Romeo & Juliet Group Project Review

For our group project Romeo and Juliet college version, David Wang wrote the general storyline of the story and all of us planned the details in the play together. I played the role of Juliet. David played the role of Romeo. Nia played the roles of Juliet’s friend, Tybalt, Friar Lawrence and the guard in the jail. Joey played the roles of Mercutio, policeman, and Lord Capulet.

In our story, Juliet met Romeo in a party and fell in love with each other. However, Tybalt saw them together and decided to kill Romeo so that he doesn’t distract Juliet from getting her PhD. Tybalt tried to kill Romeo with poisoned water but Mercutio accidentally drank the water and died. Romeo killed Tybalt to revenge for Mercutio and got deported back to France. Juliet heard the news from Lord Capulet and asked to go back to France. Lord Capulet didn’t let her go back. Juliet asked Friar Lawrence to help her. Friar Lawrence sold a gun to her and asked her to shoot off her room so that she can get deported to France too. Juliet listened to Friar. When Lord Capulet heard that gunshot took place in Juliet’s room, he thought Juliet was dead and blamed her death on Romeo. Romeo was so sad about Juliet’s “death” and decided to suicide.

After watching the play, I noticed several things that I did well. I used my voice well so that the audience can always hear me. At the same time, I had different tones when I talk about different things. For example, when I was talking to Romeo, my voice was joyful. When I talk to Friar, my tone changed into a sad tone; my voice was soft and slow when I talked to Friar. Another thing that I think myself did well was that I used different facial expressions to show my emotion. Even though I think they were not enough, they were better than the facial expressions I had in the last recording of my performance. Finally, a great thing that I noticed was that I did not swing when I said my lines. The swinging was very distracting. I think I did not swing for this play because my group had practices lots times together so that I was more confident when I say my lines.

When we first did the scenes when we practice, I was very nervous because I was kind of shy and I did not know how to react after others said their lines. My group partners helped me a lot by giving me lots support and suggestions to make me more relaxed on the stage. We had lots fun during our practice times by sharing our ideas that we had about the play. The practices were very efficient. Figuring out the ways to express our ideas and let the audiences understand us was challenging. Even though our story was short, it was somehow complex too. We had several characters but only four actors. Two of our could only play one character. We tried to mention the characters’ names when they get on stage so that the audience can distinguish among those characters.

We achieve most part of the version that we originally had for this scene. We deleted lots details because we didn’t want the video to be too long. We remained all the main events in the story so that the story can still make sense to audiences. This adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was very realistic to me. However, this version led me to think that the thing that led Juliet to do extreme thing-shooting in the dorm-is not only her love towards Romeo but also the heavy pressure that her father gave her. She had been locking herself in her room because of her father’s command. Her father asks her to stay and study even after her cousin died.  This led me to believe more that parents are the most at fault for the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.  

All in all, this group project was very valuable to me. It not only helped me to improve my own performing skill but also helped me gain more experience of working with other people to put on a performance together and support each other.