How many ways can the most ill-fated\u00a0love story unfold in a single season?<\/p>\n
At West Village Theatre, the answer is at least two.<\/p>\n
In the fall, The Shakespeare Company partnered with Calgary Young People\u2019s Theatre to present a full-text Romeo and Juliet, casting young actors in the roles of young lovers. Joel David Taylor played Friar Lawrence.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s back in the same theatre space, same source material, but a different angle.<\/p>\n
The new production, Shakespeare\u2019s R&J, adapted by Joe Calarco, is\u00a0presented by The Shakespeare Company and Sage Theatre with the support of Calgary Young People\u2019s Theatre. The story strips the play down to four performers, students at a strict private school.<\/p>\n
They\u00a0sneak away one night, find a copy of Romeo and Juliet, and begin reading it aloud together.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have four actors playing all of the roles, and it\u2019s quite different,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a cool kind of re-imagining of the piece, and so it\u2019s been a lot of fun to work on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Taylor, returning to the same Shakespeare text twice in one season has been an interesting experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more time you spend with something, the deeper and deeper you can navigate through it and explore it,\u201d he says. \u201cJust to look at these scenes through the lens of the other side of the argument, the other side of the conflict has been a ton of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this version questions the tragedy of the inevitable ending.<\/p>\n
\u201d \u2026 you get this kind of beautiful hopefulness as they kind of carry these aspects of things they\u2019ve learned throughout the story on and into their lives moving forward,\u201d Taylor says.<\/p>\n
After appearing in Comedy of Errors\u00a0and Twelfth Night\u00a0last season, and now two versions of Romeo and Juliet\u00a0this year, Taylor may be permanently orbiting the Bard. But he says he feels lucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done quite a bit of Shakespeare now. Yeah, I enjoy it a lot, and so I feel very lucky that I\u2019ve gotten to do so much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n