Booklicious: Such Tweet Sorrow: The Bard Takes on Twitter

April 12, 2010

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Looks like someone from the Royal Shakespeare Company read Twitterature and got inspired. 

The power of the Bard has electrified audiences via the stage, the page and is now set to do so via the internet. Well, more specifically, via Twitter. Starting this morning, the Royal Shakespeare Company will be performing Romeo and Juliet in real time using only tweets. The cast of six actors will be using their cell phones to perform their lines, and the "show" - entitled Such Tweet Sorrow - will last five weeks. 

From the London Times:
"Michael Boyd, RSC artistic director, believes mobile phones 'don’t need to be the Antichrist for theatre'. The RSC’s aim was always “to bring actors and audiences closer together', he said. 'We look forward to seeing how people engage with this new way of playing.'"

But it seems the "way of playing" isn't the only thing that's going to be new about this production.

"Roxana Silbert, the RSC associate director who is directing Such Tweet Sorrow, emphasised that it was a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s play and 'was not very reverential'. The original dialogue is lost to more contemporary language so there will be no posts like '@romeoM: R,R, wr4 rT thou R?'

Tybalt is an “arsey teenager on the verge of being expelled from private school”. Romeo is 'an avid PS3-playing, drum’n’bass lover', Juliet is as obsessed with Robert Pattinson and the Twilight vampire saga as any of today’s 15-year-old girls and the friar runs an internet cafĂ©." 


Oh boy. You can follow the star-crossed lovers @Such_Tweet.

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