The Way You Look At Me

Below is the link to The Way You Look At Me, a modern adaptation of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. It takes place in the community forum. Michael is Romeo, John is John, and I'm Juliet. I hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2FdsYxgVIk&feature=youtu.be

Growing Up and Letting Go

     My favorite scene in Act 2 is Scene 5. In this scene, Juliet is awaiting news form Romeo. She's sent her Nurse to retrieve news from Romeo about their marriage. Juliet is impatiently waiting for news that Romeo plans to follow through with his promises from the night before. She sent her Nurse, her most trusted confident, to act as the go-between. I like this scene because of the relationship between Juliet and the Nurse that it shows. The Nurse is Juliet's second mother. She thinks of Juliet as her daughter as she lost her own several years ago. Their relationship is clearly important to both of them. In this scene, they both are affectionate toward one another and are comfortable enough to tease each other.
     In the beginning of the scene, Juliet is complaining about the Nurse's slow pace. She calls her "lame" and then says that many old folks "feign as they were dead, unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead." She sent Nurse to meet with Romeo at nine that morning, but three hours later, she has yet to arrive. When she finally does, Juliet notices that she looks sad. She is immediately concerned that the news is not good and voices these concerns. The Nurse responds not with placations, but with complaints about  how "aweary" she is and "how [her] bones ache!" Juliet becomes more agitated and begs for good news. This back and forth continues for over thirty more lines. No news is shared and Juliet is only further exasperated. My favorite line in this scene is when after the Nurse refuses again to share because she is out of breath, Juliet says, "How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath to say to me that thou art out of breath?" This quote sums up their dynamic. The Nurse calls attention to herself by any means necessary, and Juliet has to reason with her like a child to get what she wants. The Nurse is lonely, and gaining the attention of her ward that is fast approaching adulthood would be rare.
     The Nurse compliments Romeo, saying that "his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's, and for a hand and a foot and a body, though they not be talked on, yet they are past compare." She acts as if she doesn't approve of Romeo, but then 'concedes' that he's handsome beyond compare. She's egging Juliet on. She's starting her story and recounting her experience with Juliet's love, but directly following these complements, she asks Juliet if she had "dined at home."Juliet continually brings the conversation back to Romeo and her potential marriage, but to no avail. The Nurse agains complains of her aches and pains. Juliet replies to this complaint in a sweet tone. She's trying to get the Nurse to reveal her information and begging hasn't worked before so she asked nicely. It's a funny image, a  thirteen year old girl reasoning with a grown woman like a toddler.
     The Nurse does finally relent and tells Juliet of Romeo's plans to marry that day in Friar Lawrence's chambers. This whole conversation is Nurse delaying the marriage of Juliet because she knows that she is almost grown and that means she won't need Nurse anymore. Nurse acts as a symbol of her adolescence, a reminder that Juliet is still young enough to need a constant caretaker. This scene is a turning point for Juliet. After this point, she is pushed into adulthood. Nurse loves Juliet. She is all she has since her daughter has passed and now she is losing her. I like this scene because it appears to just be comedic relief, but there is a deeper, almost unnoticeable, sadness about the situation.

"Though art thyself, though not a Montague"

Juliet is asking Romeo to "refuse [his] name." He's a Montague, her family's mortal enemies, and as a result, their romance is doomed. She wants him to not be a Montague because she loves him. She promises to " no longer be a Capulet" in return. She wants them to banish their names so they can be together. In the second part of her monologue, she talks about how odd it is that so much is riding on a last name. Your last name isn't who you are as a person. Juliet says that a name isn't even a tangible thing, but yet it stands between them and their love. 

A Tragically Stupid Love Story

     I first read Romeo and Juliet when I was in eight grade and I hated it. The words were beautiful, but the plot made me want to rip my hair out. Romeo and Juliet didn't even know each other. They met once and I use the word met loosely (looking into someone's eyes isn't really meeting them, is it). Romeo was in love with a different girl the same day he met Juliet. The kid- and I mean kid- doesn't even know what love is. Lust combined with the appeal of forbidden love only fueled their hormone- addled brains into romanticizing the little time that they had with each other- no, looked at each other. They speak beautifully, but think idiotically.  
     Their story is a tragedy. Neither of them had to die, but both were quick to be self- sacrificing. If Shakespeare was looking to create a melodrama, he definitely reached his goal. But I relent, even if it wasn't real love, they both thought it was. The ending is a bitter pill to swallow. The reader can't help but care what happens to the lovesick (lustsick?) idiots. It's tragic not only because of their death, but the fact that they didn't have to die. They were tragically stupid and stupidly hopeful. I hated their story, but I also fell in love with it. These sentiments haven't changed after reading the first three scenes. 
     When we first meet Romeo, he's depressed. His love, Rosaline, has decided to stay chaste. He's overcome with grief. His 'love' for her was all encompassing. He loves love. He describes it as a thing of beauty, but also a thing that causes great pain: "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;  Being purged , a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet." It drives him mad, but he craves it. He wants more than an attraction, but all he seems to have are strong, but fleeting ones. He's melodramatic. When he talks of how he has lost Rosaline, he says he has also lost himself: "Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here. This is not Romeo. He’s some other where." His parents, at least our first impression of his parents, is that they're not free thinkers. They have held a decades long grudge and don't look to be letting go of it anytime soon. Romeo is wide- eyed and innocent in his intentions. He expects love and romance. He jumps into love unrepentantly, baring himself to pain he knows he might experience. He longs for something more.
     Juliet displays the same wide-eyed innocence. She displays a thoughtfulness that neither of her power-driven parents possess, but she is less concerned with love than Romeo. She hasn't given much thought marriage or finding a husband-  "It is an honor that I dream not of."-, but respects the requests of her parents to do so:  "I’ll look to like, if looking liking move . But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly." She respects the plans her parents have laid out for her, but it's not what she wants. She wants freedom but has little hope of attaining it.
Romeo will give her that hope, and in turn, Juliet will give him all- encompassing love. 

Images taken from Google Images

Romeos and Juliet Summary

In Act 1 Scene 1, two Capulet servants are insulting the Montague family. When two Montagues walk in, the two Capulets servant decide to fight them, but they want it to look like the Montagues started it. One of the Capulet servants bites his lips thumb at a Montague, but says he didn't. Both parties get agitated and a fight starts. Benvolio, a Montague, comes in to break up the fight. He pulls out his sword to do so, but Tybalt, a Capulet, sees the sword and thinks he wants to fight to. A crowd gather arounds the fight. Both Montague and Capulet arrive with their wives and start throwing insults and calling for weapons. The Prince comes and breaks up the fight and tells the men to meet with him. He says that this fight will be the last or they will be severely punished. Everyone departs but the Montagues and Benvolio. They want to know why Romeo is so sad. They see Romeo approaching and decide Benvolio should talk to him. Romeo is sad because the woman he loves, Rosaline, is chaste, and therefore, will never be with him. 

In Scene Two, Paris a wealthy business man asks Capulet for his daughter's, Juliet, hand in marriage. He says he will throw a party to see if she likes him, but is not opposed to the match. A servant is given the invite list and runs into Romeo and invites him to the party, not knowing that he's a Montague. Romeo and Benvolio decide to go so they can see Rosaline.

A Curious Incidence of Scenes that have No End (...?)

Christopher's story in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime doesn't follow the traditional story outline. There is no clear climax and the conflicts in the story often don't involve Christopher at all.  Christopher's autism affects the way he views the world. The story is told from his point of view, so the narrative is often not relatable. It doesn't have a happy ending or a relatable description of his feelings, but yet, it is still compelling. The novel is not traditional, and consequently, the play doesn't tend to follow the 'usual model' either. Though the playwright, Simon Stephens, took creative license with the sequencing and presentation of the story, both authors stayed true to Christopher's first person, albeit fictitious, narrative.

A  novel usually provides detailed descriptions of people, places, and things. Even in the novel, despite his different view of things, Christopher describes his experiences-“And then the policeman went away and I had my tomato soup and Mr. Shears stacked up some boxes in the spare room so he could put a blowup mattress on the floor for me to sleep on, and I went to sleep."- but he tells them in a series of run-on sentences. "The policeman went away," and then directly following that, " I had my tomato soup." He doesn't pause or try to smooth his transitions. His brain keeps going, one thing after another. The playwright did something similar. He hops from one scene to the next. For example, in part two, Roger gives Christopher some books he picked up at the library. Christopher says, "They're for children. They're not very good. I'm not going to read them." Roger then says, "Well, it's nice to know that my contribution is appreciated," but directly after that, Judy begins talking to Christopher about a chart she's made. There is a small gap in the script, but no stage direction. According to the novel, these two scenes happen in different rooms, but in the play there is no reason for moving given in the dialogue or stage directions. Both the play and the novel jump around, but despite Christopher’s ever roaming mind, in the novel, he puts words to the changes in location and characters who are interacting.

The script (of the play) is stripped of details.  There are minimal stage directions, so explanations for movement are few and far between. Changes in lighting and a character’s stage position are used in place of clear scene endings and transitions. These effects help the audience to understand the story. Because so much of Christopher’s story is taking place in his head, Stephens had the difficult task of showing what can’t be shown. For example, when Christopher was reading the letters from his mother, he wasn’t reading them out loud. In the play, Judy has to put a voice to her letters so that the story can progress. When Christopher is in the police station, and then again when he’s in the train station, other voices besides his are heard by the audience. Lists of the things he has, or sees, run through his head. The play voices these lists. The voices let us to further experience what happens in Christopher's mind, like we are able to do in the novel.

The play was shorter than the novel. There were minimal descriptions, so dialogue made up most of its length. It took less time to read, but, without prior knowledge of Christopher's story and an avid imagination, the scene transitions, or lack thereof, could be confusing. The novel is more descriptive and helps a reader build the story. The script is the barebones of the story. When it is performed, effects help to clarify what's happening, but when reading the script, we can't see those. I found the novel more enjoyable. Mark Haddon was able to show multiple levels of Christopher's personality. The jumble of his brain was easier to explain and understand on paper than with our imaginations.

     Christopher's story is hard to relate to. It is not often that a novel is told from the point of view of an autistic person. The way his mind works is complicated. To explain it with words and pictures is difficult, let alone with just lighting and actions. Stephens didn't really cut anything out. It's just that without Christopher's explanations of his reasonings, there was very little dialogue-which Stephens had to infer for the script- and few descriptions of the places where he was experiencing the story. The playwright had to create dialogue from Christopher's internal monologue. This difficult task was achieved through creative scene sequencing and presentation. But despite their differences, both the play and the novel presented Christopher's story in roughly the same way he would have told it. 

Literature vs. Performance

     According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a play is the "stage representation of an action or story." A novel is an "invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events." I agree with these definitions in theory, and yet, I take issue with the simplicity of the definition of play. The definition of novel talks about the complexity of the prose. This is also true of a play. The descriptions written down in a novel of the setting, of emotions, and of characters need to come through on stage as clearly as the do on paper. A performance is also "complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events." Plays, sometimes, are able to take more liberty with a story in sequencing than a novel ( that's not to say novels can't do that either!). Plays are presenting a story to us to absorb and a novel is presenting a story for us to interpret. 

     Literature had two definitions that I thought could be applied to the word, both taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The first defined literature as "written works (such as poems, plays, and novels) that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance." The second defined "printed materials (such as booklets, leaflets, and brochures) that provide information about something." I don't believe that literature can be defined as only those works that are "considered to be very good and to have lasting importance." This is the commonly accepted definition, but literature should not be limited to notable works. I tend to define most written works as literature, despite numerous objections. I don't believe any piece should be discounted because it's not famous or fictitious. 

     The definition of performance, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "an activity (such as singing a song or acting in a play) that a person or group does to entertain an audience." This refers to the performance as a whole, but performance is also defined as "the way an actor performs a part in a play," which signals out an individual. I believe both to be accurate. A performance is being put on by a group for an audience, but also by an individual to act out the play, which are similar, but not the same. The way an actor performs is not the same as viewing a performance. One is an action, but the other is an experience. 

     Literature is written. It's words on a page that you can hold in your hand. Descriptions of places, people, and emotions are given in detail. It is something experienced alone and interpreted with an individual's personal opinion. Experiencing a piece of literature does not always happen in one sitting. A performance does. A performance is almost always experienced in one sitting (the exceptions being recorded TV programs or CD's). It is also almost always pre-prepared, while literature is written once and then published. The piece experienced by readers is the same as that first piece, but performances change as they're repeated. Actors present roles differently. Performances are visual actions coupled with spoken words. What you see is what everyone else in the audience sees. Literature is more open to opinion and an individual's imagination. Costumes and characters differ among readers of literature, but in a performance, there is no choice for the audience, but that is not to say imagination is not required for both. Both readers of literature and audience members need to "read between the lines" to get the context and emotion behind the characters. Creativity is also needed by both parties to form connections and to imagine aspects that are not presented to us upfront. 

                                        

Sources:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

Google Images

         

Is One Less Because Another's More?

A script is continuous dialogue occasionally interrupted with often vague actions, expressions, and/or descriptions. A play puts voices and movement to these words, and a production puts on a performance. A performance entails the cohesion of dialogue, action, and expression, which is then accompanied by sound effects, costuming, and set design and layout. A script is the barebones of a performance. It is "obviously less" than both a play and a production in terms of sensory fulfillment. It is words on paper, and as a result, a  script requires a great deal of imagination on the part of the reader. The must create a created picture in their own minds, which leaves it more open to interpretation than either a play or production. A play offers more visually and audibly, but a production tends to appeal to all the senses of an audience member. As the detail increases from script to production, the interpretation of the text can become more narrowed. I believe that a production offers more to our senses, but appeals less to a reader's imagination. I don't believe a script is less because there isn't more to see. In some cases, it can be more because it's up to you what to make of it. This class covers the melding of both literature and performance- a common ground between a script and a production. It explores both individually, but also the area where the tend to overlap- plays.  

The Chairs I Talked To

I've always hated nicknames. When I was little, my dad tried to call me GG, which I quickly rejected, but unfortunately, even today, my mother calls me Lucka because of a conversation I had with a chair before I learned to read. In middle school, my friend began calling me G2, both because of my alliterating name and my "nerd" status. I had hoped to prevent another unfortunate nickname when I arrived at Cheshire Academy almost three years ago, by insisting that I be called by my given name. This backfired unexpectedly when my teachers and peers knew me, not as Grace Greene, but as GraceGreene. Despite initial reservations, I’ve become fond of the nickname, but that has less do with name, and more to do with the people that call me it. 

The chairs I talked to.

I've always enjoyed school. I like to get away from my house where my siblings always seem to be just a little too loud. I like quiet libraries and heated discussions. I like the routine. I like knowing that there's a place for me to be. My academic success can most likely be attributed to these feelings. I’ve always done well in school (I’m sorry it sounds like I’m bragging; I don’t mean to!). School has always been my “thing.”

I’ve never been good at sports or talking to people, but assign me a lab report and I’ll write you a good one. I’m better at written assignments than I am at any kind of presentation. I can yell at someone across a table in class, but put me in front of that same class with a presentation and I’ll start shaking.

I won’t be able to stand still or enunciate. Even though I’m terrified of public speaking, my afternoon activity of choice is theatre. Despite the trouble I have pacing my words and controlling my shaking hands, I am able to perform on stage because I can pretend that it’s not me standing in front of an audience. I am no longer Grace Greene; I’m Mauve, the butler, or Sagredo, an astronomer’s assistant. I’ve made great friends through theatre and some even greater friends through school. Both have helped me feel more comfortable around new people and also more comfortable with myself.

I spend a lot of time with my family. I have one older sister, one younger sister, and three younger brothers. I’m related to only two of them biologically. Our family picture is a little different than most, but in it, everyone’s smiling. In sixth grade when everyone decided they were too cool for their family, I remained really close with mine. 

My Family

I’m a homebody. I prefer weekends in and vacations spent lying in bed. I want to travel the world someday and leave a mark somewhere, but for now, my life is school, family, and sleep-usually in that order. Right now, my first love is sleep and I haven’t done anything world-altering yet, but I plan to one day. So take note now, Grace Greene, or GraceGreene, is going to be something soon, and she’s making her start in a Connecticut prep school surrounded by some really great people.