Theater department’s hip-hop Shakespeare opens with rave reviews

Even though it’s nearly two weeks after the show has finished, it needs to be pointed out that I <3 Juliet, the theater department’s first show of the year, was absolutely fantastic.

The show ran from October 4 to 7 to a sold-out crowd in Tansill Theater for each of the five performances. Even for an ordinary play, that’s not a lot of prep time. Even more amazing? The show was written, rehearsed, cast and performed in just over three weeks. Even better than that? THE ENTIRE SHOW RHYMED.

With the help of the Q-Brothers, JQ and GQ, along with Postell Pringle and Jackson Doran, this cast of Conn students wrote and produced an “ad-RAP-tation” of the classic Shakespearean tale. This adds to the Q-Brothers’ repertoire of hip-hop musicals which include, Othello: The Remix, The Bomb-itty of Errors and Funk It Up About Nothing.

I <3 Juliet wasn’t your typical attempt at modernizing a story that has been retold far too many times. Unlike most rewrites, it was actually compelling and interesting. More or less, we all knew what was going to happen (assuming we all at least Spark-noted Romeo and Juliet for our high school English classes), but it was fun to see exactly how they would get from point A to point B. Going into it, the English major in me was a little skeptical; I love the original text of the play and didn’t want it to be ruined. But honestly, it was so original and different from any other telling of the story that it didn’t feel cheapened in the least.

The process of the show was as follows: “We did line for line at first, gave it over to the Q-Brothers and they did their thing,” said Kadeem McCarthy ’15. The entire process became incredibly improvisational as they started to get a handle on freestyle rapping to a beat without fear of saying something ridiculous. “Freestyle is a terrifying experience. I sucked. But it was addictive,” said Noam Waksman ’15.  “We basically just tried to see who could make us laugh the hardest,” added GQ. “If you get too serious about the music or what you’re saying it’s hard to give it air or life.”

During an impromptu workshop with the Q-Brothers I was given an opportunity to see exactly how difficult it is to write a rap with consistent syllables and rhyme scheme, and rap it without stumbling over your own tongue or the beat playing behind you. Looking back at my notes from that afternoon, I have no idea what any of it means. It really came illustrated that inspiration for these kinds of things comes and goes insanely quickly and all you can do is say “YES THAT’S GOOD” and go with it until you manage to spit something out, whether it be a couplet or an entire show.

Part of what really worked was the detailed attention to the actual language rather than obsessing over the plot. I mean, there was a freaking race between a penguin and a pigeon mid-show that I’m pretty sure Shakespeare never envisioned. Also an evil Uncle Mary who had POISONS AND UMBRELLAS….or umbrellas dipped in poison, a whiny little man named Perry whose mustache was a bit floppy and a shockingly accurate teenie-bopper Juliet. Just thinking about the very concept of language is amazing in general. We’ve managed to construct sounds and shapes that represent such a variance of meaning and depth once they are said or written down. That alone is an incredible human feat. However, it is easy to lose an appreciation for language when you’re a college student immersed in pages and pages of books to read and papers to write. For me at least, this show reawakened some of this fascination with the musicality and complexity of language.

Each of the actors was completely committed to his or her role. Actually, they were committed to several of them. The smallest visual cues changed a character from a police officer to Romeo, or a crazy scientist to a wealthy socialite mother, insecure about her daughter being younger and prettier than she. Even more than that, each of the actors was committed to each other; they were in for the long haul regardless of what happened. It wasn’t as if they had a script to read ahead of time; they were the script. The entire show wasn’t even cast until ten days before, so they learned to be flexible and pick up rewrites and changes on an hourly basis. “I’ve been doing theater for all four years here, but there’s never been a show like this,” said Alex Marz ’13. “We have all had acting training, but nothing like this. Loose screws are the fun of it.”