from Jacqueline

On Thursday October 24^th I went to see Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet and then on Saturday October 26^th I went to see Sleeping Weazel’s The Madness Of Small Worlds.

I never thought I’d see the day where I would be able to understand every single word in a Shakespeare play. But this production of Romeo and Juliet succeeded in doing this! I was amazed at the actors’ knowledge of what they were saying and their capacity to transmit it to an audience. This made me think I had it all figured out, that the key to enabling an audience to understand and listen was the actor’s knowledge of what they are saying.

However, after seeing The Madness Of Small Worlds, I realized I didn’t have it figured out at all. The actors in it had complete knowledge of what they were saying, that was very clear, and yet, I didn’t understand a single thing! It was in a post-modern style, which I had never seen before. The actor’s presence on stage was so strong, and yet no matter how hard I tried to follow what was being said I couldn’t understand. Nevertheless, there were numerous people in the audience that seemed to understand everything and kept laughing and laughing. This seriously baffled me as I tried to figure out why, despite the actor’s brilliancy, I couldn’t seem to grasp what was going on.

I still don’t have an answer to how it was possible that I understood every single word of a play written by Shakespeare’s daunting language, but not a single one of commonly spoken English.