“¡Shakespeare para todos!” Romeo and Juliet in Spanish for 5th-7th graders
Spanish-speaking Brown students, from February through April, will work with Latino students to interpret this timeless play that’s also a play for our times. Leonard Bernstein’s popular musical, West Side Story, transformed the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets into an urban gang war between the Krips and the Bloods. In his hit movie, Baz Luhrman transported the warring families to “Verona Beach” in Florida or California.
The play raises questions that are as urgent now as in 16th c. Verona or London. Who is responsible for these feuds, families who tolerate them, gangs that mandate them, or the individual young men who carry them out? What is the role of parents or families in perpetuating them? How might religious leaders or civil authorities control or end this violence—by laws, by moral persuasion, by offering alternative activities and pursuits? What do such feuds offer to those who pursue them—a sense of power and self-esteem, social validation, the comfort of belonging to a group?
These problems hit Latino communities in Providence (where 40% of the population is Spanish-speaking) especially hard. To make Shakespeare’s play fully accessible to Latino students, we are offering Romeo and Juliet in Spanish.
In partnership with the Providence Community Library, faculty from Brown’s departments of English and Hispanic Studies are training Brown students to work with middle-schoolers at Del Sesto Middle School, Roger Williams Middle School, Leviton Dual Language School, and Sophia Academy. This program will culminate in performance of scenes from Romeo y Julieta on El Día de los Niños, Saturday, April 30, at Knight Memorial Library.
This project is made possible through major funding from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Council seeds, supports, and strengthens public history, cultural heritage, civic education, and community engagement by and for all Rhode Islanders.
Credits:
Facsimile of one of William Henry Ireland’s forgeries, a primitive portrait of Shakespeare. Published for Samuel Ireland, Norfolk Street, Strand, Dec. 1, 1795.