After reading Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen our class was assigned the task of adapting the play similar to what Shakespeare and Fletcher did to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. My group included myself, Cyrus Mijares-Shafai, Kieran Kristensen, and Marissa Levine. We were in charge of adapting Act I, Scenes IV and V as well as Act IV. After discussing our personal ideas for the adaption we decided to revise the play to be similar to the movie The Big Lebowski. We felt in order to modernize the story as well as make it available to a more diverse audience it would be a good idea to parody a similar storyline. Adapting the play to be slightly “Lebowskian” gave it a modern feel, comedic value, and made it more relatable to a modern audience.

I felt our group cooperated fairly well together. Once we agreed on parodying The Big Lebowski it made writing the adaption very straightforward. We all had wonderful ideas that all seemed to complement one another. Our group dynamic was rather remarkable. There didn’t seem to be any arguments or disagreements. I believe we all communicated our thoughts well and everyone’s ideas and opinions were considered. Everyone got a say on how we were going to revise the play and I would like to believe everyone was happy about how the adaption turned out.

We communicated with each other a lot during and after class, but a lot of the communication was done through Facebook and our personal blogs. Cyrus posted most of the project on his blog and each one of us would comment and make suggestion on Facebook. This way everyone got to be a part of the process and no one’s ideas were overlooked. I felt this was an effective method of communicating our ideas and insights in a fast, efficient way.

Turning a tragedy into a comedy was sort of a daunting task. However we found that many of the characters in the original already seemed a little over the top and the predicament Palamon and Arcite get themselves into already seemed like something out of a sitcom. For instance the jailer’s daughter already seemed a bit eccentric in the original so we just made her modern and put her under the influence of a few drugs. Overall we turned the story into a 1980s East Hollywood drug war in which Theseus, a Hispanic drug lord, kidnaps two low-life street dealers – Palamon and Arcite – that eventually end up falling in love with Theseus’ daughter.

We’ve taken a lot of liberties in our adaption, but I feel it stays true to the original in that it still tells the same overall story just in a more entertaining atmosphere. I believe after adapting the story I have a new appreciation for The Two Noble Kinsmen. I always felt it was a great story with a noble message but after adapting it I began to see more of Shakespeare’s genius. Shakespeare seems to have a way of taking a comedy and disguising it as a tragedy. After first reading the play I empathized with Palamon, Arcite, and the rest. Everything seems to go wrong for the main characters in Shakespeare’s plays, but upon adapting one of his plays for myself I see how comedic Shakespeare is truly being. It wasn’t hard to make Palamon and Arcite’s “dire” situation seem like a product of their own idiotic behaviors and if it wasn’t for one of them dying at the end it seemed like one of those situations that they would look back at and laugh. It makes me wonder if Shakespeare’s other tragedies were in fact tragedies. What if Juliet just ran away from home instead of coming up with such a fallible convoluted plan? What if Brutus just confronted Caesar? They all just seem like episodes of a hit series on TBS. Tune in next week as Juliet fakes her death to get out of work, but forgets to tell Romeo. “Sorry about trying to kill you instead of just asking you if you were evil, bro.”