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Romeo and Juliet of antiquity had it easy compared to the love-drawn adolescents looking to cross Louisiana political lines in the Nicholls Players adaptation.
Amid a bitter race for one of Louisiana’s U.S. Senate seats, ripe with “metaphorical bloodshed,” Romeo and Juliet separate themselves from family partisanship to find love in Shakespeare’s epic play molded for a new audience.
“We are exploring the old rivalry that exists between the Montagues and the Capulets as a Louisiana Senate race,” says Daniel Ruiz, who directs the play. “The Montagues and the Capulets, in all of their partisan rivalry for U.S. Senate, have created a lot of metaphorical bloodshed in the city of Verona.”
Ruiz is implementing an adapted script by David Hundsness, who cut the play down to 100 minutes by striking scenes modern audiences deem slow. Hundsness also removed dated references, so the play can be set anywhere at anytime. The famed Shakespeare language was not altered.
Ruiz, the 33-year-old, second-year artistic director of Nicholls Players, says the adaptation fits well with what the he wants to accomplish during the organization’s annual play coinciding with the Jubilee Festival.
“I definitely have made it a mission to repeat that every spring, to be part of the Jubilee Festival, whether the piece is directly about Louisiana itself or just putting a Louisiana spin on a classic text.”
Last year, the Players performed “A Lesson Before Dying,” a story about racism set in 1948 rural Louisiana.
In addition to “cross-pollination” of Jubilee events facilitating a larger audience for the play, Ruiz said he expects 700 students from high schools in four surrounding parishes to attend matinee showings.
To keep with the Louisiana political theme, the Nicholls Players have been collecting roadside campaign signs from last year’s elections. The group continues to solicit signs from anyone it can, and the 200-plus advertisements will be incorporated into a sculpture to portray “this notion of peace interrupted.”
“We have this basic structure that is going to be painted black,” Ruiz says. “On top of it is going to be layers and layers of campaign signs, so that it just looks like this world is existing on a floating sculpture of campaign signs.
“It’s very peaceful until election time, when all of a sudden you have these signs everywhere littering every available public space. That’s what this set represents.”
Cheyenne Miller, a freshman from Thibodaux, plays Juliet in her first major role with the university club.
Miller, who last played Brenda in “The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide,” is “absolutely” right for the part, Ruiz said.
“This Juliet is a little bit more street-smart, more girl-next-door, more average girl, and there’s nothing exceptionally beautiful about her other than her heart and how genuine she truly is and how unaffected, or not contaminated, she is with ideas that have been programmed into her head,” Ruiz says.
Gary Baker, a sophomore last seen as Duke in “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,” plays Romeo. Baker said he was familiar with the plot from reading the play in high school but initially had issues mastering the Shakespeare language.
“Shakespeare had so much more to a sentence than it needs to be,” Baker explains. “A lot of times when I first started, it’s like I’m just saying the lines but I don’t know what I’m saying, so I’m just reading. Mr. Ruiz helped us get more familiar with exactly what the text is saying.”
Despite the changes in setting, such as the inclusion of cellphones and iPads, the age-old message remains the same. The vehicle had to be modernized, Baker says, to maximize the reach. He admits that starring in the play’s production opened his eyes to the story’s breadth.
“It’s something that we all need to see,” Baker says. “It’s not just about Romeo and Juliet. It’s so much more than that, and I think that’s what Mr. Ruiz is going for.”
– editor@gumboguide.com
Gary Baker (Romeo) and Cheyenne Miller (Juliet) nuzzle during rehearsal for the Nicholls Players’ latest production, a local and modern twist of the Shakespeare classic. The play runs at 7:30 p.m. March 15-17 and 3 p.m. March 18 at Talbot Theater on the Nicholls campus. Tickets cost $10. Students with a valid ID can purchase tickets for $5.
