Romeo and Juliet and Reality TV
Just watched on TV and a saturday night Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet as performed by the Birmingham Royal Ballet and a group of young people from rough parts ofBirmingham, who underwent classical training from 18 months. An other reality TV stunt I thought, and didn't bother watching any of it until last week, the penultimate episode. Rebellious youths, tragic personal stories, big egos and the discipline of ballet... it made for great drama. It turned out to be more of a documentary than yet an other reality TV show.
In terms of numbers, the experiment wasn't a a resounding success: of the 200 young people who started, only 60 made it through to the end performance, and except from the satisfaction of performing a challenging work in front of family and audience, there was no other reward. What did they take from 18 months of interesting and enjoyable at time I'm sure, but more likely tedious and repetitive training? How does it feel to be back to everyday life in middle England without the support coaches and youth workers, and a hefty dose of encouragement? That could be a documentary even more interesting than the original installment but I have little hope of ever seeing it made.
I'm not sure the project would have worked if it wasn't for the choice of a play ane troubled teenager could relate to: Romeo and Juliet, the most famous of family dramas, which can be read this way:
I like him/her/my Goths friends/hard rock
the parents don't agree
everyone in the family gets involved
I'll get shackled up with the unsuitable boy/girl friend/study music instead of dentistry/pierce my eyebrow just the same
they don't understand
I'll make them regret, I so want to die
I die/ go away and make it big and never speak to you again
they/parents/rest of the world/ spend the rest of their lives regretting/being green with envy
who's laughing now?
Real grown ups gloss on the inevitability of Fate, the use of deception and it's consequences etc... But the "yobos" and I know better: for once the kids got the last word and the opportunity to make everyone feel as miserable as they did.
Every teenager's dream.
posted by Kékéli at 20:19
3 Comments:
what's a yobo?
Yobbo or yob: the expression dates from the Thatcher era and is used to refer to aggresive and anti-intellectual attitude and behaviour
The word derives from a back-slang reading of the word "boy" (boy or boyo reversed becomes yob or — slightly modified — yobbo).
Basically, anything under the age of 25, wearing hooded tops(banned in some public places) and looking sulky.
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