It has been called the most classic of love stories, but it has never been told like this:
Two families, both alike in dignity,
In Verona, a gentle scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny…
This is a remake of Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet
, refreshing the core ideas of bias feud and sudden romance by presenting them in a bilingual way.
And he also does it with
actors of diverse origins
, led by Colombian-American Juan Castaño and Kenyan-Mexican-American Lupita Nyong'o, winner of the Oscar.
"It is for us, the children of the diaspora that we live between cultures, between languages: this production of
Romeo and Juliet
lives with us in that intermediate space,"
the playwright who made the adaptation, the Puerto Rican Ricardo Pérez González
,
explains in an interview.
"Because we also reject the old-fashioned idea that if 'you're in the United States, you speak English,'" he says.
The version, released in March, was recorded as a podcast and is available on YouTube, so that people from all over the world can enjoy the magic of the theater at this time when the stages are closed.
The protagonists of the bilingual adaptation of 'Romeo y Julieta' include Lupita Nyong'o, Julio Monge and Juan Castaño. Illustration by Erick Dávila for The Public Theater
And by having the work in an audio that flows in both languages, it is sought that the story of the lovers whose families are in conflict feel closer.
"There are people who tell me
that they understand the play better
or that they only understand it for the first time listening to it like that, and not just bilingual people," says the playwright.
Pérez González says that for the adaptation he relied on how his father used the two languages in his daily life, and that he was inspired by his grandmother, who was a tailor, to think about how he could sew the existing English and Spanish versions together. from
Romeo and Juliet
.
“There are no rules on how to intertwine the two languages, when the transition should take place”, so adapting the work to a bilingual mode “was a matter of feeling where to flow from one to the other, keeping the rhythm of Shakespeare and that of the translation ”, made by the Mexican academic Alfredo Michel Modenessi.
A work with current relevance
For years it has been studied how to incorporate more diversity into Shakespeare or when teaching his plays, which usually deal with universal themes such as misunderstandings in love or the corruption of power, makes it easier to understand the bard.
Even, according to scholar Alex Fellowes, seasoning Shakespeare's dramas, comedies and sonnets can be used to teach English to people who speak another language at home.
"If we give them the opportunity to find the play in their own contexts, to make it relevant to them, that generates the excitement that we would like to have for these plays," says Fellowes in a book on the benefits of having bilingual versions of Shakespeare.
[Latinx youth come together to create bilingual poetry book]
Pérez González also highlights that
Romeo y Julieta
is a work that has special relevance
after four years of a US government
that sparked "debates about the role of Latin people in the country."
"This is a play about love and hate, and about divisions between two sides, that's why working on it given the situation in recent years ... well [that context] is fertile ground for this type of adaptation," says the playwright.
“In fact, I myself was surprised how hearing the cast speak in both languages activated part of my brain, my mind, my soul, because
there are so many bilingual people, but we hardly ever get something like this in spaces. cultural aspects
of the United States ”, he adds.
Pérez González himself resorts to the bilingualism that so many use daily, to answer the question of whether he expects this Shakespearean version to jump from the podcast to a staging and to make it possible to return to the theaters.
"If only!
It would be very very super cool. "