When Charlie Krebs asked students last year what they thought of doing Romeo and Juliet as this fall’s play, they told him that they didn’t want to do an old-fashioned production of it.

No one who sees Lakeland’s version of Shakespeare’s famous story of star-crossed lovers will call it that after seeing one of the shows, said Krebs, Lakeland’s associate professor of theater and speech, and the play’s director.

Instead of the “proper” music associated with a typical 1600s court playing during the ballroom scene, Lakeland’s Romeo (sophomore Andy Kay) will meet Juliet (senior Kayann Botana) to music that might be heard in the pub.

Instead of wearing old-fashioned garments like the Capulets and Montagues wore in the original fair Verona, the entire cast will wear all-white clothing, so that running images shot from an LCD projector will be visible on their clothing and so that in scenes with, say, swordplay, lightning flashing on the duelers will give the scene an even more foreboding feel.

After Romeo poisens himself, instead of having him squirm for a second and seemingly stop squirming forever, he will take off the white, revealing the black clothes underneath, and be a new character, the ghost of Romeo, whom only the audience can see.

Krebs said that they also cut about an hour out of the show–it’s now roughly two and a half hours–but that all the crucial parts of the play remain.

“One of the questions I was asking myself was, ‘How has Shakespeare survived for four hundred years?’” said Krebs. “I think it’s because his themes are universal. We all know what it feels like to be in love, or to fall out of love, or to lose somebody that means something to us. I was trying to create something [that the] students could connect to.”

Opening night is a week from today. For more information on ticket prices and show times, go to lakeland.edu and click on the “Calendar of Events” link.