My musical of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been translated to Chinese! This work was done by a Chinese student majoring in Linguistics who goes by the handle “CocoKissh”. We did some Zoom meetings preparing for the project and that was really fun working between Seattle, WA and Beijing, China. Read more for additional info and link to the Chinese language subtitles to my Romeo and Juliet musical.

The video is available on the Chinese website “Bilibili” which is kind of a Chinese version of YouTube. The Bilibili website is available to most people in mainland China, so this makes the video widely available to a Chinese audience and the Chinese subtitles now give an enhanced understanding of the dialogue and plot lines.

My “Romeo and Juliet” musical premiered onstage in January 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA. I composed the music entirely to the original redacted text of William Shakespeare (that means I didn’t change any words, but I did edit the script down a bit).

With my permission, the full video of the premiere run of “Conrad Askland’s Romeo and Juliet the musical” is available on the Chinese website “bilibili dot com” at:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qi4y197f5/

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(From the Chinese video description)

https://href.li/?https://conradaskland.com/
作者康拉德·阿斯克兰（Conrad Askland）授权翻译及转载。
全剧剧本仅使用莎士比亚（William Shakespeare）《罗密欧与朱丽叶》原文。为了在字幕中保留这个特色，当演员实际台词与剧本发生冲突时，双语字幕以剧本为准，只进行少量的删词及调序重组。对于在原文中其他位置出现的人物称谓，按照演员实际台词调整。
由于朱生豪译本在国内的接受度较高，且措辞较为古雅，与该音乐剧偏传统的音乐风格搭配，因此中文字幕主要使用朱版译文，尽可能还原“原文填词”的体验。调整部分包括人物称谓（如“太太”全作“夫人”）、顺序、与原文义有别的可能影响社会观点的地方等。
英文字幕参考布莱恩·吉本斯（Brian Gibbons）主编 2008 《罗密欧与朱丽叶：英文》，中国人民大学出版社
中文字幕参考朱生豪 译 沈林 校 1998 《莎士比亚全集：增订本. 5》，译林出版社

When was Romeo and Juliet written?
William Shakespeare wrote the RJ story between 1591 and 1596, probably in 1595
The original story takes place in the 1300’s, the 14th century

Romeo and Juliet the musical – English – Full Show. Music composed by Conrad Askland to Shakespeare’s original English text
For performance rights, educator sessions and questions about the musical contact Conrad Askland at: caskland@gmail.com
Romeo and Juliet the musical is set entirely to William Shakespeare’s Romeo Juliet text
Book, Music and Orchestrations by Conrad Askland
Filmed live on stage on Valentine’s Day February 14, 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA. Presented by META Performing Arts and Directed by Joe Bowen

CAST of Romeo and Juliet Characters
PRINCIPALS
Juliet – Katherine Fisher
Romeo – Dylan Kane
Friar Laurence – Joe Johnson
Nurse – Lindsey Bowen
Lord Capulet – Peter Whited
Lady Capulet – Karen Pollack
Benvolio – Alex Hollingsworth
Paris – Waylon Johnson
Tybalt – Nate Wheeler
Mercutio – Mike M. Marlin Jr.
Prince Escalus – Bruce Weech
字幕制作者（中文（中国））： CocoKissh

Conrad Askland presents: Romeo and Juliet (The Musical).

When William Shakespeare meets musical theatre.

*Original article on the BandCampDiaries website at: https://thebandcampdiaries.com/post/652902300001714176/conrad-askland-presents-romeo-and-juliet-the

June 2021 – It’s safe to say that Conrad Askland is not your average artist and composer. His creativity transcends “traditional” music release formats, in favor of a broader approach, which touches so many different genres and influences. From pop and uptempo folk-inspired dance music, down to musical theatre and plays, anything goes. Conrad has recently released a brand new project, Romeo and Juliet (The Musical). Any theatre enthusiast will tell you that tacking a Willam Shakespeare work is not easy, especially when it comes to turning such a well-known classic into a musical with a different twist! Thankfully, Conrad really managed to accomplish something amazing with this one, and listeners won’t be disappointed, even those who might not be familiar with the original version of Romeo and Juliet! If anything, this adaptation could be a great incentive for someone to go and pick up the collected works of The Bard! This happens to be Conrad’s third full-length musical theater project, and it still stands out as one of his most distinctive achievements. Although the musical play premiered in 2015, it was released as a full-length Youtube Video over at the artist’s official channel, linked at the bottom of this article.

This amazing project is a perfect example of what it’s like to produce great musical theatre pieces with a focus on great scoring inspired by neoclassical music composers.

One of the most distinctive traits of this rendition is certainly the energy, and the drive that fuels the performance of the ensemble. The actors follow the music perfectly, and their performances feel very animated and spontaneous, an obvious sign that the score is working, enabling each stage performer (and the audience) to genuinely connect with the storyline, in a much deeper way. Conrad’s original music provides a really excellent emotional framework for the storyline to unfold. This is particularly cool, especially when you consider the implication of working with a play that’s as famous as this one. What I mean is that most people who will watch this musical are probably already familiar with the story: they know what’s going to happen and they are probably already familiar with the characters and their journeys. However, the music is a way to reframe the whole narrative experience, giving the audience a different perspective

In addition to the personable and edgy performance value, this release is also quite distinctive because of the sheer quality of the production. Everything on stage is on point, and the video of the whole show has great sound and clarity, making it enjoyable even to those who watch from home. The mix is balanced and very detail-oriented, making for a lively, edgy and stark sonic approach. In other words, there are many subtle nuances in this piece, which really add to the richness of the musical rendition. The frequency spectrum of the mix is also very balanced, with a tight, yet deep low end working wonders along with a smooth top end, which adds a sense of clarity to the music.

Romeo and Juliet (The Musical) stands out for its “classical meets modern” compositional approach, but although the production is quite polished, it is never overproduced, allowing a lot of wonderfully organic  and “human” elements to really add liveliness to the mix.

Conrad’s score will amaze you for it sonic variety, and it will keep you on the edge of your seat due to its catchy, yet unpredictable arrangement. I always love to hear from artists who set the bar higher and push the envelope when it comes to their productions: this certainly appears to be the case!

If you like musical theatre and you’re a Shakespeare fan, this is a no brainer- If this is your first time, you’re in luck! This is a fun and entertaining introduction to a truly timeless classic, reimagined with some well-scored and immersive music. Find out more about Conrad Askland and do not miss out on the artist’s most recent projects, activities and events:

Official Website: https://conradaskland.com/

YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/ConradAskland

We also had the opportunity to catch up with the composer and ask him a few questions: keep reading for more.

What makes Romeo and Juliet stand out among other Shakespeare works?

It is arguably the most popular of Shakespeare’s works. The story was wildly popular even in Shakespeare’s time before he wrote his version of the story. It’s also one of the most accessible stories to the public as far as being able to understand and relate to the storyline. Sadly, the lessons we learn in Romeo and Juliet are still as pressing today as they were in Shakespeare’s time. We learn the lessons of the high price of hate and division.

Do you have a particular character you feel more attached to, and if so, why?

I have particular characters I am drawn to in certain moments in my musical. I resonate deeply with Romeo in his solo song “Direct My Sail” and with Juliet in her solo song “Come Gentle Night.” Even though I wrote the piece, I still cry every time I hear Juliet sing “Where Is My Romeo” in the final tomb scene. Her innocence at that moment just destroys me.

What other Shakespeare work would you mostly be interested in turning into a musical?

I’ve had several suggestions thrown my way since the debut of my Romeo and Juliet. My answer is that I would gladly score any of Shakespeare’s works to music, but only after “Romeo and Juliet” has gone to the next level and been picked up for a professional run. It took a lot out of me to score Romeo and Juliet, and I would only want to go through that pain and artistic focus again if I knew that there would be an audience to appreciate it.

When approaching a project of this large scale, what is the first thing you do when trying to match Shakespeare’s writing to a piece of music? In other words, how do you know what works and when it works?

All of the music was written directly to Shakespeare’s text. There was never a song that was written first and then “made to work” with the Bard’s words. This was one of the first rules: All music had to be written directly and only to serve Shakespeare’s magnificent text. Then really it is a matter of composing sections, taking a break to work on different parts and then coming back to music with fresh ears. It was normal for me to write five versions of a line of text before finally committing to the final. The most important part is being highly critical of yourself as an artist and never ever saying “that’s good enough”. Most of the music stayed intact through the rehearsal process with little changes for the actor’s best key. The underscores were written during the rehearsal process where we got a feel for how long was needed for set changes or stage movement. The fight music was all written after the combat choreography was in place.

Romeo and Juliet the musical uses the original English text of William Shakespeare.

• • Romeo and Juliet the musical
  • Book and Music by Conrad Askland
  • Lyrics by William Shakespeare
  • Premiere January 2015
  • Historic Lincoln Theatre, Mount Vernon, WA
  • Presented by META Performing Arts

Video Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet the musical by Conrad Askland

“I Fear Too Early” – Romeo solo song

“Quench the Fire” – Song from the Romeo Juliet Masquerade Ball Dance

Juliet’s Death

Paris at the Tomb

Nurse’s Song from Romeo and Juliet the musical

Music Overture to Romeo and Juliet the musical – (Full length version)

“Come Vial” Juliet solo from Romeo and Juliet the musical

“Go Counselor” Juliet solo from Romeo and Juliet the musical

Bedroom Scene video and music from the Romeo Juliet musical

“I Fear Too Early” Romeo solo from Romeo Juliet musical production

“Come Gentle Night” Juliet solo song from the modern Romeo Juliet musical

“Measure of Thy Joy” Romeo solo song and “They Are But Beggars” Juliet solo song

Romeo and Juliet Meet – The famous Masquerade scene from Romeo and Juliet

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This shrine the gentle fine is this
My lips, two blushing pilgrims ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss

The Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet

Father I Beseech You – Juliet pleads with her father

“We Are Undone” – Nurse tells Juliet that Romeo has killed Tybalt

I hope these clips reach some educators looking to incorporate Shakespeare with musical theater. I would love to see this production done by a university.

“Juliet’s Death” from Romeo and Juliet the musical by Conrad Askland to words by William Shakespeare. Katherine Fisher as Juliet. Filmed February 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theater. Visit the RJ musical website at http://www.RJmusical.com

This is a video clip from the live performance of my musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” which had it’s world premiere January 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theater in Mount Vernon, WA.

After the premiere run of my second full length musical, PAN, director Joe Bowen challenged me with composing a new Romeo and Juliet. “West Side Story”, a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, has already been done well so I was searching for a new angle of approach for the work.

At the time, the Broadway version of Romeo and Juliet was getting strong criticism partly for it’s pandering and dilution of Shakespeare’s original lyrics. That’s when the concept struck me that no one had ever successfully written an American musical theater adaptation of Romeo and Juliet using only William Shakespeare’s original text. I should note that it has been tried many times, but never successfully to audiences and critics alike. There are some successful operas but they do not use Shakespeare’s original English text.

My first pass through the script, I only found three small parts that I felt I could put to music. On the second pass, I found a couple more. I actually started to write director Joe Bowen a letter to tell him it could not be done. But on each pass I would find a couple more spots where I heard music that was fitting.

I continued the process of going through the script, only finding a couple lines to put to music, hundreds of times until the score started to take shape. From that point, I listened to computer playback of my score each night before going to sleep. At the first point I heard something I didn’t like, I would stop the score and fix it first thing when I woke up. Initially I could only get through a very short portion of the score before hearing opportunities for improvement. After months of this process I could finally listen to entire sections before making additional corrections.

For every line of music that I kept in the final score, I threw away two or three. In other words, if the final score was two hours, then I actually wrote about six hours of music. Of any projects I have produced in my life, I was most relentless and critical of myself on this project.

To my great sadness, so far there has been little to no interest in anyone even wanting to listen to the score. I have discovered that traditional Shakespeare audiences absolutely loathe the concept that the Shakespeare’s words would be put into musical theater. And alternately, I have discovered that musical theater lovers do not seem to care for Shakespeare.

But what makes me sad is not just those preceding observations. What makes me sad is that I set the goal of creating the world’s first successful treatment of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into American musical theater. I believe I have achieved that. I do believe that my score is the finest adaptation of Shakespeare’s original text into American musical theater.

I would love to know that I am wrong in this belief. The great sadness comes in the fact that no one has been interested to peruse the score and to give me an informed opinion of whether I am right or wrong.

Would it be possible for someone of musical theater stature to give me their verdict? Rarely in my life have I found myself in such a traditional artist state of woes. Perhaps I am fortune’s fool.

These are questions I received about my musical “Romeo and Juliet”. My musical version of RJ premiered in January 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA. Directed by Joe Bowen and presented by META Performing Arts. The challenge set for this production was to score the entire musical using only Shakespeare’s original text. No watering down the words. No slang and updated lyrics. And no hipster modern setting. We set the set and costumes to the original Shakespeare time period of the late 16th century. It was a very challenging project and extremely fulfilling. Here’s a link to check out original musicals by Conrad Askland.

How have you adapted the themes of the play to adapt and suit the modern day audience and politics?

Yes and no. In my rendition,  I use Shakespeare’s original words. For the premiere run I requested period costumes and sets (1590’s). Of course, a future company could choose to change that approach, but to me those considerations are superficial. To my personal taste, those changes detract instead of adding to the production. Musically, I scored the show in a combination of North American Broadway style and light opera. So it was the music itself that was tailored to a musical theatre crowd while the text and presentation was true to the period in which it was written.

What aspects of it have you found challenging?

You can put any notes to Shakespeare’s words, but to have those melodies feel natural and not detract from the text was extremely challenging. I have seen many versions where composers approach RJ with a 20th century musical approach and use 12 tone scales and atonal music. To me, this is purely an academic exercise because they were under no pressure to sell tickets; they are underwritten by the universities they work at. When you have to sell tickets, but still honor Shakespeare’s original work – that was the core of the challenge. It was a very detailed process to make the words sing and feel natural. The work involved a lot of  re-writing. Each piece I wrote was usually re-written at least 5 times and in whole I wrote three times as much music as was eventually retained. In other words, I actually scored the entire work three times and threw two of them out.

What inspired you to change the play into a musical?

I was given the challenge by a director that I have worked with before. Originally he wanted me to “write a new Romeo and Juliet musical.” On researching the history of different approaches, I realized that no one had ever scored a successful version that used only Shakespeare’s original English text. There is of course West Side Story which is it’s own story and lyrics, there is Gounod’s opera but that is not in English, there is a Romeo and Juliet musical in French that has been successful but again it doesn’t use the original English text. At the time I started researching the project in November 2013, the Broadway Romeo and Juliet musical had horrible reviews. The main complaint in that production was that it watered down the story to much to try and placate and uneducated audience. So I had the challenge to write it, I found that it had never been done successfully in the original English and on top of that the Broadway show diluted the story with the assumption that an audience would not be educated enough to understand the original Shakespeare. Those were the three elements that set me on the course to score completely to Shakespeare’s original words.

Are there any parts of the script that you’ve had to change/adapt or take out to suit the modern day audience and what parts have you been able to keep the same?

I only changed three words in the entire original script. One was the reference to the “Capulet monument”. I didn’t feel a modern audience would understand the monument reference so I changed it to “Capulet tomb”. Also, the word “shrive” I thought a modern audience would not understand, so I changed that to “confession”.

For redactions of text, my over riding rule was to cut anything that a modern audience would not understand if seeing the show cold; in other words, if an audience member could not understand something without specifically studying this particular play, it was cut. An example of this would be in the Nurse’s long monologue in Act One. She makes reference to earthquakes that the audience in the late 1590’s understood, but there’s no way a modern audience would understand the reference. I also removed some references to classical references that are now fairly obscure to the general public. This process of editing was extremely slow and detailed.

There were a few instances where I re-arranged sentences. An example of this would be Juliet’s Act Two separation from the Nurse in “Go Counsellor” which I scored as a very angry anthem that Juliet sings with a belt voice. I also did add a flashback scene right before that to make clear to the audience the Juliet is making the intentional choice to separate from the counsel of the Nurse. This is one of the few areas that I thought was not clear in the original, and a very important plot point to me.

As to all the parts that are different and the same, the process was very detailed throughout the entire script. Many artistic choices and I also received advice from some Shakespeare scholars as they read through the script to find areas that I really needed to bring back in. It was important with me in this production that my script version be satisfying to traditional Shakespeare fans.

Thank you to Marla Bronstein and Entertainment News Northwest magazine for their cover story on the premiere of my third full length musical: Romeo and Juliet.

Read the full article on the ENNW website at http://issuu.com/ennw/docs/ennw-january_2015

Romeo and Juliet the musical will have it’s world premiere January 30 – February 15, 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.

RJ is my largest and most advanced musical score to date and features 10+ live musicians with a cast of 30+. The script and lyrics use only the original source text from William Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet. Our time period is the authentic time period of Shakespeare’s original world premiere of RJ, late sixteenth century (1592-1594).

This work is orchestrated for Key 1, Key 2, Trombone, Horn, Flute/Piccolo/Recorder, Oboe, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet, Drums Bass and Guitar.

In over 400 years, since the original premiere of Romeo and Juliet, there has never been a successful musical rendition that has been embraced by both audiences and theater critics. Artistically this is a momentous challenge as we aim to do just that. We are brave. We are strong. We are RJ 2015. HUZZAH!

Follow our progress at the website for Romeo and Juliet the musical