The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare and Patrick Swickard
5"x8" paperback, 192 pages
A lovestruck Romeo sang the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made
Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade
Says something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?"
Juliet says, "Hey, it's Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack"
He's underneath the window, she's singing, "Hey, la, my boyfriend's back
You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that
Anyway, what you gonna do about it?"
- Dire Straits
This experimental version of Romeo and Juliet brings this classic into the 21st century! Most of the original text is Shakespeare, but we took the liberty of aging the protagonists up to a more appropriate age for smooching and un-aliving themselves. And to spice things up a bit more, we replaced the dialogue for a few characters with something more modern—transcripts of found-sound videos from various shady corners of the internet. Benvolio’s dialogue is now derived from an ASMR video where a make-up artist is applying makeup to the listener’s face. Juliet’s dialogue has been replaced by a bubbly sex-positive cam model hawking adult toys while promoting her social media channels. And good Friar Laurence’s dialogue has been replaced by a rather aggressive dominatrix who caters to sissy-play, cross-dressing, humiliation, financial domination, and poppers! Here’s hoping we can get a Baz Luhrmann adaptation of this version...