Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet …in Tweets!

On the 12th April 2010 a new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet started. But this is no ordinary production, with a modern twist that far exceeds Baz Luhrmann’s powerful interpretation of the famous tragedy – the 21st century translation is to be played out entirely through Tweets and videos posted on YouTube.

The possibilities of the social networking site Twitter are proving endless with the recent revelation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s collaboration with Mudlark to produce a modern day Romeo and Juliet primarily using the popular social media site. Entitled ‘Such Tweet Sorrow’ (a reference to the line ‘such sweet sorrow’ from the original), the performance will include thoughts, messages, links and confessions in the form of Tweets.

Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Such Tweet Sorrow will be played by six actors and transpire over the next five weeks. Together they will tell the story via improvised dialogue updates on Twitter guided by a contemporary narrative loosely outlining the plot. This not only allows the characters to interact with each other, but also the ‘audience’, encouraging the prospect of a completely new story being created by Twitter users.

Michael Boyd, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company stated: “Our ambition is always to connect people with Shakespeare and bring actors and audiences closer together.

Mobile phones don’t need to be the antichrist for theatre. This digital experiment … allows our actors to use mobiles to tell their stories in real time and reach people wherever they are in a global theatre.”

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