, for example the obvious Capulets against the Montagues, as well as:
  • The fight between Tybalt and Mercutio
  • The fight between Romeo and Tybalt
  • Juliet against her family over the matter of her marriage to Paris
  • The conflict within Juliet to stay with Romeo or marry Paris
  • The conflict within Romeo as to whether he should pursue Juliet, knowing that she is a Capulet. 
Throughout the rehearsal period, I learnt to work with the other people in the group. Working on my character helped my critical thinking, along with the task of modernising the play.

Skills Audit

I started the course with the following skills:
  • Motivation and commitment to acting.
  • Acting instincts.
  • The ability to work independently.
  • Learn lines quickly.
  • Work on characterisation based on the script.
After starting the course for a term I have developed the following skills:
  • The ability to work in a group.
  • Problem solving skills.
  • Using research to read around the subject and use this knowledge in characterisation.

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