Last week, all 4 of A.B.L.E.’s ensembles for teens and adults started rehearsals for Romeo & Juliet Remix!
This semester, A.B.L.E. has 4 ensembles for teens and adults ages 14 and up with Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. Every week, our teams will meet on Zoom to explore the characters and plot of Shakespeare’s classic story of love and hate - Romeo and Juliet. Ensembles will develop a collection of monologues, scenes, songs, and movement pieces - some by Shakespeare and some devised by the group. We will thread all of the pieces together for a unique movie we're calling Romeo & Juliet Remix.
New friends…
For the first week of rehearsal, our goal was to get to know each other, and to get to know the 16 key characters in this story. Even though many of our ensemble members have been with us for several years, some actors have switched to different days, and we’ve welcome two brand new actors to the Friday ensemble. This semester, we also have TEN new volunteer facilitators supporting our ensembles! So every group had some new people to meet.
Old story…
But even with all this “new”, we’re working with an OLD story. Romeo and Juliet was written around 425 years ago, and has inspired many adaptations and different version from film to ballet to opera to paintings and everything in between. Chances are just about everyone knows something about these star-crossed lovers. For check-in this week, each ensemble created a Jamboard sharing what they know about this story. Actors talked about themes, famous quotes, different characters, or pivotal plot points to create these beautiful visuals of the story.
All fun!
During class, we played some favorite games line “Find It”, “Enter Exit”, and “Character Charades” to meet our characters, and also took brain breaks with lots of movement and dancing. Want to move with us? Check out our Romeo & Juliet Spotify Playlist for different songs all inspired by our famous star-crossed lovers. Move to the music and see how these different styles of music make you feel, and how different feelings make you move. In our actors own words, there are songs on there to make you feel “sparkly”, “romantic”, “angry”, “lonely”, “heartbroken”, and “amped”
