CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED IN
ROMEO AND JULIET
FOR A SPECTACULAR RUN AND AN
ESPECIALLY STUNNING SATURDAY PERFORMANCE!

PICTURES ARE AVAILABLE AT:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6f2v1j8.3qvujw60&x
=0&y=wz4bkb&localeid=en_US

AND FROM CDs that have been given Mr. Brown and Mr. Knoedler.

THANK YOU for a wonderful production and a great experience! Directors dream about working with casts like you guys. You were - and are - extraordinary. - jh

THE FUTURE OF SHAKESPEARE IN NEWTON:

As of May 20th's override vote, South Stage and Theatre Ink are looking at a 2008-2009 school year without Shakespeare, for the first time in 25 years.

Here are Julia Caine's remarks on the power of what South Stage and Theatre Ink do together:

“The combined Newton South and Newton North production of Romeo and Juliet closed on Saturday night this past weekend. I have been in many South Stage shows before, but none has had quite the impact on me as the Shakespeare play. The North/South productions create a love for Shakespeare. Before seeing my first North/South show, I dreaded reading Shakespeare in class. I knew that the language was difficult, and I didn’t want to have to think about it any more than I had to. But after seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was performed my sophomore year, I stopped being afraid of Shakespearean language. I realized that if Shakespeare is performed, as it was meant to be, it is easy to understand. Shakespeare never published any of his scripts. They were not meant to be read; they were meant to be PERFORMED! If we cut the Shakespeare program, how will anyone learn to love Shakespeare? Yet this is one of the extra-curricular activities we will lose if the Superintendent's allocation budget is forced into use."

--Julia Caine, NSHS '08
(editor's note: Julia went on to play Ariel in The Tempest her junior year and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet her senior year.)

South Stage initiated the collaboration with Shakespeare & Company and Newton North in the 1982-83 school year. Working with a combined cast from North and South, Kevin Coleman, Education Director of Shakespeare & Company, launched Romeo and Juliet, the first in an unbroken line of Shakespeare collaborations which have challenged students, delighted audiences, generated friendships, brought North and South together in a common enterprise, and fostered interest in theatre across town. As a result, hundreds of Newton students have rehearsed and performed Shakespeare, worked with professional directors, made friends in both Newton high schools, discovered the power that lies in their voice, and explored the depth, power, and muscularity of Shakespeare's text. Thousands, literally, have witnessed this remarkable process in the audience.

As dozens of professional directors have shown us since 1983, "Shakespeare is the Olympics for actors." Shakespeare's text demands a combined physical, emotional, intellectual, and vocal commitment beyond that of modern plays or musicals. It is Shakespeare & Company's specific belief that combining disciplined, sustained voice work with Shakespeare does more than bring Shakespeare alive for students; it aims at bringing students alive to the human possibilities within themselves as they confront Shakespeare's text. As Kevin Coleman writes, "Adolescence is most like the Renaissance. We seldom repeat its intensity and extremity, its excitement and its pain. What better material, what better "script" to put into the hands of adolescents than Shakespeare? The accuracy with which he reveals our thoughts and feelings, our human nature, teaches who and what we are, and consequently what we may become. In the truest sense of the word, he educates."

South Stage and Theatre Ink have been producing Shakespeare together for twenty-four consecutive years and are extremely proud to continue raising the bar through this extraordinary tradition!

Last updated on May 22, 2008