GADS May Week Shakespeare Production Team

GADS is putting on Romeo and Juliet in May week and is looking for a production team. This includes: - Costume Design - Set Design - Stage Manager  - Publicity Officer - Welfare Officer - Intimacy Coordinator

Romeo and Juliet Production pack

Co-directors: Eva Sharkey (she/they) and Luke Quentin (he/him)

Hello! To briefly introduce ourselves, Luke is in his second year studying Classics, and Eva is in their second year studying English! We are both probably a bit too enthusiastic about theatre in Cambridge to the slight detriment of our respective degrees, and we don’t intend to stop any time soon! Last year Luke was in Downing Dramatic Society’s wacky and whimsical version of Twelfth Night, and he is bringing his excitement for excellent costumes, ongoing love-affair with the tragic, much whimsy and merriment, and staging Shakespearean queerness to this vision for Girton’s own version of Romeo and Juliet! He is, this year, returning to GADS (yippee) with Eva to co-direct. Eva was in the last GADS summer Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and very much enjoyed frolicking about in the garden, spewing some Shakespearean insults as Demetrius, and meeting more of the lovely Girton community. She’s excited to bring music and dancing (lots more frolicking) to this year’s production, gender-bending for a sapphic romance, joy and softness to a love story in a beautiful setting!
So, wonderful production people of Cambridge, we need you all to get this vision for our summer Shakespeare onto the stage! We are so very excited to have been graciously given the reigns for this special Girton tradition of staging a Shakespeare play in the beautiful Fellows’ Garden. It is a wonderful experience if you have not been involved before; a sunny end-of-term creative activity to celebrate (and shake off) the end of exams!

Our vision for this production:

As tantalisingly indicated above, we are very excited to be putting on a medieval (think inaccurate, but essence of) and very importantly, sapphic, version of Romeo and Juliet! We want to create a version of this classic play that is both old in aesthetic, and modern and forward thinking with its inclusivity. By gender-bending Romeo, we want to bring a new layer to the divisions between characters, altering the reasons for forbidden love, and the reasons for the feuding between literally everyone! The Fellow’s Garden is a beautiful spot with a raised stage, one that is perfect for the aesthetics of this production. Our main piece of staging we want is a table/altar thing in front of the stage, drawing together the domestic, the ritualistic and the tragic. Costumes and stage design really bring any production together and we are so excited to see what ideas people have for the vision! Think flags, jewel tones, drapey fabric, coats of arms and headdresses! You name it, we most definitely want to hear about it!

Who we are looking for

Please email us at: es2047@cam.ac.uk and aq248@cam.ac.uk

On your application please put:

• Pronouns (if comfortable)

• CRSID

• Any questions you have!

Costume designer

We have big dreams. Headdresses. Sleeves. Armour. Other such medieval items. However, we definitely cannot do this on our own and it would be wonderful to have someone to share our vision with! We aren’t sure how ambitious we can be with the time we have (and no clue what our budget is going to be) but we would love to be able to have medieval-esque costumes for our actors! Medieval princess vibes for Juliet, and obviously with a gender-bent Romeo we are looking for how a blend of masculine and feminine and a less traditional look could be fun to work with, and we would love to hear your thoughts!

• What is your vision for the production?

• What relevant experience do you have for this role? (none required)

• Why are you excited to be involved in this version of Romeo and Juliet?

Set designer

Help build the world around our actors! We would love to hear your thoughts on how the space of the fellows’ garden could best be used for Romeo and Juliet (and medieval decor that could bring everything to life?).

• What is your vision for this production?

• What relevant experience do you have for this role? (none required)

• Why are you excited to be involved in the version of Romeo and Juliet?

Stage manager 

This is a fun role, if you want to be backstage and help us with props (we intend to have many) moving bits and bobs around and generally being a ray of calming sunshine, we need you!

• Why would you like to be involved in this production of Romeo and Juliet?

• What do you think you could bring to this role?

Publicity designer

We need an audience, and we need to convince them of our vision! Your job as publicity designer would be posters, programmes, and having the keys to the GADS instagram (wow!). Anyone with knowledge of Canva would be delightful but it is not a requirement.

• What ideas do you have for publicity?

• What relevant experience do you have for this role? (none required)

• Why are you excited to be involved in this production?

Welfare officer

Snacks! Water on hot days! Suncream! Whatever the budget allows. This is such an important role, especially in Easter term with exams and deadlines on everyone’s mind. Your main job would be making sure cast and crew are all feeling ok (with regards to the production) and to be there for any rehearsals you can make it to, especially if there are any that have particularly difficult themes, as this is I believe a tragedy.

• What relevant experience do you have for this role? (none required)

• What is your favourite welfare snack (no wrong answers, we are just nosy!)

Intimacy co-ordinator

As we all know, this play is very beautiful in its depiction of love and closeness, and we need an intimacy co-ordinator to choreograph some moments between our characters!

• What relevant experience do you have for this role?

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Contact es2047@cam.ac.uk and aq248@cam.ac.uk before 6th May 2025 01:00 for more details.