draft 2
The play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, is a tragedy about two lovers whose deaths make there fighting families come back together. The scene that my group chose to perform was act lll scene l. This scene was very important in the book because this is when Romeo's best friend Mercutio finds out that the girl he's in love with is a Capulet. Also there is a fight that takes place within this scene it's with Tybalt Juliet's cousin who hates Romeo. Since all of this is happening in one scene it was challenging to take the role of Mercutio because you need to bring out different emotions like sadness, then anger. In this paper I will analyze the text for my character Mercutio.
Right before Mercutio is about to bleed out he is able to say one more sentence before he dies. He wants to curse both of there houses Montagues and Capulets “A plague o’ both your houses” (3.1.87). He says this because he is disappointed in his friend Romeo because he betrayed his friend and his family by falling in love with a Capulet. So when it was this part in us performing the play when i said this i tried to stutter when i said it becuase it who be more realistic. Then if i was to say it all in one breath. Also I wanted to change up the tempo of how fast i'm reading it.
The staging of the scene was important to this fight scene because we wanted the audience to be able to see what's happening the whole time we are performing. So we chose to stand in the center of the stage during the whole time. But in the beginning my charger Mercutio was standing toward the left side so the stage and as the scene digress I slowly moved to the middle. This was a good idea because it made it so that the audience was able to figure out that it's the most important part of the scene when my character fights.
I found that this scene may sound simple to perform but when really it's hard because when you are fighting to make it look realistic you need to actually portray the emotion of anger, because you are fighting to the death with someone.
The main emotions that I tried to focus on when I was reading the play to prepare myself for the performance of the play was flustered. This is an emotion that needed to be brung out because Mercutio receive all this information at once with Romeo liking a Capulet. Who lied to him and now he was to fight to the death to stand up for him, and he eventually dies because of it.
I want to talk more about my character Mercutio and why he is a very important role in this scene. To start off Mercutio is Romeo's best friend, someone characteristics that describe him are that he is loyal to his friends. Hes funny, like a change of pace character to make the place seem less dramatic he's there to lighten the mood. And the last one is he is devoted to pretty much whatever romeo does he's there to help. He is also neither a Montague or a Capulet. So even though he doesn't really have any hate between the two parties other than his opinion there is no need for him to ever be put in a situation where he would need to fight a Capulet or a Monatue.
To continue on why my character is essential in the play Romeo and Juliet is before Mercutio dies in his final words he curses the two households and predicts that the love between Romeo and his mistress will not end well. Witch Mercutio is right, because after my character's death Romeo realizes the consequences he must deal with in his love affair. Thus, because of the last few events that have taken place it's a build up for Romeo to then kill Tybalt, which leads to him being exiled from Verona and his eventual death. So you can say that my character Mercutio essential in driving the action forward in this play. He foreshadows the important and horrible events, towards his friend Romeo. And he also gives the audience the information they need throughout the play. The death of my character is what I would say the “turning point” in the play. For all these reasons, Mercutio is essential to the play.
Now I will be telling you the importance of staging in a black box theater. First off if you have ever been in that type of theatre you will know its all black, hence the name. Now that color is a interesting one, what I mean is it really makes you stand out because that is what the color black does it's used in art to make whatever they are drawing pop. So we wanted to use this to the fight scenes advantage. How we did this you may be wondering? Well it's simple all we did was at first start away from each other so there was clearly a cap between the three characters in our scene. And the black wall was the the middle making us seem even farther apart. But, as we say our lines we would take steps forward to shortened the black wall gap. This signified one to our fight scene because we need to be close but also because we need the audience to see what is going on. These Are the reasons why we choose to do the staging we did.
The staging really impacted my character the most because my lines are also for the audience, so they can still follow along with the plot. So, I needed to emphasizes certain lines so the audience knows. Also when I said them I had to be centered in the middle of the stage. And had to project my voice, because of this it really gave me the motivation to memorize my lines. But also do it in a way where it would sound and feel like something Mercutio would have sounded like. I really had to dig deep and climb the levels of acting, to do this I needed to add the little things to my character so it doesn't seem like I was just talking. One thing I did was I used eye contact meaning some lines I would look Romeo n the eyes but then sometimes I would look at the ground this is symbolizing the bond that had been broken between the two.
Another thing that I had to do for my character is figure out a costume to wear. Since he isn't as high of a status as Romeo I couldn't wear gold to signify royalty and higher social status. And since he doesn't belong to neither households then I couldn't have chose a red or a blue. But after giving it though I chose to wear blue, because even though he isn't a Montague he acts like one. And he's always involved with the “beef” created by the two. Also it was a neutral color to also signify that he doesn't have a actually side but he's more for the Montagues the the Capulet because of Romeo.
The reasons why I did all this was to really understand my character Mercutio. And to successfully do that I needed to analyze the text and really try to step in the shoes of Mercutio. I feel like I did a pretty good job portraying him, however the areas that I needed to do better in where making the different emotions come through. Looking back on it I could have just the Stanislavski technique. It made the actor find inner emotions and times that you felt that emotion in real life. So for example when Mercutio was angry I could have thought of a time when I felt anger and if I did that I could have portrayed their emotions better.
