Recently, I completed a short play script based on the first act of Romeo & Juliet, here is my reflection…

 

What did you enjoy about the process of writing and designing a short play like this?

I enjoyed being able to take a much loved story, in particular the part not so familiar to your average Joe Bloggs (Romeo and Juliet only meet briefly at the very end, no tragedy just yet). It was fun to take the characters and play with their characteristics in a modern context, exaggerating and tweaking along the way. Despite my below average art skills, I really enjoyed the design stage, where I could take the developed characters and giving them visual context. It would be incredible to one day perform the play with the costumes (especially those in scene 5). The set design was also a stage for me to start thinking about logistics on stage, an important part of direction (ie. How do those crates get there and are they behind or in front of the curtain?). I also found it satisfying when I went through an original read through of a 26 minute long script.

What did you not enjoy about the process and what would do next time?

Not very much, in short. Although it was easier and a great script writing start to use Shakespeare’s words, I would love to take on the challenge of creating my own characters from the beginning. While writing the script, I kept on trying to imagine how the rest of the play would fit in to the modern context. If I had more time, I would have gone through the process of storyboards for the whole play and perhaps gone through a different line of context that fits into the tragic next part of the play. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

 

-Ollie 🙂

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About Ollie

I have a pet frog called Agatha. Beat that.

Category

Writing