Aragon drama performs Romeo and Juliet

Aragon’s drama department performed “Romeo and Juliet” from March 18 to March 22. Drama teacher and director Shane Smuin decided to preserve the integrity of the play by keeping it as traditional as possible.

Freshman Juliet Bost came to see the play because her English class is reading the book. “There are some lines that are different,” she says, “but I think they changed it since it was written during Elizabethan times, and a lot of people would not have understood the puns that he made.”

Junior Marly Miller, who played Juliet, says, “[The process of getting into the play] was slow at first because it’s Shakespeare and you had to go through the script and look at the grammar. Getting off book, which is having it fully memorized, was really hard because there are all these weird ways of saying things.”

Sophomore Justin Sell, who played Romeo, enjoyed the sword fights between his character and Tybalt and Paris. “We had a special fight choreographer come in. He did all the choreography and provided the swords, so that was very fun. I had to stab Tybalt, so a couple of times I accidentally jabbed it in a bit too much. It was more me getting hurt, though,” says Sell.

Sophomore Gabe Igtanloc, who plays Benvolio, had another take on the most difficult part of performing the play. Igtanloc says, “In acting, I have to play this uplifting sort of good person, but at the end of the first act, I witness my friend getting killed, another person getting killed, and my best friend being banished. I am basically torn by the end of act one and that’s the hardest part for me—doing that last portrayal for the last monologue that I’m in.”

Sell agrees that the most difficult part of the play was portraying the emotions. He says, “I had a scene where I tried to commit suicide and I had to yell and scream and cry and that was really hard.”

While hard to portray, the emotional aspect of Romeo and Juliet had a different effect on junior Ian Waugh. “I’m new to this school. I did drama at my old school, and I definitely connected with people through it. That was definitely the most fun part, connecting with people through the production,” he says. “You connect with people a lot through these emotions, even if they aren’t real—just acting. Being able to portray those things, you just feel like you know someone better.”

Read about the Improv team’s “Hey, Harold!” performance, featuring many members of the drama team.