#resj

[giuliettacapuleti]

Every friend group should include:

(inspired by this post)

[crazys-art]

zoltán bereckzi mercutio living in my mind rent free as always

[musical-trash-goblin]

I literally have nothing to say. This is the post. Enjoy

Left: Bereczki Zoltán as Mercutio [Rómeó és Júlia musical]

Right: Lillium White [Countdown to Countdown webcomic] by @velinxi

[aosmccoy]

i feel so terribly sorry for everyone who has never seen/doesnt even know about the iconic wonder that is rómeó és júlia musical 2005 starring dolhai attila and szinetár dóra and bereczki zoltán and szabó p szilveszter 💔

[pufferfishartblogorsth]

this is what i mean when i say gender

[bugsbutch]

Rómeó és Júlia + being doomed by the narrative

[theghostparty]

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour - Redesign

This redesign is nowhere near finished (currently inking a Le Bal as we speak), but just wanted to drop a preview of what is to come.

...I said it was maximalist and bonkers, didn't I?

...did I also mention that everyone casted is being pulled from a different iteration of the musical?

[saltavenegar]

Art imitating life or whatever (below: the life)

[rose-fairryy]

punk juliet goth romeo send tweet

[giuliettacapuleti]

No but the way Júlia and Tybalt (In Rómeó és Júlia especially but in every adaption actually) perfectly mirror each other in the way they are being stifled by the role they play due to their gender and how it fucks them up, as well as the way they completely reject their roles (specifically in Rómeó és Júlia)? We have Tybalt, who was forced to be as violent and protective of his family as possible despite the heavy implication that he was a sensitive and dreamy child, not to mention the way his views of sex and love were shaped by social conventions (and specifically his father).

I’m going by the Italian Renaissance societal mores here, even though resj presumably takes place in a quasi-dystopian or post-dystopian future/Alternate Universe. During the Italian Renaissance, male children spent very little time with a nurse because that was considered ‘feminine’, and were sent off to school at a very young age. Although family was still considered the most important thing, actual familial relationships were hard to cultivate presuming that child was away at school. Now, it could be that I’m looking way too much into this and no one even thought about Tybalt’s childhood regarding him going away to school or being taught by a tutor at home, so I could be way off, BUT my point is that the emotions regarding family were strictly based on the masculine ‘protector and provider’ aspect rather than tenderness and actually spending time with family.

You can even see this in modern western society! It is only within the past few decades that men started to spend more time with their children, and do traditionally ‘feminine’ things for their kids like changing diapers, feeding etc. The idea of a Father being a provider rather than a caregiver has even carried over to society today - men are still praised for running errands with their children and doing activities with them without the mother present. These men are just seen as being ‘babysitters’ ‘helping out mom’ when they should simply be seen as parents doing their job as parents. It’s unnecessary to go into the negative impact this has had on both men and women, but my point is that this ‘nuture vs provide and protect’ view is still prevalent today, and was 100x worse in the Itaian Renaissance Era (and presumably society in resj).

So Tybalt is burdened with the duty to protect his family, but we see he, unlike his father, actually wants to be close emotionally to his family. The best evidence for this is his relationships to women in his family. I’ve made another post about this, but basically Tybalt’s father has taught him that women are literally ‘objects’, and the goal is to sleep with as many women as possible with absolutely no emotional attachment or respect for the women they sleep with. Tybalt, per his own admission in Ez A Kéz Utolér, mentions sleeping with many women indiscriminately, and not being emotionally attached to any of them. But as the song goes on we realize that he doesn’t want that. He is in love with Júlia, and clearly does not see her as an object. He doesn’t believe any man is good enough for her (least of all him).

Now, I’ve seen it argued that he doesn’t actually see Júlia as her own person, only the ideal of her, and even has the whole ‘Madonna/Whore Complex’ going on, which is certainly a valid argument, but I’m not sure I agree with it.

I think he sees himself in Júlia - the sensitive and loving child he never got to be. It’s possible a part of him does not want to see Júlia lose her innocence (not necessarily in a creepy way), and become like him.

Don’t get me wrong, his love for Júlia is definitely creepy and a good amount of his rage comes from romantic (and presumably sexual) jealousy. He mentions that he never loved any of the women he slept with, and has only ever loved Júlia. According to his father, love is just a weakness and women are just for sex, but clearly Tybalt doesn’t agree.

Possibly the ONLY healthy relationship he has (err, had) in his life is with the Nurse - he is seen holding her hand at the ball and she embraces his body after he dies, and has to be pulled away by a servant. I believe this is possibly a nod to when the Nurse calls him the “best friend she had” in Shakespeare (another reason I love resj is the Shakespearen nods while doing its own thing).

Lady Capulet obviously loves Tybalt (judging by her reaction to his death), though his uncomfortable attraction does not seem to be reciprocated. The inclusion of his attraction to her could be another nod to Shakespeare - though it is not actually in the text, a fairly popular theory is that Tybalt and Lady Capulet were lovers (it’s possibly worth noting that Lady Capulet was likely closer in age to Tybalt than Lord Capulet). Personally I don’t think there was any inappropriate relationship in Shakespeare, but in a way it works specifically for the Capulets in resj - the relationships they have are not healthy at all: they lack boundaries, can’t communicate, and can’t express their (familial) love until it’s too late.

Obviously, Tybalt doesn’t have a healthy relationship with his aunt and has some kind of weird attraction to her, possibly as a result of only caring (in general) about the Capulets. Yet he seems to listen to Lady Capulet in a way he doesn’t to Lord Capulet - Lady Capulet orders him to find Rómeó, and later presumably to kill him (when she talks to him in his room).

So, my point is that Tybalt, despite claiming that women are just objects, has the most important (and possibly only important) relationships with women.

Anyway Tybalt is messed up and complex and the Capulets are even more dysfunctional than in romeó et juliette send tweet.

[crazyw3irdo]

uploaded a mercutio compilation i made literal years ago and simply never posted lmao

[unusualmuffin-art]

Based on @apfel-strudelz 's meme

[artsyanarchist]

i miss them

[imyselfamstrange]

Tybalt Capulet (Part 2)

[spizgany-lipejs]

240223 Bereczki Zoltán - Lehetsz Király

[theghostparty]

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour - Redesign - 2024

If you missed part one with Roméo and Juliette, click here. Once again, long design explanation.

When designing Mercutio specifically, I turned very explicitly inwards in my belief that Mercutio is not a Montague and should not be tied to the Montagues solely. Furthermore, Mercutio has FAMILY--he's the Prince's cousin and if we want to get really semantic about it, he also has a brother, Valentine.

All this being said, in designing Mercutio, I needed to tie him to Le Prince (Escalus) and I did that mostly in dictating that these are the characters who are allowed to wear black, mostly black leather. It's a distinction that goes mostly unnoticed until its pointed out, but no other designs incorporate deep black tones. There's also this strong, olive green tone that borrows from the Montague palette and gold hardware that borrows from the Capulet palette. The Prince's family gets to straddle the line between both worlds.

I thought very texturally for the Montagues and Capulets, so in trying to give the Prince's family something distinct, I landed on this brushstroke texture to give all the leather and denim pieces a custom feeling.

In his Les Rois du Monde look (his base look--I imagine this explicitly directorial choice to have him and the Prince enter together at the top of Vérone and have Mercutio break away to join the Montagues), there is hints of this painterly texture in blue as opposed to the gold of the Prince. I wanted to feel like every alignment Mercutio has with the Montague family is an active choice on his part. I imagine him painted those swaths of blue himself. His trousers are a bleached faded, torn denim.

We see the true royal gold in Le Bal, like, I think it's just funny to think Mercutio already owned these trousers and said "Fuck it" and wore them to dress up in. His look is explicitly jester themed. It's a little bit "Earring Magic Ken Doll" coded, which delights me to no end.

This is also a good place to point out how fixated I became on closure methods in garments. In Roméo's initial design, there is a strong focus on zippers, Le Prince's jacket is held together with gold hook and eye tape at all the seams, and with Mercutio it's all about lacing.

Part of this is in reference to the explicitly gendered ideas around corsetry and playing with that in tandem with Mercutio's generally accepted queer readings. It's also an interesting metaphor to think about being bound--by duty, by honour, by friendship, by tradition--something that Mercutio is so explicitly caught in between in the Montague-Capulet feud.

His final look during Le Duel, is a take on a Jean Paul Gautier design, and is the most partisan look for Mercutio. Doffing his jacket exposes this soft satin and coutil corset top in the faintest hint of blue. A soft underbelly of allegiance that would take to stage blood SO well (and would make who ever was dressing and laundering this show absolutely hate me as a designer, but I digress).

I also think it makes him a nice mirror to Tybalt, who's overarching design element is gold chains.

Tybalt's design is wholly referential to Mark Seibert's Tybalt. Is it because I can never get that little gold and red cropped jacket out of my brain? Perhaps. But I also like to think that design for Tybalt acts as a reflection of Mercutio. The inherent softness assigned to the Capulet family's design (silks, velvets, chiffons) plays really nicely with how much machismo is implied in Tybalt's characterization.

During Vérone, we see him in a half doublet, likely of a low-pile velvet, a satin faced silk period shirt open in an absolutely impractical way, and a floral print denim trouser. I also gave him a little cuban-heeled boot. For fashion.

Tybalt is a good place to also point out that weapons are very intentionally placed in and out of scenes. Mercutio always has a dagger. Roméo leaves his behind during Aimer. Benvolio does not carry one. Tybalt has an ornately sheathed sword. There is this undercurrent of violence for these characters that is dressed up and dressed down, but persists.

In Le Bal, I really leant into the idea of chainmail for this character, in keeping with the concept of chivalry and Arthurian influences. There's a little bit of royal purple thrown in there for good measure as well as a jaw-bone mask that, at best, is foreshadowing and, at its shallowest, looks cool as hell.

During Le Duel, I wanted to strip our fighters down to exposed skin. A lot of this is to do with one of my favourite versions of this scene, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet. What I love about the sequence is how it devolves from nobel duel to outright brawl--from a distance to something very close and personal. It's the type of step by step tension-building that I really enjoy: where there are moments (when they're just shouting words back at forth, when they're drawing their weapons, when Mercutio would doff his jacket, when Tybalt doffs his doublet) when the fight could have de-escalated. When they could have walked away. But of course, it's not the play if they do.

I just imagine seeing Mark Seibert and Bereczki Zoltán fight would be fun, ultimately.

And now onto Benvolio. I fixated on paring down his looks, and quite frankly, if it weren't for how much I enjoy his little twink clubbing outfit, I would have probably only given him one costume. My justification for this is that Benvolio gets to live. Ostensibly, he has a lifetime past this play of changing to do. I feel very strongly about the idea of Benvolio as a narrator, Benvolio as a passive presence that is forced to become active. He's not certain in the same way that Roméo and Mercutio are about love and hate. He literally spends a whole song stagnating and waffling on how the hell he's going to tell his cousin that his wife is dead. He runs around following their impulses, patching over their problems. I have a lot of feelings about Benvolio as a character.

He's really the softest of the Montague characters in textures: his doublet is torn and slashed denim, his shirt is some sort of billowy linen blend. He has a little bit of metal flair in the form of this thigh adornment, but really he's quite simple--and my comparison to Roméo and Mercutio, he's quite warm. That hint of magenta on Roméo is a full on feature on Benvolio.

I accept any and all slander about my choices for his Le bal look, but by god do I think it's silly and it brings me joy. Suit of armour under ripped green denim, a little navy ribbed singlet with a silver chainmail crop top over it? Lensless silver glasses frames? It makes no real sense, but I stand by my "We're sneaking into the Capulet's ball tonight with very short notice, here's what we can cobble together" reasoning.