Salisbury School Dramatic Society to Present Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
The Salisbury School Dramatic Society is currently in rehearsal for William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Performances are scheduled for Thursday, February 23, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, February 24 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, February 26, at 2:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend and is encouraged to come to Sunday’s performance. All performances will be presented in Seifert Theatre on the Salisbury School campus. Doors will open 15 minutes before the start of each performance. There is no charge for admission.
Perhaps Shakespeare’s best-known play,Romeo and Juliet is the story of two teenagers who fall in love despite a long-standing and violent feud between their two families. In the 1950s, Romeo and Juliet was famously adapted for Broadway and later for film as West Side Story, with the feud re-imagined between rival gangs on the streets of New York. More recently, Baz Luhrmann took the idea of rival gangs and relocated them to modern day Miami Beach for his 1996 film Romeo and Juliet, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. Shakespeare wrote the original play around 1593. The story takes place in Verona, Italy, in the 1590s. The Dramatic Society’s production will stay in the original period and will use David Hundsness’ 2008 adaptation, which has Shakespeare’s original language but abridges the play to just over two hours.
The cast of the Dramatic Society production is led by Clark Lambo ’13 of Wayne, PA in the role of Romeo and Amelia Bell of Lakeville, CT in the role of Juliet. Clark will be making his Salisbury debut while Amelia has appeared previously as Scout in 2009’s To Kill a Mockingbirdand as Nurse Flinn in this past fall’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The supporting cast includes stage veterans Shawahl Abdur-Rahman ’14 of Brooklyn, NY as Abram; Dylan Brodie ’12 of Old Greenwich, CT as Benvolio; Hiu Pang Choi ’13 of Hong Kong as The Apothecary; Theo Elmore ’15 of Winona Lake, IN as Gregory; Yeskendir Kazhmuratov ’13 of Almaty, Kazakhstan, as Count Paris; Donald Reed ’13 of Lakeville, CT as Prince Escalus; Eric Ruangsakul ’12 of Krabi, Thailand as Mercutio; and Kyung Duk Yoon ’13 of New York, NY as Sampson.
Making their first Seifert Theatre appearances are Trent Carpenter ’15 of Santa Monica, CA as Lord Montague; Arnaud Cluzel ’12 of Montpellier, France, as Lord Capulet; Robert Marchesi ’15 of Darien, CT as John; and Sadiq Olanrewaju ’13 of Germantown, MD as Tybalt.
The cast also boasts a number of area students who have previously made their mark in Seifert productions: Shyla Gregory of Sharon, Amanda Kitik of Kent, and Shelby Macchi of Canaan as The Chorus; Rebekah Purdy of Canaan as Lady Capulet; Clara Ziegler of Sharon as Lady Montague; and Keila Zipkin of Sharon as The Servant. All attend Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Rounding out the cast are history instructor Connor Compton as Friar Lawrence and Gwenn Curtis of Salisbury, CT as The Nurse.
The production crew is headed by Yeon Sang Jung ’12 of Seoul, Korea. Nico Falla ’12 of Antigua, Guatemala, heads the technical crew. Zacchariah Wooten ’13 of Phoenixville, PA is the stage manager. As assistant director, faculty member Laura Smith is in charge of wardrobe and set design. The production is directed by Procter Smith.