Adapted and Directed by Margaret Rose
Produced by Sal Cabras
How about playing Juliet, Romeo, Mercutio, the Prince of Verona, Juliet’s Nurse, or maybe even Tybalt, King of the Cats?
These are just some of the roles up for grabs in our new English Theatre Milan workshop, starting on 26 September through to end of May 2025. Sessions will be weekly, on a Wednesday, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at the All Saints Church, in via Solferino 17, Milan, with some extra rehearsals in April and May before our final performances. For the 2023\24 workshop, the group performed in three venues, including the Filodrammatici theatre; we hope to repeat something along these lines.
Interested in joining us? Send us a brief CV and tell us why you want to join. You might want to act, or perhaps work on stage management, costumes, makeup, promotion, video, etc. Once you write to us, we’ll arrange a zoom call:
Participation is 350 euros
Discount of 50 euros if you sign up before the end of August!
Director’s Note
For us, Shakespeare’s timeless love story Romeo and Juliet is irresistible. At first sight, these two young people fall head over heels in love. Shortly after, they marry and just as quickly meet their tragic destiny. There’s more, though. There’s generational conflict since Juliet Capulet fights tooth and nail with her parents about the man she should marry. For decades, the Capulets and the Montagues have also been engaged in a violent feud, with deaths on both sides. And last but not least, the families are at loggerheads with Prince Escalus, Head of Verona city state.
Our story pans out in ‘Greencity’, a homage to Shakespeare. Cities in his day, such as London and Verona, could be opulent but very dangerous. While violent crime was everywhere, at the same time, the natural environment, including gardens and orchards, was never far away. They grew strawberries in Holborn! Romeo, Juliet and their peers mention orchards, pomegranate trees, larks and nightingales, offering us a chance to imagine what a city could still be, even today, if we could only reconnect with nature.
This new version of Romeo and Juliet, in slightly modernized English, will propel you back to an age when people lived less on average than we do today in Western Europe – the average life span was around forty. Still they lived life to the full, enjoying music, dance and song that relieved the darker moments.
Our adaptation (running time, approx. 90 minutes) will have two endings: the first, the one Shakespeare wrote, and the second, in contemporary English, devised by the group, who will offer their take on Shakespeare’s story.
