Stalking Romeo: Shakespeare, Performance, and Facebook.com

By Helen Skura, Romeo and Juliet: A Facebook Tragedy Team

A play is not a novel; it is inherently different by virtue of being meant for performance rather than individual reading. This type of text is very versatile because it is comprised heavily of dialogue. Most plays offer little to no expository description about their characters, the various scenes in which the characters interact, or the interactions themselves. In this way, the task falls to the directors and actors of a play to interpret the text and offer forth an adaptation of it with their performances. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is one example of a play that has been repeatedly reimagined by scores of actors and directors since its inception in Elizabethan England. As it has been handed through history, the play has been frequently altered and adapted in a multitude of different forms and mediums that reflect not only the changing social climates of the times but also the technological advancements available. In order to appeal to modern audiences, stage productions have most notably spawned an array of popular Romeo and Juliet live-action feature films. Because these new media adaptations have been so successful--despite not always keeping entirely true to the original text--it is logical to conclude that other widely-consumed modern media may also be able to provide unique, well-received translations of the play. The current prevalence of digital and Internet technologies as well as the broad use of online social networking sites suggest that these means of mass communication could be utilized for mass performances that would deliver fresh, engaging, and even interactive versions of the text. The University of California Santa Barbara's English 149 Literature+ project "Romeo and Juliet: A Facebook Tragedy" explores the possibility and benefits of digital playacting using Facebook.com.

The origins of Romeo and Juliet date much farther back than the play's first performance by the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1595 (Hager 116). Shakespeare is believed to have borrowed from a wide spectrum of classical tragic romances such as Hero and Leander, Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe," and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (Hager 33-34). The first work actually featuring the title characters Romeo and Juliet is said to have been created in Italy by Matteo Bandello long before the theatrical version (33). Therefore, Shakespeare's text is nothing more than an adaptation of these stories meant to appeal to the English theater-going audience of the time period.

Contemporary productions of Romeo and Juliet and other Shakespearean plays took place in the English court but more frequently and for larger audiences in public outdoor theaters such as the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan. Studies have concluded that "the open-air theater of the 1590s and later was probably a polygonal building with fourteen to twenty or twenty-four sides, multistoried, from 75 to 100 feet in diameter, with a raised, partly covered 'thrust' stage that projected into a group of standing patrons, or 'groundlings,' and a covered gallery, seating up to 2,500 or more (very crowded) spectators" (Holland x). This layout was far different than what modern audiences are used to today.

Special effects technology was severely limited, but did include such methods of creating magic and drama as winches, trapdoors, primitive makeup, and fireworks; for the more gruesome scenes, actors employed pig bladders filled with animal blood and simple contraptions for portraying mock hangings and beheadings (Holland xii). Until 1660, professional theater companies were not permitted to include women, instead restricting the amount of speaking female roles and casting prepubescent boys in wigs, makeup, dresses, and falsetto voices to play them (Holland xii; Hager 118). Although this incarnation of the theater would most likely not be familiar to modern audiences, the Shakespearean actors did what they could with the available technologies in order to bring in a crowd.

Even though available technologies were primitive and censorship severely limited what could be performed and who could do it, the theater was still a fashionable means of entertainment for those living during the time period. The population of London from 1590 to 1620 is estimated to have been between 150,000 and 250,000 people; attendance at public playhouses is estimated to have been about 15,000 people per week, up to ten percent of the city's population (Holland x). In spite of this, the "intensely hierarchical and status-conscious society" made repeated attempts at stifling the theater (Holland xiv). The anti-theatrical statutes enforced by the city's Puritanical elders put actors, writers, and managers at risk of being arrested for vagrancy right along with prostitutes (Hager 117). Actors and theater companies operated outside traditional guild structures, and playhouses tended to be noisy, politically offensive, and socially insubordinate (Holland xv). Because of this, city and church officials as well as the royal court tried many times to control and/or break up the groups; such efforts had only limited success, seeming to prove that the theaters had effectively used available technologies in order to deliver their productions to a receptive and appreciative public (Holland xv).

Since Shakespeare's time, recreations and "based-on" versions of Romeo and Juliet have been put on in a variety of different forms. Though modern theaters are not usually designed in the same fashion that the Globe and others were during the play's original era, they still regularly host Shakespearean productions and still draw a crowd. While stylistic presentation has varied widely throughout different eras, notable modern stage performances of Romeo and Juliet include those of Sir John Gielgud in 1935 and Peter Brook in the 1960s and 70s (Hager 132-133). While Gieldgud's version is said to have been heated and highly elaborate, earning many of its actors knighthoods, Brooks' is said to have been truer to the "stark, allegorical, Elizabethan look" (Hager 132-133). Though of the same story and utilizing almost identical scripts, the two productions were imagined and performed in nearly opposite manners, providing further evidence that the basic text of the play is highly versatile and invites adaptation.

 Beginning in the nineteenth century, Romeo and Juliet was also adapted for opera, ballet, and musical theater (Hager 134). These means of entertainment were not only vogue for their time periods but also allowed the visual and aural elements of the story to be expanded for the audience's pleasure. Louis Hector Berlioz wrote an operatic version of the play in 1839; Parisian Charles Gounod wrote the opera Romeo et Juliette in 1867; Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, widely regarded as Russia's greatest composer, wrote a concert overture based on the play in 1869 (134-135). In 1935, Russian Sergei Prokofiev produced a "gaudy" ballet (135). Leonard Bernstein strayed farthest from the original text with his 1956 musical theater version (135). Later adapted again into film in 1961, Bernstein's West Side Story changes the plot of the play from that of feuding families in Verona to warring youth gangs in New York City. Tony (Romeo) belongs to the Jets (the Montagues), and Maria (Juliet) is the sister of the leader of the Sharks (the Capulets). Since the Jets are a white gang and the Sharks are Puerto Rican, the musical and film deal mainly with themes of race. Bernstein injected these themes because America at the time was experiencing real-world problems surrounding equality and Civil Rights. Many plot points are altered and deleted, but the most prominent differences are the fact that Tony does not commit suicide but is murdered and that Maria does not die at all. These major differences allow the plot of the original play to be translated into a version that offers a more socially relevant message, one that was important for and presented in a way that fit the time period.

With the invention of the first motion picture camera at the end of the nineteenth century, film versions of Romeo and Juliet began to be produced (Hager 136). In his book Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love, film scholar Douglas Brode makes the claim that Romeo and Juliet is the single most filmed play of all time (20). Whether silent or with sound, black-and-white or in color, these productions inevitably require actors to be moved off of theater stages. The leap from fabricated sets to the real world provides vivid illumination of the limitations of the theatrical setting. Multiple cameras can shoot the same scene at the same time, and various angles can be edited into a sequence, providing viewers with a vast array of perspectives rather than the one they would receive watching a play production. The action of the play can cover a limitless range of space as well as traverse time both forward and backward. Advances in special effects technology enhance the sense of realism by more closely recreating the look and sound of the action as it would really occur. Film has allowed for Romeo and Juliet to be reproduced on a far grander scale, making the story not only more reflective of reality but also more widely available and popular with broader audiences.

Film adaptations of the play vary greatly in their treatments of the original text. Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version sticks very closely to the look and spirit of medieval Verona. Actors wear period costumes, and the settings include old castles and cobblestone city streets. Shakespeare's text is followed somewhat closely, though certain scenes are altered, deleted, and added. Brief flashes of nudity also contribute an element that is entirely modern; such displays would not have been tolerated in productions in Elizabethan England. 

Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo+Juliet--starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, and John Leguizamo--similarly includes most of the play's original dialogue. However, the action is set in modern times, in a modern metropolitan version of Verona. Characters wear modern clothing and wield guns instead of swords. Original stage directions such as "they fight" are interpreted to include shootouts, car chases, helicopter chases, and explosions. Scenes and dialogue in this adaptation are also altered, deleted, and added. Notable differences include Romeo and Juliet's first meeting, in which they do not see each other across a throng of partygoers but instead see each other while looking through a large fish tank which separates the men's and women's restrooms; also, in the final scene, Juliet wakes up just in time to watch Romeo take the poison. He dies in her arms, and Juliet shoots herself in the head with his gun.

Yet another film adaptation, though one that strays much farther from the original text, is Andrzej Bartowiak's 2000 Romeo Must Die, starring Jet Li, Aaliyah, and DMX. This version also moves the action to modern times. However, it completely abandons Shakespeare's dialogue and plotline, instead portraying the "two households" as warring African American and Chinese mafia syndicates. Han Sing (Romeo) and Trish O'Day (Juliet) are the children of the leaders of the two gangs, and, as their forbidden love develops, the audience is once more treated to such action-packed additions as car chases, motorcycle chases, and martial arts battle scenes. This version also deals with racial relations in a more modern era.

These movies and others utilize modern film and special effects technologies in order to offer adaptations of a text meant to be performed in a specific kind of theater during a specific time period. In doing so, the films translate the original play into versions that are more engaging and easily-accessible for modern audiences. Currently relevant social themes can be inserted and/or emphasized, such as themes of race in West Side Story and Romeo Must Die. The history of this play shows its versatility as a performance piece as well as the success it has had in its multiple forms of adaptation. In order to appeal to modern audiences, the recreations and adaptations of the play tend to utilize new technologies as they become available and publically preferred.  With the success of previous adaptations, subsequent versions created with other highly-popular, highly-accessible varieties of new media may also offer further means of understanding and enjoying the play.

One means of doing this is through the Internet and social networking websites. Social networking websites are "web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system" (Boyd). Facebook.com, which labels itself a "social utility," is one such example of this type of web-based program. Facebook reports that it has over 65 million active users (with "active user" defined as being one that has logged on in the past thirty days), as well as over 55,000 regional, work-related, college, and high school networks. More than half of active users spend an average of twenty minutes a day on the site. Facebook claims to be the sixth most-trafficked site in the U.S. and "the second most-trafficked PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] in the world, and one of the largest MySQL [multithreaded, multi-user Structured English Query Language] installations anywhere" (Zuckerberg). With this amount of popularity, an adaptation using the technologies the site offers seems prudent.

The University of California Santa Barbara's English 149 Literature+ project "Romeo and Juliet: A Facebook Tragedy" is an attempt at translating Shakespeare's work using the Facebook.com social networking website. In doing so, group members have not only been able to gather data about the social network of the characters in the play, they have also been able to conceive the means by which the site could be used for digital playacting and interactive performance. Given a larger cast, individuals could adopt the roles of characters and "role-play" the events of the text. This would presumably result in not only the creation of more complete, three-dimensional characters but also in more understandable exchanges and greater reader/participant enthusiasm for the work itself.  Those not directly involved with the acting aspect of such a project, especially students learning the work, also have the potential to benefit. With "Mini-Feed" updates and "Facebook stalking," average site users who choose to be friends with the cast of characters could potentially watch the play unfold from their computer screens.

As Romeo and Juliet has been adapted to reflect new technologies and social climates, it has gained new levels and broader audiences. A digital performance via Facebook would continue this tradition and provide greater enjoyment and understanding to modern readers.