Script Editing

Script Changes 4 March

Act 1
• More Romeo & Juliet in Party Scene
• Romeo & Benvolio – How it reads
• Tybalt & Capulet needs expanding
• Establish Paris
• Queen Mab – needs to embrace violence
• Shorten Princes speech

Act 2
• Look at editing Mercutio Scenes – Jokes too long and aren’t funny.

Act 3
• Refine the role of Lady Capulet
• Refine Romeo’s reaction to banishment
• Nurse needs to reappear due to continuity of ring

Act 4
• Refine and strip back Juliets & Capulets dialogue. Make it more contemporary and natural
• Add Nurse into banished scene
• Establish Paris in Friar & Juliet scene
• Bring Nurse into Friar & Romeo scene for continuity
• Peter & Musicians needs refining/contemporary (Musician is a DJ)

Act 5
• Paris death reaction

General
• Establish Paris role throughout the play - Paris can bring comedic value. His characteristics would
usually bring disgust to the audience as he has a vulgar personality who is hoping to marry a
teenager.
• Refine contemporary language for each character. The most effective way to relate to a
contemporary audience is to speak their language. This is also the perfect opportunity to integrate
comedy.
• Refine Shakespearian language for each character -most contemporary audience are put off by
theatre in general because of the complicated language in use with Shakespeare - and a lot of young
people associate theatre with Shakespeare. Even though there are multiple pieces of theatre with
modern language.
• Refine the Friar’s language – Hybrid?
• Correct SPAG
• Title each scene
• Place time, day and location at start of each scene
Welcome to Verona
• Prologue to be written for each scene
• Embrace overriding theme of a broken-down society

Verbatim
• Where and What?
Initial Script Changes
• Should we replace prologue with 'Welcome to Verona'
• Where else could the chorus appear - what's their function?
• Where can find humor in the piece? Mercutio is the ideal vessel of providing comedy as they have
the most outlandish personality.
• What's the Place/Month/Day/Time of each scene?
• How does the difference use of language between young n old read? We need to make the
contrast really noticeable or we should not bother at all.
• Do the young people have enough of an 'edge'?
• How to insert terminology around knife crime? Research: Shank, Shiv, ‘I’m gonna cut ya’
• Is Peter's journey big enough? IE how he falls into radicalisation/gang culture?
• Accessibility - Subtle and descriptive use of language to describe where we are and what's
happening?
• Pronouns - should we use gender neutral? If we have to multi role cast (have two actors per one
role) then it would be vital to have gender neutral pronouns. Otherwise it would become confusing:
• Verbatim pieces - where could we interrupt the action and what could we use? The most fitting
place would either be at the beginning or the end of an act. We could potentially scrap the prologue
idea and just have verbatim pieces instead. Knife crime themed pieces are the obvious choice for
verbatim as that is the ongoing theme. Would we have the verbatim taken from a victim or a
victimiser’s post of view. Potentially an ex-knife user or someone who has been to prison for a knife
related crime could effectively represent the negatives of knife crime. There could be a rehabilitated
knife user, speak of the consequences of knife crime - moral and legal reasons. Also, we could use a
piece of verbatim from someone who is promoting the benefits of knives - to fit in with the darker
characters who are quick to draw their knives. That being said, that could send the wrong message.