Working With A Classic

We began by reading the play and making note of the elements we wouldn’t change and the differences we wanted to elaborate on. To reflect the modern high school experience and to resonate with our audience, the new story focused on LGBT relationships in high school, online bullying, and homophobia.

We reimagined Tybalt, Romeo, and Mercutio as female characters and then dug deep on how these characters would interact with today’s social media platforms. Each character had their own aesthetic and voice for their accounts. Romeo was an activist, Rosaline and Paris started a vlog on IGTV, and Juliet had her Instagram and Tumblr blog.

The story might be over, but the accounts are still up.
Click on the characters below to see their accounts!

So, How Did We Pull It Off?

This real-time play was executed across 8 days in which we posted from each account on a typical high schooler’s schedule. Our hypothetical first period started at 7:05AM, which meant the fight in the hallway was planned exactly at 7:08!

While we ran a fan account to help the audience follow the story, viewers were explaining the story to each other in the comments. They were revealing secret meanings of posts and helping each other find clues. Our audience quickly caught on to the format and even called out the actors who were breaking character by commenting on posts from their personal accounts.

By keeping true to the rules we set for this social media universe, we were able to foster a community that played along with our story and heavily engaged with our content.

Read our article in The Hollywood Reporter and our project summary on BuzzFeed.

Take a look at some of our Instagram assets below: