On 14th August 2008, over one hundred people gathered in the grounds of the beautiful Bishopswood House to see twenty-five young actors perform a shortened version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The performance was the culmination of a five day concentrated rehearsal period constituting our annual summer workshop. In addition to the task of setting the piece and rehearsing the actors all of the costumes and properties have to be acquired or made in just five days. This years production demanded that thirty period costumes be designed and made by Penny and her handful of helpers. The final stitch was applied to the last costume just five minutes prior to the start of the performance!
The adaptation used all of the characters of the original but reduced the playing time to 80 minutes by removing some scenes and introducing a chorus to maintain the story line. The young actors, (between the ages of nine and fifteen), met the challenge of the piece splendidly. Whilst the play had been shortened, all of the spoken verse, with the exception of the added chorus, was from the original script with no modernisation or 'dumbing down'. Every young performer knew the full story, all of the characters and their relationships to one another, and no word was spoken without a full understanding of it's meaning.
This was a promenade performance with the audience following the action around the grounds of the house, and for the fourth year running the weather, which had been far from settled throughout the workshop week, remained fine and dry for the performance. Many audience members stayed on after the performance to picnic in the grounds of this glorious Victorian mansion. Once again Bare Bones Youth are indebted to the Freeman family for so generously making the house and gardens available to us for this frenetic but always rewarding annual experience.

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