April 23rd, 2010

Shakespeare is Going Trendy with Twitter

Shakespeare has been reinvented in a whole new way! A modern take on probably the best known Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, is making it’s debut on the Twitter stage. Claire McArdly came up with an idea that involved Twitter and the famous Shakespeare play. The modern play can be seen/read on Twitter by following Such Tweet Sorrow.

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet more than 400 years ago reflecting the romantic story of two young star-crossed lovers with all kinds of family problems. The story has been retold in opera, ballet, musical and in Baz Luhrman’s famous adaptation for the silver screen starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

This time it is done in a whole other different way: history meets today’s social media tool Twitter. If you have an Twitter account you can follow anyone of the six members enacting the play, this is your entry to the story. It’s a real experience because it all seems so real, you can follow them and so far it’s been pretty entertaining. You can follow every characters point of view in the story – that’s what makes it all so real.

The characters are six actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company and each of them has a “script” designed by Mudlark’s writing team of Tim Wright and Bethan Marlow, under the direction of the RSC’s Roxana Silbert. RSC artistic director Michael Boyd said the world-renowned theatre company’s aim was always “to bring actors and audiences closer together”.

What makes this work so well is that real actors actors are really writing the tweets themselves. They are using a diary that tells them where their characters are at any moment of the adventure and it all takes place at normal times so it feels and looks real for Twitter visitors.

The dialogue and script has been modernised to work on Twitter. To really get into the Shakespears story you just follow Such Tweet Sorrow, but here is a little preview for the ones who aren’t following it yet: Juliet’s brother Tybalt, who risks being expelled from school because of bad behaviour, was: “Gonna be late for class coz i’ve gotta have breakfast. Couldn’t give a crap!”

So it’s only a matter of time before more company’s join Twitter just to tell their story.

Image by pimousse3000

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