Ah! Then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!

Mercutio in the production of Romeo & Juliet that I directed in 2013.

Today, I did video auditions for five characters for a staged reading of Romeo & Juliet. Here's my Romeo balcony scene soliloquy.

Makeup is magic (Pic on right is for a video audition for Lord Capulet)

As much as I love "Exit, pursued by a bear," I think it overshadows a few of Shakespeare's other wonderfully weird stage directions. For example, Richard III features this peach of a stage direction before Richard receives Hastings' severed head: "Enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM, in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured]" Like, for a guy who seldom bothers who write stage directions, he takes the time to specify that not only is their armor rotten, they look bad in it. I also like "He goeth down" from Romeo and Juliet.

My favorite Shakespeare troupe anecdote

Three years ago, my Shakespeare troupe put on Romeo & Juliet. In our production, when the Friar was giving his monologue about how “Within the infant rind of this small flower/Poison hath residence and medicine power,” he held up a plastic baggie filled with oregano, which we had helpfully labeled “NOT WEED.” When Romeo entered at the end of the monologue, the Friar quickly shoved the baggie under the couch cushion, audience laughed, play moved on.

 Anyway, the play closed on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning, my co-director suddenly realized that nobody ever took the “NOT WEED” out of the couch. Aaaand I forgot to mention that we put on this play at my co-director’s church. This church had about twenty similar couches that we used for the first several rows of audience seating.  We’d already totally reset the performance area to how it usually looked, so at church that morning, she and her sister (who played Benvolio) had to frantically search all of the couches at the church to find the “NOT WEED” before somebody else did. Luckily, nobody caught them, because I’m pretty sure “What are you looking for?” “NOT WEED!” is not a conversation that would have gone very well.

A nostalgic flashback to our 2013 Zero-Budget Shakespeare production of Romeo & Juliet, which was set at a comic convention. 

Left: Juliet and Romeo say their last goodbyes before Romeo leaves for banishment.

Right: Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech.

Several years ago, our zero-budget Shakespeare troupe did a production of Romeo & Juliet that was set at a comic convention.

Mercutio and Benvolio

Hey, I get why people are all like "Romeo & Juliet is a terrible relationship, all those people died" and "R&J is not a love story, it's about kids making stupid decisions" and everything-- but I feel uncomfortable with how those people are putting all the blame on the kids themselves. Oh, stupid teenagers! Everything's your fault!'

I think the play makes it pretty clear that the kids were unable to overcome the violence and hatred rampant in the environment in which they grew up, and that the adults in their lives were not supportive or willing to listen or help them. The parents have no idea what their kids' hopes, dreams, or interests are, and their kids don't feel comfortable talking to them about their lives. Romeo & Juliet is a great tragedy because every tragic event within it was completely preventable. The lovers may have taken their own lives, but the 'tragedy' is that the other characters disregarded their feelings and their words, and ignored them because they're just stupid teenagers... much like a lot of the more jaded readers of the play.

(Incidentally, I haven't been a teenager for years now, and I think the over-romanticization of the play is a problem, but it also contains some of the most beautiful and vivid love poetry in the English language, and shouldn't be dismissed as 'this is a play about stupid teenagers, haha, Romeo can't control his dick.' Teenagers are pretty smart, Romeo and Juliet themselves are no more 'stupid' than Shakespeare's other tragic heroes, and Juliet in particular is a very well-developed, intelligent, and interesting heroine.)