Grudge Match stuns audience – The Flor-Ala

The production “Romeo vs. Juliet: Grudge Match,” directed by Professor Robert Fuson, encouraged audience participation in all five shows. This unique show challenged modern theater etiquette, was almost entirely improvised, and set a new standard for the appreciation of the art.

The cast and crew have been working on the show since the first week of classes this semester. The first table reading officially took place on August 27th and rehearsals began shortly afterwards.

First, director Fuson gave the performers the tools they needed to study both theater technique and the philosophy of the effectiveness of improvisation. Jarrod Stocks, who played the role of announcer, praised Fuson, saying that this allowed the cast to “hand-craft” and “self-select” what they had to do to make the show successful.

Aside from a few references to Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet, two monologues reserved for Mercutio and Juliet, and Stock’s dialogue as an announcer, the production was entirely improvised. To prepare for this, the actors were encouraged to act out the most extreme scenarios during rehearsal.

Opening night was Thursday, October 10, the day after the department preview. Director Fuson was proud of how well the actors got along with the audience and looked forward to the next evenings.

What made this production so special was both the nature of the cast and the role the audience played throughout the show. Stocks maintained the only static character with his role as announcer, meaning his role never changed on different nights.

However, the other actors studied and perfected different roles, as they only knew which character they would be playing right before each show. In front of the audience, each performer pulled wiffleball-like objects from a box that determined the fate of the character they had to take on that night.

To do this effectively, each member of the cast had to memorize and learn each character’s personality and actions well enough to respond accordingly.

Now the most unique thing about the show was that the audience led the entire proceedings of the show every night. In fact, the audience was divided into the Montagues and the Capulets, similar to how at sporting events the audience is divided to cheer for two different teams.

The first round of the show consisted of a quiz game. The audience was responsible for helping their character answer specific questions about Florence, and the first team to answer five correctly died in that round

This was followed by the wrestling round. The audience could discuss with their respective partner which move they thought would win against their opponent, and it played out like a game of rock-paper-scissors. The first character to win twice ended up killing the other.

There was a civil court round where the actors had to improvise based on suggestions from the audience as to why the families were fighting.

The next round consisted entirely of improvisation scenarios involving members of the audience.

In the final round, social media was consulted, with each team selecting a specific representative. The winner of this round was determined through an Instagram poll and got to choose the last character to die.

Because of the structure of this production, the characters had to respond and act effectively to the audience’s decisions.

“The audience is an essential part of the production, so it’s a very high-risk, high-reward situation,” Stocks said. “If there’s an audience that just doesn’t agree with it, it’s going to be a much more difficult task to get the show where it needs to be.”

In theory this would have presented some difficulties had the audience not been particularly engaged, but the cast did an excellent job crafting and adapting their performances each night.

“There wasn’t a night where we performed poorly as actors,” Stocks said. “It went like clockwork almost every time we got there.”

Director Fuson drew inspiration for this production from his master’s studies on the evolving role of audiences in the post-streaming era of entertainment. This experience made him realize that he needed to produce a show that was different each performance and where the audience felt like they could contribute as collaborative storytellers.

Although the audience was different at each show, each audience had moments that made each night a unique experience. For example, on one of the evenings, a viewer raised a timely objection during the civil court battle when the blame was shifted to a man named “Dan.” He contradicted this claim and stated that Dans were generally just as good people as Dan himself, which caused the audience to burst into laughter. Dan was now immediately part of the actual production and offered this audience a personal experience.

The varied audience sizes allowed the cast to fully understand director Fuson’s intention to challenge audience participation in theater.

“It was successful in that we introduced all these audiences to the different possibilities of what theater can do and be,” Fuson said. “Our cultural idea of ​​what theater needs needs to be challenged, and my actors have managed to develop a much broader understanding of what it means to involve an audience in the production.”