LONDON (Reuters)
- One of Shakespeare's most famous plays gets a 21st century makeover
in a new version of "Romeo and Juliet" which will unfold through Twitter
messages and on the Youtube video website.
Entitled "Such Tweet Sorrow," the experiment
is a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and
Mudlark, which produces entertainment on mobile telephones.
Organizers have already outlined a
contemporary "narrative arc" loosely based on the original tragedy, and
the cast will improvise the rest through Tweets which have already begun
to appear on the website www.suchtweetsorrow.com.
The production will take place over five
weeks and allows for the characters to interact not only among
themselves but also with members of the "audience."
Each character writes their own tweets,
guided by an existing storyline and diary which outlines where they are
at any moment in the adventure.
And
so two families named after the original adversaries the Montagues and
Capulets have loathed each other for years after a fatal car crash in an
unnamed English market town in 2000.
Juliet,
played by actress Charlotte Wakefield, is just turning 16 and wonders
whether she should have a birthday party to celebrate. She posts a video
on Youtube showing viewers a typical teenager's bedroom.
Her Twitter name is @julietcap16 while
Romeo's entry into the messaging world comes later as "he is too busy on
his Xbox."
"We have no real idea
of what the next five weeks will bring, but we are holding onto our
seatbelts," said Charles Hunter from Mudlark.
Michael
Boyd, artistic director of the RSC, added: "Our ambition is always to
connect people with Shakespeare and bring actors and audiences closer
together.
"Mobile phones don't need
to be the antichrist for theater. This digital experiment ... allows
our actors to use mobiles to tell their stories in real time and reach
people wherever they are in a global theater."