Before They Were Night Vale: Romeo and Juliet (with rules) (Patreon)

In March of 2012, I started working on two different projects. One was a series of paragraphs about a weird desert town where every conspiracy theory was true. I didn't know what those paragraphs were for, exactly, but they seemed to have a spark to them so I kept writing them.

The other project was a theater production. I had the idea of a performance of some well-known classic (Romeo and Juliet for example) in which, every few minutes, a card would be randomly chosen from a bucket. The card would have a new rule, either for all of the performers, or one performer, and they would have to strictly follow that rule for the rest of the show.

There would be a referee in a high chair, like in volleyball, assigning the rules and enforcing them with a whistle and penalty cards. The idea is that the show would start straight-forwardly, and then gradually devolve into something with so many contradictory rules that it was almost impossible to perform.

I liked this idea then, and still like it now. However, the other project I had started, the one about the desert town, definitely felt better to me. Since I only had time and energy to pursue one, I decided to make the desert town thing as a podcast. 

Still, there is some alternate universe where instead of making Night Vale, I spent 2012 putting on a wildly chaotic production of Romeo and Juliet that would likely have been seen by a total of maybe 70 people over the course of a couple weekends at some experimental downtown NYC venue. 

I'm glad things turned out the way they did, but still, I do wish I could watch this show. It sounds like a blast.

-Joseph Fink

PS

Here, untouched since March 2012, are my original notes on this never produced show:

***

Structure Ideas

Actors openly carry and read from scripts.

There is a moderator (in a tall, lifeguard type chair?) who stops the action to assign new rules and also makes sure that the rules are followed.

Rules are assigned on a per actor basis, so each actor is following a different set of rules (although maybe there’s the occasional special rule that applies to everyone?)

Penalties for breaking rules: temp penalty rules that are harder?

Rules for audience?

Rule Ideas

1.     All movement must be diagonal.

2.     Skip every third word.

3.    Switch roles with [character name]

4.    Must stay where they are standing right now for the rest of the show.

5.     All lines must be sung.

6.     May not speak. All lines must be conveyed through physical performance.