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In celebration of the English month, the grade nine students of University of San Carlos - South Campus were tasked to make their own production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Dubbed as the “greatest love story ever told”, Romeo and Juliet has thousands of adaptations in both film and stage alike.

Written by Shakespeare himself in the early years of his career, “Romeo and Juliet” is a tragedy about a pair of star-crossed lovers, where their love for each other and their sacrifice play a crucial role in reuniting their feuding families. The love between the titular characters is the recurring theme all throughout the play.

Grade 9 - San Carlos Borromeo performed their rendition of Shakespeare’s work at nine AM on the 28th of November, 2016 at the Rudolf Rahmann Cultural Center. It starred Stan Matthew Taylaran as the young Montague, Romeo, and Raven Petiluna as the young Capulet, Juliet. The play production was intended to showcase the creativity and talents of the students. Through this task, they can experience the range of theatre skills which includes acting, directing, props making, and production work.

Although the casting and production started early on September, the class started to have misunderstandings and disagreements half-way through October and semestral break. The original person casted as Juliet backed out, explaining that she had just acquired dengue and was unable to commit to her role. That caused quite a bit of disorder since almost no one wanted to play as Juliet. Then the other actors and actresses started to voice out their concerns and things started to fall apart after that. I will not expound on it much longer, though, as the problem had been eventually resolved when classes started to resume early in November.

The costumes were sufficient and the designs fitted the time period the play was set in. The time alloted for practices weren’t enough, but it was understandable since the students were more focused on the Intramurals that occurred late October. Thankfully most of the subject teachers were willing to give their time for the practices. Everyone was very participative during practices, and no one complained especially during the after-class practice. Although some people didn’t attend the practice when they were supposed to, it rarely ever happened.

The cast did a splendid job in their portrayal. They worked hard to portray the characters that they were cast as, no matter if their gender was the opposite of what their character’s gender was. They performed with empathy and understanding of their character’s motives in each scene, thanks to the help of the director. No one forgot their lines throughout the play, though some didn’t show more variety expression on their faces, focusing more on speaking out their lines.

In regards to the music, the musical score was satisfactory. I believe that the music is what brings more life to the play. It sets the tone and mood of each scenes and there were little dead air present. Originally we were going to use the soundtrack of the 2013 film, Romeo and Juliet, but the director and I both agreed that it would be unorginal of us, or rather cheating, if we used it. So we spent a whole day researching and listening to different musical scores from different genre of movies that we could incorporate into our play.

In most scenes that were performed at the Capulet’s palace we decided to use the musical scores of Princess Diaries as it gave off a sense of upper-class vibe, since the Capulets techincally are from the upperclass. When Paris was present in a scene, the soft sounds of orchestra from the BBC’s Three Musketeers was played, its pitch altered from time to time to fit the mood of the scene. I even managed to squeeze in bits of musical scores from Marvel movies, John Williams’ “The Terminal” and “War Horse”, Alan Silvestri’s “Forrest Gump”, Dario Marianelli’s “Pride and Prejudice”, and even Ramin Djawadi’s “Game of Thrones”.

All in all, I could say that the production was successful. Even the props and the invitations were done creatively. The props committe had done a great job in their tasks. Let us not forget the food committee as well, who had been in-charge of the food to be served during the ball. Choreography of the dance and music was done well also.

I read a thesis by Kenneth R. Ginsburg about the importance of play in promoting healthy child development:

“Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth.”

I think letting students partake in a play is beneficial and is worth doing again. Although I insist that the play not be “Romeo and Juliet” again as it has slowly been becoming monotonous as years pass. I am sure there are hundreds of Shakespeare’s plays that have abridged versions online for free, like Nick Newlin’s 30-minute Shakespeare “Much Ado About Nothing”, “Hamlet” and others. I recently acquired Shakespeare Schools Festival’s abridged version of Macbeth, and it can certainly be an option to consider. I suggest that the students forgo with the use of lapel as it has been known for its unreliability, as well.

Our unity as a class had been tested, friendships were broken and repaired. Producing “Romeo and Juliet” with my classmates has been quite a learning experience, one I wish I would never be able to relive again.