Romeo and Juliet digital resource book

THE ROYAL BALLET
ROMEO AND JULIET
Generously supported by The Taylor Family Foundation and
The Gerald and Gail Ronson Family Foundation
2021/22
RESOURCE WORKBOOK

YOUR VISIT
We are really excited to welcome you and
your students to the Royal Opera House for
the Schools’ Matinee of Romeo and Juliet on
Thursday 24 February 2022.
Welcome to the Royal Opera House film
This film introduces you and your students to the Royal
Opera House, guiding them through the spaces they will visit,
introducing them to some of the people they will encounter and
some of the exciting things they might see.
Cover, William Bracewell as Romeo and Fumi Kaneko as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet ©2021
ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper. Left, Steven McRae as Romeo and Sarah Lamb as Juliet in
Romeo and Juliet ©2015 ROH. Photographed by Alice Pennefather

THE STORY
Romeo and Juliet – a story of ‘star-crossed lovers’ – is part
of a tradition of stories that date back to ancient Greece,
through Italian poetry, and was most famously told by William
Shakespeare. Since Shakespeare, this story has been retold
many times – including in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet, which
follows Shakespeare’s play very closely.
ACT I
Two noble families live in Verona: the Capulets and the
Montagues. They are sworn enemies and have been feuding for
many years. A fight breaks out in the town square. The Prince
of Verona stops it and commands the families to end their
feud. Juliet is playing with her nurse when she is interrupted
by her parents, Lord and Lady Capulet. They introduce her
to Paris, a rich young man who wants to marry her. Guests
arrive for a ball at the Capulets’ house. Romeo and his friends
Mercutio and Benvolio wear masks to disguise themselves
and try to catch the attention of Rosaline. Once inside the
party, however, Romeo becomes much more interested in
Juliet ,who he sees across the room. They dance together and
sparks fly between them. Mercutio tries to distract Romeo,
while Juliet’s cousin Tybalt tries to follow him, but is stopped
by Lord Capulet. After the party Juliet is unable to sleep and
comes out onto her balcony. Just as she thinks of him, Romeo
appears in the garden and they tell each other they are in love.
ACT II
Romeo watches a wedding procession and dreams of marrying
Juliet. Her nurse brings him a letter from Juliet saying she
wants to marry him immediately. Romeo and Juliet are secretly
married by Friar Laurence, who hopes that this union will end
the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Back in the
town square Tybalt fights with Mercutio and kills him. Romeo is
devastated at the death of his friend and fights and kills Tybalt.
ACT III
Romeo and Juliet spend the night together before Romeo
must flee Verona at dawn. Juliet’s parents arrive with Paris
and Juliet refuses to marry him. Hurt, Paris leaves, and Juliet’s
angry parents threaten to disown her. Juliet rushes to see
Friar Laurence and begs him for help. He gives her a potion
that will make her fall into a very deep sleep – so deep she
will appear to be dead. Romeo is sent a message by Friar
Laurence, explaining their plan. Back in her bedroom, Juliet
agrees to marry Paris, but then takes the potion and collapses.
Her friends and family find her apparently dead, and she is laid
to rest in the family crypt. Romeo has returned from exile and
hides himself until everyone but Paris leaves. Believing Juliet to
be dead, Romeo stabs Paris and mourns Juliet, taking his own
life by drinking poison. Juliet awakes to find Romeo’s body.
Devastated, she stabs herself and dies reaching out to him.

THE CHARACTERS
ROMEO
JULIET
MERCUTIO
TYBALT
A young man from the Montague
A young woman from the Capulet
A Montague, Romeo’s closest
A Capulet, Juliet’s cousin is an
family who is in love with Rosaline,
family who seems destined to
friend, Mercutio is a dreamer and a
angry young man, eager to defend
until he meets Juliet.
marry Paris, a young nobleman.
romantic.
his family’s honour and fight the
Montagues.
Marcelino Sambé as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet ©2019 ROH. Photographed by Helen Maybanks.
Fumi Kaneko as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet ©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper.
Luca Acri as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet ©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper.
Ryoichi Hirano as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet ©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper.

THE CHARACTERS
BENVOLIO
Another Montague friend of
Romeo and Mercutio.
THE NURSE
Juliet’s nurse has known her since
she was born. She knows Juliet
better than her parents, and
becomes a trusted messenger and
go-between.
LORD AND LADY
CAPULET
Juliet’s protective parents who
want to see their daughter happily
married to a good match – not to a
Montague!
THE PRINCE OF
VERONA
The ruler of the city state in which
the story is set. Neither a Capulet
nor a Montague, the Prince is
weary of the feud between the
two families.
Tristan Dyer as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet ©ROH/Johan Persson, 2013.
Mica Bradbury as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet ©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper.
Christopher Saunders as Lord Capulet and Christina Arestis as Lady Capulet in Romeo
and Juliet ©2019 ROH. Photographed by Helen Maybanks.
Thomas Whitehead as Prince of Verona in Romeo and Juliet ©ROH/Johan Persson, 2010.

CONTENT WARNING
Although Romeo and Juliet is one of the most wellknown
works of English Literature, you may wish to
explain and discuss some of the issues raised in the
story with your students ahead of your visit.
In Act I, when we first meet Juliet, we see that
her parents are intending for her to enter into an
arranged marriage with Paris. But Juliet falls in love
with Romeo, and, as we see in Act III, they spend the
night together.
Romeo and Juliet’s relationship develops in secret
against the backdrop of a family feud that often
erupts into violence, with tragic consequences.
In spite of this, the lovers attempt to run away
together. However, a fatal miscommunication results
in their double suicide.
The story juxtaposes love and hate, life and death,
hope and despair. This production of Romeo and
Juliet has moments of violence and sensuality,
although this is only inferred through dance.
Artists of the Royal Ballet in Romeo and Juliet ©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper

ONE BALLET –
THREE CREATIVES
The following is intended as an introduction for your students to the creative forces
behind The Royal Ballet’s production of Romeo and Juliet.
The ballet Romeo and Juliet is the
combination of three creative geniuses
– a playwright (someone who writes
stories performed by actors), a
composer (someone who creates music
to be performed by musicians) and a
choreographer (someone who creates
the movement that dancers perform)
coming together across five centuries:
Shakespeare’s timeless story, retold
through Prokofiev’s emotional score,
brought dramatically to life through the
choreography of Kenneth MacMillan.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is
often referred to as the greatest writer
in the English language. Despite dying
over 400 years ago, his plays are still
regularly performed and his poems read
all over the world. His works have been
adapted in many forms and inspired
many reworkings as films, plays,
musicals, dance pieces, paintings and
beyond.
We don’t know very much about
Shakespeare’s life. He was baptized (so
we can probably assume he was also
born) in Stratford-upon-Avon in the
midlands of England and died in the
same town aged 52. He married Anne
Hathaway and the couple had three
children together. Thirty-seven plays
survive today, though he may have
written more, as well as 154 sonnets.
Shakespeare is credited with being the
first to use nearly 2,000 words we still
use today and many common
expressions and turns of phrase.
Can you find other adaptations of
Romeo and Juliet online?
Why do you think Shakespeare’s story
has lasted so long?

ONE BALLET –
THREE CREATIVES
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was a
Russian composer, pianist and
conductor who lived and worked
through some of the most troubled and
exciting times in his country and the
world’s history and wrote dramatic
music reflecting this. He is recognised
across the world as one of the great
composers of the 20th century.
Prokofiev wrote a huge range of music
including seven operas, seven
symphonies (works for a whole
orchestra, usually in four parts, or
‘movements’), eight ballets (including
Romeo and Juliet), concertos (pieces for
orchestra and a solo instrument, usually
in three movements) for piano, violin
and cello. He even wrote early film
music. He was a young man at the time
of the Russian Revolution and left Russia
to spend time living and working in the
USA, Germany, and France before
returning to Moscow, where he wrote
some of his most successful work
including this ballet and his opera, War
and Peace, which he began when Nazi
Germany invaded the USSR. Prokofiev
died on the same day as the Russian
dictator Stalin meaning his death
received very little attention in his
homeland, though his reputation has
continued to grow since then and his
work is performed and recorded
frequently.
Can you find pieces online that capture
the different styles in which Prokofiev
wrote?
How is his early Piano Concerto no.1
different to his children’s piece Peter and
the Wolf, or a work like Romeo and Juliet?
Previous page, Federico Bonelli as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet
©Bill Cooper/ROH, 2021. Left, Cesar Corrales as Romeo and
Francesca Hayward as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet ©2019 ROH.
Photographed by Helen Maybanks

ONE BALLET –
THREE CREATIVES
Kenneth MacMillan (1929–1992) was one
of The Royal Ballet’s two most
important choreographers in creating
the Company as it is today and his
ballets are known around the world.
Inspired by the way that film and theatre
was changing in the middle of the 20th
century, he is famous for ‘roughing up’
ballet – telling blood-and-guts stories
about outsiders and misfits after a
period when it was much more usual for
ballet to retell fairy tales or create
beautiful movement rather than realistic
characters.
Romeo and Juliet was perhaps
MacMillan’s first ‘big hit’. He created it
for The Royal Ballet in 1965, when he
was 36, and it was his first three-act
story ballet. MacMillan had been born to
a working-class family in Dunfermline,
Scotland, in 1929. His father was a miner,
then a chicken farmer who struggled to
make a living and drank heavily. His
mother died when he was 12, after which
he turned to dancing and was accepted
into the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (which
would become The Royal Ballet)
although he didn’t dance for long as he
suffered from terrible stage fright. This
turned him on to choreography and he
made work all around the world,
returning to The Royal Ballet as artistic
director in 1970. MacMillan died in 1992,
backstage at the Royal Opera House,
but his reputation as one of the great
choreographers has only continued to
grow since then, with his work regularly
performed by The Royal Ballet and
many other companies.
Francesca Hayward as Juliet and Bennet Gartside
as Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet
©2019 ROH. Photographed by Helen Maybanks

POST PERFORMANCE REFLECTIONS
These questions can be used to prompt
your students after the performance.
Consider the society that Juliet and
Romeo are growing up in. What
pressures are they under? What are their
relationships with their parents? Why
did arranged marriages take place? How
do the characters’ decisions affect their
fates? What is out of their control?
Think about all the characters in the
ballet. Who are they? What do they do?
What do they think about what happens
to the main characters?
What do the different characters’
costumes tell you about their
personalities, their status, their
emotional state? How is colour,
silhouette and embellishment used?
Artists of the Royal Ballet in Romeo and Juliet
©2021 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper

FURTHER VIEWING
4:41 1:17:01
WHY THE ROYAL BALLET LOVE
PERFORMING ROMEO AND JULIET
THE ROYAL BALLET REHEARSE
ROMEO AND JULIET
ROMEO AND JULIET 2019
IMAGE LIBRARY
You might want to watch this film about our
production of Romeo and Juliet ahead of your
visit. Here, members of The Royal Ballet talk
about why they love performing this ballet.
This longer film, taken from our Insights
programme, looks at the choreography and
history of The Royal Ballet’s iconic production of
Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.
This gallery contains images from when The
Royal Ballet performed Romeo and Juliet in 2019.
The pictures may be helpful for you to take a
closer look at the costumes from the production.
The Royal Opera House YouTube channel has many more performance clips and behind the scenes videos that you can explore. Find more videos here:
www.youtube.com/c/RoyalOperaHouse
From left to right, Matthew Ball as Romeo and Yasmine Naghdi as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Steven McRae as Romeo and Sarah Lamb as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet ©2015 ROH. Photographed by Alice Pennefather.
Matthew Ball as Romeo and Lauren Cuthbertson as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet ©2019 ROH. Photographed by Helen Maybanks.

NATIONAL PROGRAMMES
We place creative learning at the centre of children’s education,
through certified CPD and online programmes, opening a
window into the world of ballet, opera and theatrecraft.
Our resources, created together with teachers in schools across
the UK:
• Build teachers’ confidence, providing the tools to facilitate
learning through the arts. No previous experience required.
• Develop students’ creativity, resilience, communication and
and other transferable skills.
• Are relevant to current school topics, providing a theme for
cross-curricular work and a springboard for literacy.
WE OFFER:
• Practical training for KS1 to KS5 teachers country-wide.
• Free digital resources offering two-lesson (Taster), five-lesson
(Explorer) and ten-lesson (Immersive) schemes of work.
• Introductory films that inspire and entertain students,
reinforcing the activities and concepts they encounter in the
lessons.
• Programmes schools can use to suppor their ArtsMark
journey. Arts Award Explore or Discover resources also available.

FURTHER PROGRAMMES
CREATE & DANCE
createanddance@roh.org.uk
KS1 to KS3
This programme provides an understanding of dance
by unlocking children’s imaginations and creativity.
CREATE & SING
createandsing@roh.org.uk
KS1 to KS3
This programme develops skills in singing, drama,
storytelling, characterization and music.
CREATE & DESIGN
createanddesign@roh.org.uk
KS1 to KS3
Develop an understanding of stage design and follow
a brief to design sets for a ballet.
CREATE & LEARN
For more information on all of our programmes
visit: learning-platorm.roh.org.uk