Romeo & Juliet Anticipatory Readings

The Power of Love

Article One

Karachi Journal; A Hindu Romeo, a Muslim Juliet and Woe Aplenty.(Foreign Desk)

Zeba Bakhtiar, the angel-faced Pakistani star of the hit summer film "Henna," received her first set of reviews even before filming began. They were death threats.

"I got some letters and phone calls, people saying they would kill me if I made the movie," the 24-year-old actress said. "They said Muslim girls should not be appearing in films with Hindu actors. Lots of people warned me not to appear in the film, not to take the risk."

Released a few weeks ago and in most ways typical of the syrupy romance films that fill the movie houses of Pakistan and India, "Henna" is already being described as a landmark in the history of motion pictures on the subcontinent.

It is as much a joint production on a major motion picture as the Indian and Pakistani film industries have ever seen, a Romeo and Juliet story with Romeo portrayed as an Indian Hindu -- and played Rishi Kapoor, who is one -- and Juliet a Pakistani Muslim by the name of Henna. It is also an enormous success on both sides of the border. Of Land and Borders

The movie was conceived by one of India's legendary film makers, the late Raj Kapoor, and directed by his son Randhir. Much of the dialogue was written by a respected Pakistani screenwriter, Haseena Moin.

"Henna" is being promoted with the slogan: "God made land. Man made borders." And the border portrayed in the film could not be more troublesome.

The setting of "Henna" is Kashmir, the divided northern territory that has been the focus of two of the three wars fought between India and Pakistan since their partition by Britain in 1947.

The Indian-Pakistani relationship is considered so incendiary a topic in the motion picture industry that only a handful of films that touch on it have ever been made in either country.

That includes the subject of the 1947 partition, in which hundreds of thousands of people, Hindus and Muslims alike, were killed in weeks of religious rioting, and millions of others were forced to desert their homes and their livelihoods. Out of the partition was born the largely Hindu nation of India and the Muslim nation of Pakistan.

Ms. Moin, who traveled to India from her home in Karachi to work on "Henna," had her name removed from the credits before the film went into distribution, in part because of concern that "Henna" might be perceived as somehow pro-India.

"Relations between India and Pakistan are not as friendly as they should be," said Ms. Moin, who is Pakistan's best- known television writer. "Kashmir is very controversial."

"In the film, a wealthy Indian businessman is struck on the subject of India and Pakistan," said Jameel Akhtar Khan, professor of language and literature at Karachi University. "There are strong feelings on both sides. Film makers have not taken these risks." Censors Ban a Play

Novelists and book-writing historians have no reluctance to address the Indian-Pakistani relationship. But since more than half of the population in both India and Pakistan is illiterate -- an estimated 60 percent of the adults in India cannot read, 75 percent in Pakistan -- books often lack the audience to sway popular tastes.

The fear among film makers, as well as theatrical and television producers, is largely a result of politics.

Censor boards in both India and Pakistan monitor the political content of films and television programs. Earlier this year, censors in Karachi banned a well-reviewed play about the partition.

There is the related concern over public taste and commercial appeal. Satish Anand, a Karachi film maker who is managing director of Eveready Pictures, said his competitors in Pakistan were just as concerned with the bottom line as their counterparts in Hollywood.

"I think people in the industry have thought in the past that the relationship between Pakistan and India was a risky subject, commercially risky," he said. The financial success of "Henna," he said, may help change some of that thinking. On Pirated Videotapes

The antagonism between India and Pakistan extends to film distribution. Since the two nations went to war in 1965 over Kashmir, Indian films have not been shown in Pakistani theaters, nor Pakistan films in Indian cinemas.

"Henna," like most popular Indian films, is seen in Pakistan on pirated videotapes, which are available in every video shop in Karachi.

"Henna" follows a formula typical for an Indian or Pakistani film, which, simply put, is to appeal to every possible audience. "Henna" is part love story, part action-adventure and part musical. The drama is interrupted frequently for bouts of singing and dancing.

The film is unusual in that the dialogue is in two languages: Hindi, the dominant language in northern India, for the Indian characters, and Urdu, a major Pakistani language, for the scenes in Pakistan. The two languages are closely related and can be understood on either side of the border. 'Not a Political Movie'

While some viewers are reading a political message into "Henna," the director, Mr. Kapoor, insists he was only trying to make a film about the larger theme of tolerance.

"This is absolutely not a political movie," he said in a telephone interview from Bombay, the film-making capital of India. "This film is about humanism and the need for people to overcome human barriers and borders."

But Mr. Kapoor makes no money from the pirated videotapes sold in Pakistan, and he acknowledges that "Henna" may offer the chance to break down more than a quarter-century of film-distribution barriers between the two nations.

He has requested a meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, to seek permission to show "Henna" in Pakistani theaters.

"The film has been immensely popular in India and Pakistan," he said. "But in Pakistan, people have only seen it on video. I am proud of this film. I will tell the Prime Minister that 'Henna' was meant to be seen on the big screen." Gale Document Number:A175352904

Shenon, Philip. "Karachi Journal; A Hindu Romeo, a Muslim Juliet and Woe Aplenty.(Foreign Desk). ." The New York Times. (Sept 5, 1991): NA. The New York Times. Gale. Lesley University. 31 Mar. 2008

Article Two

Baghdad's Romeo and Juliet find love in Iraq war by Virginie Montet and Stephane DelfourFri Mar 14, 12:13 PM ET

It was certainly not a match made in heaven at first. He was an American soldier newly arrived in Baghdad at the start of the US-led invasion. She was a young Iraqi doctor.

But against the odds they fell in love and were married.

They were the first mixed couple to emerge from the bloodshed and terror of the Iraq war, and only a handful more have joined their ranks since.

Five years later the couple now live in Florida with their 15-month-old baby girl, Norah.

But life has been far from easy and the costs have been high for this couple who had to overcome a huge cultural gap and look beyond the fear and distrust forged in the Iraq war.

"I think it was not easy at all. It's not that smooth," said Ehda'a Blackwell from their Florida home.

In 2003, she was a young doctor looking for work when she met Sergeant Sean Blackwell, a new recruit to Iraq who had been there for just two weeks and charged with overseeing security in hospitals.

On paper the US Army is prepared for this kind of liaison which is not illegal. But the reality proved very different.

"I hate to sound like we were the pioneers for this, but I do think maybe it made the road a little easier for those who followed," said Sean Blackwell.

"I was persecuted by my military chain of command," he explained.

"They tried to have me court martialed for dereliction of duty, saying that I forsake my mission to go get married instead. But nothing came of it because that was not true."

The couple were married in August 2003 in a 15-minute civil ceremony in a Baghdad restaurant, for which Sean first had to convert to Islam.

"Once they figured out that he was going to really marry me, they wouldn't permit him to go to the court to finish the marriage," said Ehda'a.

"We had to ask the judge to meet us somewhere on the way of their daily patrol because they wouldn't let him go to another area and marry me."

-- 'That was the fastest marriage I've ever seen' --

So Sean took a quick break from his patrol and the couple were married.

"That was the fastest marriage I've ever seen. I wish we could make it again," she said longingly.

The couple were forced to live apart for several months. Sean left the country in December 2003, and returned to Jordan in February 2004 to collect his bride who had been secretly smuggled out of Iraq by a CBS television crew.

They spent six months in Amman getting to know each other, before finally heading to United States.

Ehda'a, who now works as a medical assistant, has not seen her family since she was smuggled out of Iraq. She does not want to talk about those she left behind, fearing for their safety as they have received several threats. It is hard to say how many such marriages have taken place. Sean, who has now quit the army, thinks there may be only about 20.

Neither the army nor the State Department keep the figures. Some 1,400 visas for Iraqi spouses have been issued since 2003, but that figure is largely made up of couples with double-nationality.

Sean concedes that cultural differences and differences in religion pose large hurdles to mixed marriages.

Converting to Islam caused him some problems at the beginning.

"I considered myself to be a Christian at the time and it was a little bit a struggle for me personally, but it was just something I had to do to marry her. It wasn't something that I believed," he said.

"Religion is not relevant in my life, it's not something I really worry about.

"America is one of the most Christian countries in the world so it's definitely not well received to marry a Muslim ... we've always painted a negative image of the Arab culture."

Cultural differences remain one of the main reasons why US-Iraqi marriages occur less frequently than US-Vietnamese marriages during the Vietnam war.

"During the Vietnam war, the soldiers were more integrated in the society. In Iraq they are more isolated. And with the major differences in religion, we can expect the number of marriages to be much lower," said military sociologist David Segal, from the University of Maryland.

"I married her for love and a lot of reasons," said Sean Blackwell.

But he added: "We both agree that we would trade our marriage for (an end to) the war any time. Our personal happiness with each other is not worth all of the lives that have been lost." Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo All rights reserved.Copyright/IP Policy |Terms of Service |Help |Feedback

Article Three

In Liberia, 'Romeo and Juliet' teaches reconciliation

As students in Liberia study Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, they realize: This is their story. Will their country's blood feuds bring more tragedy? Or is peace yet possible?

By Vanessa Gezari, Times staff writer Published October 28, 2007

GBARNGA, Liberia - For as long as anyone can remember, the Capulets and the Montagues have been at war.

The rivalry extends deep into both clans and tears Verona apart. The Capulets' servants attack the Montagues' servants. The children of one family pick swordfights with children of the other family.

Edwin Kwakpae is telling this story to a group of 10th-graders in a classroom with a dirt floor. The students wear green uniforms and sit at simple wooden desks. Edwin's voice drifts out the open window, toward the mango tree and the unpaved road.

His students are part of a lost generation. Fourteen years of civil war killed more than 200,000 Liberians and forced half the population from their homes. Schools closed, and thousands of children were wounded or orphaned. Thousands were forced to fight.

Ordinary life took on the contours of high tragedy. Lovers were separated, and old arguments soaked the jungle earth with blood. Which is why, four years after the war ended, Edwin Kwakpae is teaching Shakespeare to students who have never heard of a costume ball or read a line in iambic pentameter.

"They will see the reason why we are studying Romeo and Juliet," Edwin says. "If there was no reconciliation in the play, then the play would still continue."

Like the Montagues and the Capulets, Liberia is in need of reconciliation. A truth and reconciliation commission has started collecting stories about what happened during the war: who slit throats and burned villages and organized gang rapes. If some people ask forgiveness, the country's leaders believe, the past can be laid to rest.

"If we can't reconcile, we will just be in this problem, and we will not go anywhere," Edwin says.

He knows the truth commission can't reach every classroom in the country. Over winter break, he read Romeo and Juliet's opening acts. He read the end. He decided that it wasn't just a love story.

"What happens after a big calamity have been caused in the community?" he asks. "Whereas you can't pass in my yard and I can't pass in your yard. Your child cannot go to my house and my child cannot come to your house. What happens after this have been settled? So it came into my mind that, yes, it's reconciliation."

He's 26, the son of a high school principal, partway through an education degree. He'd be finished if he had more money, and if Liberia hadn't been at war for most of his lifetime. He has the pent-up intensity of a distance runner who has spent too long indoors.

The Rachel E. Fay High School of Humanity, where he teaches, was built with money from the World Bank and private donors. For most of Liberia's history, education has been reserved for the wealthy few. At Rachel Fay, tuition is free.

The students arrive with mud on their shoes. The World Food Program's free lunch of bulgur wheat and split peas may be the only thing they eat all day. They've already laid claim to the green mangoes ripening on the tree outside, writing their names on the skins in ballpoint pen.

The school can't afford books. Edwin buys them whenever he finds them in the market. He has two anthologies of literature, and one includes Romeo and Juliet. He takes careful notes, and every day he copies a summary onto the blackboard, and the students copy it into their notebooks. They never get to read Shakespeare's poetry themselves.

He thought that when they saw the tension between the Capulets and the Montagues, they would recognize their own tribes, their own country.

It was a tough sell. Even 20-year-old Romeo Qweqwe, a student named after the play's hero, didn't think it had anything to do with him.

"It's not my story," he said. "It was done long ago."

All spring, warm air blew dust through holes in the classroom walls. Mangoes ripened on the tree. Romeo and Julietunfolded on the blackboard in Edwin's looping cursive. The blackboard could hold only so many words. Days stretched into weeks.

Seated at one of the wooden desks, 20-year-old Dearest Coleman began to think that she knew how Juliet felt. Juliet loved Romeo, but her father ordered her to marry Count Paris, a nobleman. Dearest had been through this herself. She had moved out of the house because her parents tried to make her marry a man she didn't love.

One day in class, she stood up next to her desk to ask a question. "The same girl that said she's 14 years old and she's too young to be married, why at the end was she forced to be married to Count Paris?"

"We see it here!" Edwin said. "Our sisters suffer from it by our parents. When parents see a man who can support the family, what they do?"

"They force," someone said.

"So this is what Juliet's parents have done - threatened her. Nobody wants to be disowned by their parents."

Dearest's parents had chosen a man 16 years older who worked for an international aid group. He made enough money to support her family, but he got jealous when she went to soccer or choir practice. Now she rents a room and walks an hour to school every day. Temptations are everywhere. If you're not careful, she says, you'll end up hustling on the streets.

"I want to achieve something," she said, "so that tomorrow I will really prove to my people that being poor does not mean that I should be sold."

Edwin told them that the feud between the families had gotten so bad that Prince Escalus ordered them to stop, on pain of death. Then Tybalt, a Capulet, insulted Romeo, a Montague, in the street. Romeo tried to ignore him, but a fight broke out. Tybalt killed Romeo's friend Mercutio. In revenge, Romeo stabbed Tybalt to death.

"Now the Capulet family is demanding Romeo's life for Tybalt's death," Edwin said. "Death for death."

The students nodded. They knew about death for death, about enmities so old that no one remembers how they started. They knew about young people bleeding in the street for a cause they didn't understand.

"What actually brought the confusion between these two groups?" 28-year-old Peter Kollie asked one day. Like most of the students, he was far older than his grade level because he had missed years of school during the war. The day before, another student had asked the same thing. The answer came, unsatisfying but familiar.

"I cannot tell you because the drama did not tell what brought the feud between them," Edwin said. "They only told us that these two people were feuding."

One day in March, when he had almost finished summarizing the plot, he drew a map of Liberia on the blackboard and divided it into counties.

Each county is occupied by a different tribe, and the rivalries between them are part of what caused the civil war. No one knows how they started, or when they will end.

"Even before our forefathers could be brought into this world, they already have conflict between them," Edwin said.

The most prominent rivalry is between the Mano and Gio people of Nimba County and the Krahn of Grand Gedeh. Earlier this year, a Gio man went into Krahn territory and disappeared. He turned up dead.

"Okay, now, this is the demarcation," Edwin said, striking a desk with his hand to indicate the line between the two tribal territories. "The Krahn made it clear that no Gio people were allowed to cross the line.

"It's just like the Romeo and Juliet story. This man violated and stepped here, so they got him killed."

If the Montagues and Capulets persist in their enmity, the whole city will pay, Edwin told them. His voice loosened, his precise, clipped English giving way to a deep Liberian patois.

He talked them through the play's last act, when Juliet takes a sleeping potion to avoid being married to Count Paris. Romeo hears that she's dead and goes to her grave, where he finds Paris and kills him. Then, in his grief for Juliet, Romeo poisons himself. When Juliet wakes up and sees him dead, she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger.

"Because of the conflict, see, the Montagues and the Capulets died," Edwin said. "What we should do now? Have peace. Have peace, reconcile. Let the Montague come into my compound, let the Capulet come into your compound."

On the blackboard map, he tapped Nimba County with a piece of chalk.

"Okay, now, this is the Montagues," he said.

He tapped Grand Gedeh County, where the Krahn people live. "And this is the Capulets."

Storytelling is a kind of alchemy; suddenly, Liberia held Romeo and Juliet inside it, and Romeo and Juliet contained Liberia.

The students laughed, a little nervous, a little proud.

A student named Jacob Glee stood up. He said that when the Gio man got killed for being in the wrong place, peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in Liberia, known as UNMIL, stepped in.

"It was so good that UNMIL interrupted and there was not a war there again," Jacob said.

Edwin got excited. The Gio man who crossed the line was like Tybalt, he told them. The Gio people were like the Capulets, demanding the death of an enemy for the death of one of their own. The Krahn people were the Montagues, including Romeo, who were asked to pay with their lives for the death of the Gio man. And the U.N. peacekeepers were Prince Escalus, stepping in to calm the fighting.

The students grew quiet, as if recognizing themselves in the mirror.

"It's happening now," Edwin said. "We see it live in our own society, that there is a need for us to have peace."

"Peace," someone whispered, like an echo.

Article Four

Prehistoric Romeo and Juliet discovered Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried in eternal embrace By Ariel David The Associated Press

ROME, Feb. 7, 2007 - They died young and, by the looks of it, in love. Two 5,000-year-old skeletons found locked in an embrace near the city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale "Romeo and Juliet" have sparked theories the remains of a far more ancient love story have been found.

Archaeologists unearthed the skeletons dating back to the late Neolithic period outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's story of doomed love.

Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, because their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.

"As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti told The Associated Press by telephone from Milan. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."

Archaeologists digging in the region have found some 30 burial sites, all single, as well as the remains of prosperous villages filled with artifacts made of flint, pottery and animal horns.

Although the Mantua pair strike an unusual and touching pose, archaeologists have found other prehistoric burials in which the dead hold hands or have other contact, said Luca Bondioli, an anthropologist at Rome's National Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum.

Bondioli, who was not involved in the Mantua dig, said the find has "more of an emotional than a scientific value." But it does highlight how the relationship people have with each other and with death has not changed much from the period in which humanity first settled in villages, learning to farm the land and tame animals, he said.

"The Neolithic is a very formative period for our society," he said. "It was when the roots of our religious sentiment were formed."

Menotti said the burial was "a ritual, but we have to find out what it means."

Experts might never determine the exact nature of the pair's relationship, but Menotti said she had little doubt it was born of a deep sentiment.

"It was a very emotional discovery," she said. "From thousands of years ago we feel the strength of this love. Yes, we must call it love."

The couple's burial site was located Monday during construction work for a factory in the outskirts of Mantua. Alongside the couple, archaeologists found flint tools, including arrowheads and a knife, Menotti said.

Experts will now study the artifacts and the skeletons to determine the burial site's age and how old the two were when they died, she said. The finds will then go on display at Mantua's Archaeological Museum.

Establishing the cause of death could prove almost impossible, unless they were killed by a debilitating disease, a knife or something else that might have left marks on the bones, Menotti said.

The two bodies, which cuddle closely while facing each other on their sides, were probably buried at the same time, an indication of a possible sudden and tragic death, Bondioli said.

He said DNA testing could determine whether the two were related, "but that still leaves other hypotheses; the Romeo and Juliet possibility is just one of many."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17011786/ Article Five

Published on The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online (http://www.mb.com.ph/) Home > Greatest love story now told with garden gnomes in 'Gnomeo & Juliet'

Greatest love story now told with garden gnomes in 'Gnomeo & Juliet'

MANILA, Philippines - The original “Romeo and Juliet” was penned by William Shakespeare in the late 1500s. The tragic tale of two teenage lovers endures today with countless interpretations—from Georg Benda’s operatic adaptation in the 1700s to the popular 1950s stage musical “West Side Story” to 1996’s MTV-inspired “Romeo + Juliet.” In 2010, Twitter premiered “Such Tweet Sorrow”—an improvised tweeted version of the play presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Mudlark Production Company.

And now we have garden gnomes, in Touchstone Pictures' animated comedy “Gnomeo & Juliet.”

The filmmakers were instantly drawn to the irony of the film’s premise. Says producer David Furnish, “The concept of the film gave us the opportunity to take a classically well-known story and turn it on its head—reinvent it for a modern audience in a very funny way. The sheer fact that we have the high art of Shakespeare, the most revered playwright of all time, and the kitschy garden gnome gives us so many fantastic opportunities for comedy.”

The challenge, says producer Steve Hamilton Shaw, was making the fun premise into an interesting big- screen movie. “It’s important that while this movie makes people laugh, it also presents a world the audience can believe in; they need to feel the characters’ emotions. We needed to give it the heart and soul that would allow people to emotionally engage with the movie, so that the comedy plays that much better.”

Enter Kelly Asbury, a director whose comedic experience and artistic roots made him a natural fit for the project. Asbury’s directorial credits include the Oscar-nominated “Shrek 2” (2004) and “Spirit—Stallion of the Cimarron” (2002). He also worked as an artist on such notable films as “Shrek” (2001), “Toy Story” (1995), Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) and “Beauty and the Beast.” The producers felt Asbury had a proven ability to showcase a comedic character’s emotional side.

Says Asbury, “If you’re going to make an animated feature for a big audience to enjoy, you have to have a little bit of laughter, you have to have a little bit of tears—but I think the main thing is sincerity.”

But is it safe to transform one of Shakespeare’s most beloved tragedies into an animated comedy suitable for the whole family?

James McAvoy, who provides the voice of Gnomeo, considered the question. “It’s strange, isn’t it, because it probably shouldn’t work,” says McAvoy. “But you know what? In most Shakespeare plays these days, the director goes out on a limb to set it in some new environment. We’re probably not that far away from seeing a version in the West End or on Broadway where the actors are garden gnomes anyway. This is just getting there ahead of time. We’re trailblazers here.”

Aptly set in Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-Upon-Avon, “Gnomeo & Juliet” highlights the heated rivalry between neighbors Mr. Capulet and Miss Montague, who’ve taken their zeal for gardening to a whole new level. Their gardens overflow with kitsch plaster garden gnomes who, when the humans are out of sight, have taken up their respective owner’s non-neighborly behavior. The feud has taken on an even more personal nature with the gnomes, where simply being a Red from the Red Garden or a Blue from the Blue Garden comes with a host of prejudices that most don’t understand, yet fail to question.

“Why gnomes?” asks producer Baker Bloodworth. “Why not gnomes? This story is worth telling; it’s relevant. I think the artwork is joyous and vibrant and colorful and it has Elton John tying it all together.”

Fortunately for the garden gnomes, in addition to an extraordinary soundtrack featuring both new songs and classics from the Elton John-Bernie Taupin library, this version offers an all-new third act—replacing Shakespeare’s tragic conclusion. “I think this is definitely the ending that people always wanted from Romeo and Juliet,” says Emily Blunt, who lends her voice to Juliet (and actually kicked off her career on stage as a more traditional Juliet at the 2002 Chichester Festival).

“The theme of the movie is that love can overcome hate; that’s universal,” adds Bloodworth. “It plays to everybody. We aim to entertain people and to send them out the door with something to think about.”

But what would Shakespeare think?

“He was a great storyteller,” says Bloodworth. “I expect he’d have good fun with this.”

Opening soon across the Philippines in Digital 3D and regular format, “Gnomeo & Juliet” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.

Article Six

San Quentin Inmates To Perform 'Romeo & Juliet'

Posted: 6:09 pm PDT June 27, 2010 MARIN CO., Calif. -- Some might assume that there are few opportunities to dance, laugh or speak in iambic pentameter at San Quentin State Prison. But on Monday evening, 10 inmates will prove them wrong by performing "Romeo and Juliet" in the prison's Presbyterian Chapel, which will be the culmination of seventh months preparation in their Shakespeare class led by members of the Marin Shakespeare Company. Monday's 5:30 p.m. performance, directed by the company's Suraya Keating, will be the third full show in the class's seven-year history, a company director said. Acting is "completely foreign" to some of the men who come into the program, managing director Lesley Currier said, adding that the challenge is often daunting for the students. Preparation for the performance began in September, when the actors read through three different Shakespearian plays and ultimately selected this year's work, she said. Safety precautions at the prison mean that outsiders, including the actresses playing the parts of the Nurse, Lady Capulet and Juliet, aren't allowed to make physical contact with inmates. So how does one perform "Romeo and Juliet" when actors playing the star-crossed lovers aren't allowed to press palms, let alone kiss? With creative acting, of course. "It has been a great learning experience for them," Currier said. "They've done a great job of stepping up to the plate." It's a tough crowd too, she said, as the bulk of the 400 expected audience members are men with life sentences and the prison workers who discipline them. "It takes a lot of guts for 1/8the actors 3/8 to stand up and perform in front of their peers," she said. But Currier said the audience responds with respect. San Quentin is one of the few state correctional facilities to have an arts program. When actors deliver their lines, "gasps of recognition" can sometimes be heard from the responsive audience, she said, because the tragic play's themes of murder, forgiveness, hatred and regret are resonant with the actors and audience. The men gathered in the yard to rehearse their lines, often drawing curiosity from neighbors. But their eventual success and experiences with the arts program have inspired others to give Elizabethan theater a go.

"They've become spokesmen within the prison system," she said. "They are very articulate about how getting involved in a program like this is a benefit for all the men at the prison." Despite frustration from the surrounding community that the company is wasting resources on its prison arts program, Currier said the company prides itself on its outreach work, which includes programs for low-income youth around the county. "It's part of our community," Currier said. "And we can do something that enhances that community. Shakespeare can help them be better people and feel better about themselves. They may never leave San Quentin, but they're still becoming more educated and responsible human beings." The performances have not been without their own drama, she said. Last year, during the performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," one of the actors had to miss the first 20 minutes of the show when his attorney appeared at the prison before curtain time. This is the second year the performance will take place in the chapel. Two years ago, "Macbeth" was acted out in the prison art room in front of a cramped audience of 30, Currier said. Actors will perform for two hours without intermission because inmates are required to be back in their cells by 7:45 p.m., she said. "We were worried they'd have to leave before the show was over, and then they wouldn't know what happens to Romeo and Juliet," she said.

Article Seven

Opinion

Romantic love, love at first sight -- it's great theater but disastrous dating advice.

February 14, 2010|By Andrew Trees

What if Shakespeare had it wrong about love in "Romeo and Juliet"? In fact, what if all of us have it wrong and our ideals of love and romance are hopelessly awry? Although we are supposed to be celebrating our love for that special someone on Valentine's Day, perhaps the time has come to reconsider the concept of romantic love, at least as it has been conceived in Western societies.

As we busily track down red roses, the best chocolates and the finest champagnes, we need to ask whether, in the pursuit of the perfect romance, we haven't declared war on true love. Cupid's arrow does strike often, but with the U.S. divorce rate near 50%, one has to wonder whether the wound is particularly deep or long-lasting.

As I found when researching my book on the science of human attraction, our typical romantic beliefs are quite often wrong. For instance, even couples who are blissfully happy together can't count on a happy ending. The PAIR project, a long-term academic study of couples, found that those most in love when they marry are also the most likely to get divorced.

And the chemical attraction that many people rely on to choose a partner has been found to fade "to neutrality" in two to three years. That's right, neutrality, which might work well for Switzerland but is deadly for a marriage.

Perhaps most damning of all, I discovered that wife murderers tend to be strong subscribers to the romantic ideal. Take that, Romeo and Juliet.

Love and romance did not always rule the roost. As recently as the 1930s, American men ranked mutual attraction as only the fourth most important quality for a relationship, while women had it even lower, placing it fifth (in a 1956 survey, women dropped it all the way to sixth). But in recent decades, love has climbed to No. 1, accompanied by a rise in the importance of looks, which suggests that our romance with romance is long on style and short on substance.

I hate to sound unromantic on this day of all days, but perhaps it's time to place less emphasis on romantic attraction as the key to finding a partner. What can shoulder some of the load? I would suggest that we rely a little more on what science has discovered about human attraction.

Retrieved 3/17/11 From http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/14/opinion/la-oe-trees14-2010feb14