Romeo&Juliet

I was working at the theatre today for the first time in a long time, during a performance of Romeo & Juliet, performed by the drama-school on Öland. The group of 10-12 students have been working with this piece during a long time. The piece is chosen because of the recent gang-related killings going on in Sweden and, of course, because of the various aspects of love and hate between young people, apparently an eternal problem. The cast is young, around 20 years old, and the audience for today was school kids from 14 to 19 years old. 

I was taken by the energy and devotion on the stage and the concentrated listening from the audience, some of them surely personally acquainted wit some of the very young men recently killed through gang-related violence in Kalmar. In this scene, Romeo has just killed himself with poison because he thinks Julia is dead. Julia tries to empty the same poison bottle that Romeo used, only to find there is nothing left so she kills herself with a knife. I expected giggles in the audience but the 200 kids were dead silent.