The Martlet

What: Romeo and Juliet
Where: Phoenix Theatre, UVic
When: 8 p.m., Nov. 5 to 21
How much: Students $15

UVic’s Phoenix Theatre is presenting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — with a twist.

The tragic love story, which opens this Thursday, has gone through a change of scenery. Director Brian Richmond has decided to place the play in the Holy Land, the disputed region of the Middle East, instead of in Shakespeare’s original Italian setting.

Through the lens of the many cultures that inhabit the region, Richmond translates what Shakespeare wrote as a struggle between Italian families into a feud between Muslim and Jewish households.

“Italy was a metaphor for a country that had a great deal of internal strife. When I was approaching this project, I was thinking, what is the area of the world that we think of as having an ongoing conflict?” said Richmond.

“Of course that answer is the Middle East or, in this production, the Holy Land. We’re setting the play in the context of our perception of an area of violent and apparently irresolvable conflicts.”

Kerem Çetinel, who was born and raised in Turkey, is a department sessional instructor and brings his experience to the set design. With a stage floor of desert sand and backdrop of a war-torn wall, the scenery fits the theme of struggle in this divided territory.

The production also includes flying, fog, traps and an elevated stage. There are 28 people in the cast and almost as many working in the stage crew.

“This is the biggest department-wide effort on a production in several years,” said Richmond.

One of the biggest challenges for the actors was working with Shakespeare’s language. Richmond said that understanding what is being said is one thing, but that being able to speak verse and then make it comfortable is a second big challenge.

UVic acting students Samantha Richard and Melanie Leon will both play the part of Juliet. Leon, the understudy, will perform for five nights, while Richard plays Juliet the other 12.

“I’ve wanted to play Juliet since I was about six years old,” said Richard. “She’s young, she’s feisty, she’s strong, she’s brave.”

Leon admits she is terrified, and Richard said that playing Juliet is the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life.

“It’s so hard to get your vowels, to get your consonants, to hit every period, every question mark,” said Richard. “ But I’m really excited and I want to take each day as it comes. It’s not very often you get to be a Juliet.”

Romeo and Juliet is a play that has somehow transcended through centuries of theatrics. Brian Richmond chose Shakespeare’s most famous play because it speaks to timeless universal themes.

“I think there are two things in life that are neither rational, nor ultimately explainable,” said Richmond. 

“The first is love. When we fall in love, it seems to me that our whole systems change inside of ourselves and we never know why. The second thing is death. We’ve always had to encounter the concepts of love and death in society and, in simple terms, that’s what Romeo and Juliet is all about.”

Be sure to catch the free pre-show lecture on Friday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., where Janelle Jenstad from UVic’s Department of English will give her talk, “Shakespeare’s Experiment in Comi-Tragedy.”