Act 3 Scene 3:
Dear Diary,
Today, I went over to Friar Lawrence’s cell today to check on Romeo and bring word to him from Juliet. I looked around me nervously before hastily knocking on the door. It was a good thing nobody saw me, or else Romeo could’ve been caught since he took poor Tybalt’s life. Anyways, as Friar opened the door, I immediately realized Romeo was not in sight, until much to my discontent, Lawrence told me that he was “lying in a pool of his own tears!” Oh for goodness sake he was crying on the floor like a baby! Could he have at least have some dignity and be a man for Juliet? We have Juliet sobbing and weeping over Romeo being banished when her own cousin was just killed by her lover! She just keeps crying everytime she hears Romeo’s name, it’s just banishment, not even death! Gosh, this repetitive crying from this young lady is seriously getting on my nerves now. And now we have Romeo being so immature and has cried his own little pool of tears. What a mess! Oh these two foolish children, when will they ever grow up and stop making it harder on everyone else? It was a goody thing my arrival finally slightly brought him back to his senses! Until, he went back to his unpractical self and tried to stab himself, before I stopped him. This irrational child! Finally, Lawrence came and saved the day with his scoldings, which might I add, was very good advice in my opinion. It also seemed to put Romeo in a better mood when I gave him a ring that Juliet had ordered me to give him. Whew! With Romeo’s confidence back from the ring, we’ll finally get somewhere with this plan of Friar’s!
Sincerely,
Nurse
Reflection:
The steps we took in recreating the scene included transforming the dialogue by Shakespeare into a more modern formal, everyday speech. We decided to not include any modern slangs or references into the script in order to have a more simple and broken down message to deliver to the audience.We wanted the script to be very blunt and straight to the point so that the theme and setting could be interpreted immediately. We shortened and cut out a few lines between the back and forth, output and input conversation by Romeo and Friar, because it seemed unnecessary and was just overall, repetitive in the messages they were trying to give. Ultimately in the original dialogue, Romeo just kept complaining and just added a whole bunch of worthless and repetitive fluff, while Friar tried to reduce Romeo’s childish complaints. We decided to keep some of Friar’s long scolding speech towards Romeo in the end, because it was a vital speech that helped bring Romeo back to his senses. Friar’s speech made a huge impact on Romeo’s rationality and contributed to allowing Romeo to rethink things through, while also, adding some great advice. In our group’s performance, instead of performing live, we made a video just so that we could take multiple takes on it. Some things that went well was that everyone came prepared with their props and costumes, so we were easily able to get things going. Something we should tweak next time is probably get more in character and be less awkward in the recordings. Which was mainly due to the lack of emotions and characterization played by each of us. There wasn’t any challenges when we worked in a group, besides one person (me) messed up a few times, so then we had to retake it. Benefits I received from the group was that we were able to help each other comprehend the original script. For example, when one person didn’t understand the line, someone else did, and helped them.