Hello and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be talking about my latest project in humanities. This project, was about the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, and many aspects of it.
To begin off the project, we started to learn the storyline of Romeo and Juliet. Our milestone to show our understanding, was to create our own more modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet, that still kept the essential elements of the story. For this, I decided to write a story about children of Mexican drug kingpins laundering money in Caribbean tax havens and accidentally fall in love. This idea proved very popular among the class for our radio play, which I will discuss later in the post.
Next we moved into looking into certain aspects of the story, and others like it. The big focus for the next bit was on what exactly a classic was, and how we could apply it to our podcast topic. For this, we were put into groups of two, and tasked with having a discussion that relates to identity, what a classic is, and our podcast topics. We were then supposed to craft a cohosted podcast episode using that discussion. My first draft of this, I edited it so much that there wasn’t a conversion, but in my second draft I think I made some good points relating to my podcast topic, and included much of the conversation. You can listen to this episode below.
Our next leg of the project was focusing on two movie renditions of the play that we watched in class. A version from 1968, and one from 1996. For this we were put into groups. Our task was to collectively discuss and note down how each movie used the events and perspectives of its time to influence the setting, variation, and other aspects of the play. We were able to effectively come up with relevant connections to all sorts of stuff from the Vietnam War to the US crack epidemic.
After that, it was time to make another podcast episode, this time about adaptations. This episode was also supposed to be in the cohosted format. We were put into the same groups as the last episode, to help us build on our strengths and weaknesses from the last episode to make this one much better. I was able to connect this to my podcast topic relatively effectively like the last one, and better incorporated the cohost format in this episode.
Next was the largest part of the project. For this, our whole class had to collectively work together to create a filmed radio show rendition of the play, which relates to a modern audience. My primary task for this, was to come up with and create sound effects to be used in the play, from random objects. I also ended up playing male Juliet in the play after the original Juliet supposedly got knocked out in the play. Overall I think that the play went quite well, and there were no unscripted issues.
I believe that through all of this parts of the project, I have been able to effectively make the story of Romeo and Juliet relevant to modern audiences, prove it’s place as a classic, and connect the story to my podcast topic to the story in a relevant manner.