2"Romeo and Juliet" Speak Portuguese!

By Manuel Luciano da Silva, M. D.

As a practicing physician for more than 40 years, I had to be an actor in many  protagonists  situations: a counselor, a  judge,  a true friend, an adviser,  a good  listener, etc. Never  crossed my mind that it was in my destiny  I would have to  act on a stage as the personification of Juliet!… To my amazement  it really happened,  when I was 71 years old!  Let me tell you my odyssey as an actor, I should say, as an actress,  on the "Bristol Broadway"…

I have been a member of the Bristol  International Rotary Club for more than 27 years. Being a very busy physician,  I  even managed to have  20 years  of perfect attendance, every Wednesday at 12 noon!   I  was president of the Bristol  Rotary Club  in 1986-87. There are now about one million members of Rotarians all over the world.  Personally  I find the objectives and camaraderie of the Rotary Club  very much to my liking as a concerned member of our community. All the moneys that each Rotary Club is able to raise during the year are given away for  scholarships or  for other humanitarian  objectives such as the public library,  or charitable organizations. 

So on the Spring of 1998, the Bristol Rotary Club decided to present  on the stage of the Bristol High School  a "Variety Show" for the purpose of  raising  funds to help the "Homeless in  the State of Rhode Island". Among the twenty different sketches, musical and humorous,  there was  included  the  romantic scene of Romeo and Juliet,  at night  in her garden when she was at  her balcony…. and  conveying  her  profound love  to Romeo and vice-versa.

Bristol is a town of 25 thousand people. But our Rotary Club has 92 professional and business  members.  Twenty two are women and the rest are men. The fun part of it is that Juliet should be played by a man! The Romeo was easy to find among our members. The right choice was Frederico Pacheco, travel agent, and a world traveler of  85 different nations and with a good English diction and disposition to act on stage.  The big problem was to find  a male  Rotarian to do Juliet.  The part was offered  to several members but they all refused, because it was too embarrassing, the English was too old… Whatever excuses there were, on the final analysis Juliet  ended on my lap! 

The director of the production, Williams  Dennis (Attorney),   at our regular meeting  gave me the part, and I must confess  that that same day  in the evening at home when I read  it,  my first  instinct was to tell him  the next day that  I  felt I  would not be able to deliver it! I decided to call Frederico Pacheco and see what he thought of his part. He too found it tough because  English is not our native tongue, and the only way we could do it was to memorize the entire scene!  Memorize it  all at  my age of 71? We had only six weeks to do it! So we got together in my library and went over the entire scene. I found the old English difficult to pronounce and even to understand!  Poetically it was beautiful! 

Then  we realized that we were not  actors, and therefore we should add to the exchange of love sentences, similar expressions  in Portuguese,  because more than 50% of the population in Bristol is of Portuguese extraction,  and  this way  a mixture of languages will bring about humor, and that was the main objective of the "Variety Show".  So with this  trend of thought we decided that we should reverse scenes. Usually in a romantic encounter  when the girl is at the window or balcony, it is the boy who serenades the girl…  Not here. Juliet at her veranda will open the scene by playing  her mandolin, and to top it, she  will play a Portuguese Vira called "Mininas vamos ao Vira"… A folklore dance" Girls let us all dance".

So Pacheco and I got together a few times and each time we kept adding new things to our "production". But there was one thing that we could not laugh  anymore. We had to memorize the entire  dialogue by heart, otherwise, the people who will attend the three performances would remember only the mistakes that  either one of us would utter on the stage, and disregard the rest our  good acting.  On the top of it I found out that every boy and every girl (specially the girls) all over America knew by heart the entire scene of Romeo and Juliet on the Orchard…

So, what could I do to memorize Mr. Shakespeare's masterpiece?  I decided to tape all the verses, including the Portuguese ones on a cassette, and on my way to the hospital  to see my patients in Providence, going and coming,  I would listen  and recite  the performance, many times,  loudly and clear.  It was painful,  but it  worked!  

Note: Click on each photo for a larger view

On May 1994,  my  wife Silvia and I went to Italy for two weeks  and we visited Verona where we saw Juliet's Balcony.  Note the dark  Juliet's statue (in front of the greens) where  many couples like to take their photos embracing lovely Juliet…Of  course every one knows the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet, and their profound love for each other, and the way they  both  lost their lives. 

But in the famous play written by Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet",   he seems to convey the blame of the tragic ending  of  both  teenager lovers on  the rivalry that existed  between the adults of both families. (Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet). This is interpreted as a sentiment of generation gap which makes this play very appealing to the youth  of the world.

My dress, my breasts and my wig

As a rule each Rotarian was responsible to get his or hers uniform to perform. 

 None of my wife's dresses fitted  me. So I had to rent or inquire among the female Rotarians where I could find  a dress for the "new Juliet"… Finally Rotarian Mary Millard, who is  connected with local  amateur theatre,  found a dress that would fit me. It had many roses, and I liked  it because it was consistent with the Juliet's garden…

Now I had to master the breasts. My wife and I using lamb's wool,  cotton and a large bra we  managed to fulfill the spaces, but one became larger than the other, and we wanted  them symmetrical. After several tries and much laughing we arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.

Now I needed a long hair, to coincide with a Juliet of 1596.  My Romeo, Mr. Frederico Pacheco, prefers blondes, but he had no choice, he got instead a beautiful brunette!… Once again  Mary Millard was the one who provided  me with  the long wig!… I only need long earrings, those that would shine with the lights on the stage… My wife had  them.  I was all set.

In the meanwhile I had to rehearse with my mandolin, -- which I had not played for many,  many years…--  the Portuguese folkloric song.  But with perseverance, and  determination, I developed enough calluses on my fingers and it was pleasant recalling a song that I had learned when I was 14 years old in my old village, in Portugal.

Romeo's uniform

Romeo's uniform was even more complicated than Juliet's. Once again Frederico Pacheco had to depend on our  Rotarian Mary Millard. For his hat, she used one of her 1939 mother's hat, which had a pheasant feather. It gave Romeo an appearance of a  Swiss Guard of the Vatican or Verona style! For his shirt,  he used a white blouse of his wife,  Deodete,   with several folders in the front as  to display distinct  knighthood! His coat or vest  was made of green velvet. It had been used by Mary Millard's daughter at her prom dance. It needed  enlargement  adaptations which were made by  his  wife Deodete.  

For trousers up to the knees, Mrs. Deodete  had to make them from one of her  green old silk dress. Romeo  used darkish  pantyhose to cover his legs  and for shoes Deodete Pacheco went to a store and bought sleepers with pointed toe shoes. All in all,  Romeo looked indeed  a perfect knight of the XVI Century! Any Juliet would fall in love with him!… 

The old sword was lent  to Romeo  by our fellow Rotarian Lum Costa. Romeo had  to exercise with  it in order to draw it  and to insert it  in the sheath,  several times,  because the acting  on the stage would require  such a procedure.  There was the detail of radio-microphones that Romeo and Juliet had to use so their voices could be heard in the entire theatre. Dough Botelho was the Rotarian who  knows  how to take care of this technicality and he did an excellent job.

One more thing  Juliet had to do:  had to train her  voice in high peach to sound feminine. It  was not easy, but it was accomplished and the final results were good!  With all these many details taken care of by the cooperation of several people,  a  few days before the curtain went up, on the stage of the Bristol High School Theatre,  both Romeo and Juliet  were ready to give their historical performance!  It turn out to be a show  to be long remembered!  My sincere thanks also to the makeup crew of the Bristol Amateurs' Theatre!

The curtain opens with Juliet playing her mandolin: "Meninas vamos ao vira!"…
(Photo by Stanley Ulbrych)

Romeo -- I take thee at thy word.

Juliet -- (In Port.) --Casa comigo, Romeo! Responde-me até amanhã! se não morrerei de paixão! ( Marry me, Romeo! Give me an answer by tomorrow or I will die of passion because of you!)

Já viram uma cara tão linda? E um corpo tão bem feito? (Have you notice such a beautiful face? And such a gorgeous body?)

Juliet-- Boa noite meu amor. A que horas vens ver-me amanhã? (Good night my love. At what time are you coming to see me tomorrow?)

The audience thinking he was nervous, continued to laugh loudly! But after insisting, Romeo finished the job and went on his way for the evening and the curtain was closed!

And Bruno insisted with this question --" Do you know how the Romans called the hole of the sheath? I bet Doc Da Silva knows! " They both looked at me and I said. "The Romans used the correct term: Vagina!" Yes, it is true! Vagina was named by the Romans because of its similarity to "the sheath where the dagger is inserted". Today, in medical terminology, it means tunnel or canal.

The Bristol Rotary Club made a total profit of more than sixteen thousand dollars to help the Homeless of Rhode Island!  Mike Davis, a fellow Rotarian, and General Manager of the regional Full Channel TV, made a video of the entire show, which can be obtained for the price of twenty dollars, and the proceedings will continue to favor the Homeless.

There is much talent among the male and female Rotarians of Bristol. They certainly demonstrated it very well, during the performances in those three unforgettable  nights!

As an appetizer let me finish this page by showing you the dance of the bellies. All our members who have a large waste line… had their bellies painted in order to give you this illusion of a special dance. Take a look!

Click on photo for larger view. The Belly Dancers Please note that the center of each mouth is the belly button!  Their heads and arms are inside of their hats!…Clever! (Photo by Stanley Ulbrych)