Colony Hall was honored on April 7 with a performance of the ballet Romeo and Juliet: The Choice, where the audience voted to replace Shakespeare’s classic tragedy with a happy ending by a margin of 20.
Composed on the piano in 1935 by Sergei Prokofiev, the ballet reflects his vision of an alternate, light-hearted ending to this infamous tragedy, with Friar Laurence stopping Romeo from stabbing himself just in time for Juliet to awaken.
Mr. Frederick Chiu, the pianist who single-handedly accompanied the two-hour-long ballet, learned of Prokofiev’s score, written with a happy ending, 30 years ago in Paris. However, the Soviet government insisted that Prokofiev rewrite the ending of his score for the production that they commissioned. The inaugural performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Ballet of the National Theater Brno in what was then the Soviet Union ended tragically, adhering to Shakespeare’s original ending.
Prokofiev’s piece, which unintentionally featured two possible endings, presented Mr. Chiu with an opportunity to create an interactive production of the ballet, Romeo and Juliet: The Choice. He envisioned an ending to the ballet that could be voted on by audience members, followed by a debate carried out among a panel of academics. They could determine the fate of the production by choosing between showcasing Prokoviev’s originality with the happy ending or staying authentic to Shakespeare’s tragic ending.
At a Prokofiev symposium at Louisiana State University in 2016, Mr. Chiu approached Mrs. Sandra Parks, Director of the Arts at Choate, to bring his vision to life after seeing her choreography for Prokofiev’s “Music for Athletes.”
“When I saw that, I was like, ‘Wow, she’s got the whole spirit,’” recollected Mr. Chiu. She understands what’s going on with Prokofiev: the era, the style, and I asked her and right away, she knew what I was talking about. So we really connected — we were on the same wavelength.”
After two years of working together on the piece, the premiere of Romeo and Juliet: The Choice took place at Drexel University in 2018, where Mrs. Parks directed the Dance Department. Mr. Chiu and Mrs. Parks intended for this piece to break the fourth wall and foster a deeper connection between the performers and the audience. The performances at Drexel University were presented in a college lobby with movable art-display screens used for projections. The audience sat next to Mr. Chiu as he played, with an eye-level view of the performance. In order to increase audience interaction, Mrs. Parks also created short sections wherein audience members were invited to dance with the cast. “There is a kind of intimacy that I’m trying to create. The interactive element kind of ties in with that as well,” said Mr. Chiu. Aria Ramnath ’24, reflecting on her experience, said that the live piano music “made the whole performance feel more authentic and as though the dancers were real people [she] knew.”
Mrs. Parks’s choreography highlights the differences between the opposing Montague and Capulet families. “For me, the music for Montague seems very sharp and straightforward, so their movements are more linear and straightforward and more line-driven. The Capulet music, for me, sounds more circular. So their movement feels more wavy, like up and down movement,” said Mrs. Parks. She also incorporated motifs unique to the two sides to reflect the score. “Hopefully the audience can recognize [that] ‘Okay, this is a motif happening,’ and hear it [in the music],” she added.
Preparations to bring this piece to the Sacred Heart Community Theater in Connecticut began towards the end of 2019 when Ms. Rima Dael ’91, General Manager of WSHU Public Radio, joined the project. This show marks the first ballet that WSHU, a radio station owned and operated by Sacred Heart University, has ever produced, as well as the first one to be performed at the community theater.
For the production, Ms. Dael coordinated transportation for the cast and purchased a dance floor for the venue. She also worked with the Director of Development as well as the Communications and Fundraising Department at WSHU to publicize the event. She shares Mr. Chiu’s vision of using this work to introduce new audiences to ballet and music.
“We’re looking to make sure that classical music isn’t just for an older audience — that classical music is really accessible to the broader community,” Ms. Dael said. She has also invited students from the Suzuki music schools and the Connecticut Youth Orchestra to attend the performances.
Coincidentally, Mrs. Parks assumed the position of Director of Arts at Choate when the show at Sacred Heart Community Theater started to come together. Mrs. Parks and Ms. Dael wanted to bring the production to Choate and showcase a diverse cast to the school community. Originally from the Philippines, Ms. Dael respects that Mrs. Parks “is casting against type,” citing that Mrs. Parks “has people of different nationalities and ethnicities in the work that she does, [and] she has cast women in men’s roles and vice versa.”
Auditions for the Connecticut production were conducted in Manhattan in December of 2020. Jack Murphy (BFA, The Juilliard School) was cast as Romeo and Órla Baxendale (Scholarship recipient, Alvin Ailey School) as Juliet. “To have dancers right next to me dancing and following the rhythm and landing on a big downbeat — wow, that’s powerful,” said Mr. Chiu, reflecting on the interactive experience of rehearsing with the dancers. As they usually have to dance to recordings, Baxendale and Murphy valued the experience of dancing to Mr. Chiu’s live music. “The fact that he can play that all by himself is amazing,” said Baxendale.
Both dancers were most excited about the possibility of having two different endings featured in one piece. “That’s like nothing I’ve ever done before … You don’t know whether you’re going to be dying or whether you’re going to be living,” said Baxendale.
Murphy shared how he and the rest of the dancers only learnedwhich ending they would perform during the intermission after the audience’s votes were tallied. Both leads expressed their fondness for Shakespeare’s ending over Prokofiev’s, stating that the tragic nature of the original ending allowed them to dance with more intense emotions on stage.
In favor of Prokofiev’s ending was English teacher Dr. Amber Hodge, one of the four panelists in the performance at Choate. Having focused a lot of their work on adaptation studies, Dr. Hodge made the argument that “Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is in itself an adaptation based on two earlier works.” They stated, “In adaptation studies, you say there was not an original, there was a source. Because everything’s really coming from data that takes from all sorts of influences.”
Ms. Dael is eager to continue working with Mrs. Parks and Mr. Chiu on future projects and hopes that Romeo and Juliet: The Choice is the first of many collaborations between Choate and WSHU. She hopes to bring renowned speakers, performers, and artists that visit Choate to the Sacred Heart Community Theater and the broader Fairfield County community. She said, “I deeply believe in partnering with people and with organizations that have shared missions. And so that’s where I see that this is a catalyst [for] some really wonderful partnerships and friendships moving forward.”
