Wha-huh? Wacky double post.

I don't want to bore everyone else to tears so I won't post it here, Erin, but if you want I can send you some exercises to get them all good and loud without shredding their vocal cords (which will probably bore them to tears, but it really does help).

I'm kinda tempted to throw our extra Slings & Arrows tapes in a box and ship it off to you, because Geoffrey Tennant, the character played by Paul Gross, is really a Mary Sue of Shakespeare directors; in the two seasons of the show, you get to see him dealing with complainers and divas, dealing with blocking, light and costume issues, and doing extremely effective one-on-one coaching through some big tough monologues (and in S2 he coaches the leads in R&J). You could do worse than take tips from him (except minus the nervous breakdowns and ghost-seeing and living in the prop room in the theater basement).

If you can possibly find a professional anywhere to come in and coach the kids in stage combat, that'd be excellent, because that shit is hard and potentially actually dangerous -- and learning how to fake it is fun, fun, fun and will totally get the kids even more engaged than they already are.

Erin, I'm kinda sporadic on the board now (eek! student teaching!), but I'm always available via email with suggestions on what to do.

Number one: you're a smart woman with an artistic eye. Trust your instincts.

Two: For sets, see if you can wrangle an art and/or woodshop teacher for help. I know they can often do amazing things with next to no money. And, they could make it a class assignment/extra credit to work on the set.

Three: See above advice from Sophia and JZ.

GC, all kinds of job~ma for the GF!

Aimee, your professor is an ass. With boils.

Umm.. Hi, y'all!! Still alive and loving student teaching. The kids are in the Let's Test Ms. M and See if She Will Crack phase, but I expected that and it's nothing too serious. I have the Student Teacher's Sickness (it seems it's going around to all the STs!), but it's slowly leaving my system.

With directing kids, I find it helps to be really clear about the emotion of each piece of the scene, and then you vary your direction according to what they need to get there. To kids with acting talent, you can explain the feeling (He's waiting for her and is nervous that she won't show) and with kids who are more self conscious, you can give them actions which illustrate or evoke the feeling. (Pace from here to here and keep looking down the street).

I remember when my high school did R&J, the director really stressed that everyone go off-book ASAP, and then we concentrated on speeding up the delivery so that it sounded natural, not "Shakespearian." We kids really got into the rudeness of the characters, starting with the street fight at the beginning ("Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?"), so making the characters real and real-sounding was key to get us into it.

I was a street vendor in the first scene, then did scenery changes until my big scene as the Apothecary.

OK I almost sent out an email to my coworkers (regarding the fact that I had dialed into the other computer to update a spreadsheet) with the subject line, "Im n ur puter updatin ur files!" I think I spend too much time here.

Hey, who on here has theatre experience? I am directing Romeo and Juliet. I know Shakespeare, but....I HAVE NO THEATRE EXPERIENCE.

Ooooooh! Exciting! Erin, everyone here has said pretty much all I would, but if you need someone to bounce ideas off of and whatnot, I'm always available by email.

Biggest thing: get a pro to do the stage combat. Seriously. Even "mature", experienced actors go all "whee! slash!" when it comes to fighty fighty, and I can only imagine the damage actual teenage hormone bombs could do to each other in their puppyish excitement.

Others have made the argument.

Actually, I didn't think so. Jim Crow was terrible and oppressive, but it involved no ownership of people. It's an independent horror to me--if people can't be traded for money or other goods it's some other sort of subjugation in my eyes.

it did create a comprehensive legal and social system that placed a class of people in a subordinate position

Not slavery. Bad, subjugation, but not slavery.

Not to mention that many members of the subordinate class were doing basically the same thing that their ancestors did under slavery -- sharecroppers being analogous to field hands, maids and cooks similar to house servants.

That's still happening now, though, and I wouldn't call it even remotely analogous to slavery then or now.

Once you can own and you are not owned, I don't see the link.

It was the same people fucking over the same people that they'd been fucking over before. They were just doing it a new and different way.

But there's all this stuff I don't KNOW...like, you know, HOW TO FUCKING ACT. Or direct. Or buildsetsmakesoundeffectspaintblock....argh.

Well, others have already said most of what I'd say, I guess - but fwiw, I've acted in R & J when I was in Canada at High School (I was the Nurse) & directed the Queen Mab scene; I'm running an after school drama club at the moment, and I'm presently acting in a short 1930s comedy in the Bangkok Community Theatre's fringe production. And I've acted in other Shakespeare & directed other plays, some with kids.

And I agree - I think you'll enjoy it immensely, and I think your instincts for directing and blocking are going to be v. sound.

I'd like to be constructive - what specifically are you worried about?

Do you have anyone who has any experience (adults or kids) with the technical side of staging a production? I'd be tempted to start off by sitting down with the kids and identifying specifically what all the backstage jobs involve and getting your stage crew sorted out, because it sounds like that's the bit you're daunted by - they may already have experience and/or transferable skills that they can bring to the table. (When I was in R & J our drama teacher/director made 3 of us into co-directors and we each took responsibilty for directing individual scenes, which she oversaw - it spread her workload a bit, while giving us experience in directing and making us reflect on our own performances too...) Plus if you have a bossy and anal and efficient responsible kid to be the Stage Manager, that's going to make life one hell of a lot easier.

(I'd second the "Go modern dress! Choose modern dress!" thing, incidentally, but YMMV.)

For my money, the most important thing, far and away, is that they understand what they're saying and mean it, and that you've got the blocking worked out - and that's going to come naturally, to some extent, when they know what they're saying and what the emotion of the scene is.

When I'm planning something I like to work out what areas I'm going to need for my stage, in terms of basic props/levels and where people are entering and exiting. I tend to work it out with a pad and a pencil, scribbling cryptic-looking, make-sense-only-to-me maps of how people will move about the stage and get on and off.

If you want to have proper set changes, then maybe sit down with the script and try to group scenes into locations so you know how many different looks you're going to need to create, and then decide how you can make the scene changes simple - you'll need something to represent Juliet's bed/tomb, you'll need some way of presenting the split level for the balcony scene, you'll could probably use chairs several times, but you don't have to have them...if you want to go with a very simple set, with a black curtain and blocks or something, you could do that. Or not. Do you have a particular idea of the 'look' you want to aim for?

Job~ma to your GF, GC!

I'm up. We're going out with TCG's father and step-mother tonight, so I should probably clean up the apartment in case they end up back here.