Young stars connect with classic love tale
Director amazed at how young people continue to discover new ways to interpret Shakespeare’s works
Summer is the perfect time to fall in love, so it makes sense for the original star-crossed lovers to reappear.
Yes, those lovable but exasperating romantics Romeo and Juliet will be back on the boards, thanks to Carousel Theatre for Young People’s Teen Shakespeare Program.
Starring 17-year-old Finnegan Howes as Romeo and 14-year-old Maggie Stewart as Juliet, the Shakespearean tragedy runs July 28 to Aug. 12 at the Performance Works Outdoor Stage on Granville Island.
For long-time director and theatre educator Mike Stack, this summer was especially well suited for a Romeo and Juliet comeback.
“Romeo and Juliet are the briefest moment of light in a very dark place in a very harsh world. Yeah, we need some more of that,” says Stack, who has done a dozen-plus Romeo and Juliet productions during his long career as an actor and director.
Shakespeare’s works have lived on for centuries and been adapted, abridged and adored by many. While there is nothing new on his end, the beauty of the Bard is how he is continuously rediscovered.
“This girl was just pouring over a script and I asked her, ‘So what is Shakespeare revealing to you today?’ She said, ‘I never knew there was so many ways to express love.’ This is coming from a 10-year-old or something,” Stack says of an experience he had at a youth Shakespeare workshop. “It’s moments like that that constantly remind me I’m fortunate to do what I do because I have moments like that, too, where I rediscover this language all the time.”
Shakespeare, in some form or another, is on every high school reading list. But the best way to enjoy the masterful works is to hear them and see them.
“Once you see a character in action pursuing whatever it is they are pursuing, then the language makes sense,” says Stack.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s works that is mostly written in verse form. The movement of the language is the motor of the play.
“I like to talk about finding that rhythm and putting it underneath you and surfing on Shakespeare and letting it take you,” says Stack.
This production has 15 cast members, some of whom have experience with Shakespeare and others who have only heard of him and maybe read a bit here and there. For Stack, it’s the fresh faces that keep the old text alive.
“There is no way I would be able to be around Shakespeare as much as I am if it didn’t keep teaching me stuff and I didn’t keep learning from it, if I wasn’t open to the interpretation of the young people as they discover new things,” he says.
Easily one of the most recognized stories of all time, Romeo and Juliet doesn’t hold any surprises. Spoiler alert: They both die.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way, but this is a very simple story, a simple emotional truth throughout it,” says Howes, who recently graduated from Vancouver Technical Secondary School. “When you go and see it you are not looking for the story, you know the story. You are looking for the actors’ portrayal of the characters.”
Stewart has been taking classes at Carousel for the past two years, but this production is her first big step onto centre stage.
“I have never done anything like this before, so to work with all these amazing people in such a professional environment is just incredible. I’m enjoying it so much,” says the soon-to-be Grade 9 South Delta secondary student, adding she wasn’t expecting to land the part of the young lover from Verona.
“I had some callbacks and I looked at some different young people for Romeo and Juliet, and there was an ease with the language, a vulnerability and what I perceived as a passion,” Stack says of his leads.
The story of Romeo and Juliet, like all of Shakespeare’s works, has been set in different times. Some cite the original play as being set in the 1300s, despite being written by Shakespeare in the early 1590s. The Carousel production is going old school.
“We have spent a lot of time in the 20th century, so I wanted to take what I would call the classic approach, inspired by the Elizabethan playhouses and Elizabethan clothing,” says Stack.
“It helped a lot to get into character,” Stewart says of playing dress-up.
While the costumes may offer some character comfort, the outside stage can cause a shiver or two.
“We need to share it outdoors with geese and helicopters and people on bicycles and who knows what else,” says Stack, who has seen it all in his four years of outside performances.
Luckily, the company gets to rehearse there for a bit before the curtain goes up — and the seagulls caw and the babies start to cry.