With director Mokhallad Rasem, rehearsing is like working on a puzzle. It starts at the table, with the actors Vic De Wachter and Gilda De Bal and dramaturge Erwin Jans sitting around it drinking coffee. Lying between them are bits of text and poems that have been collected over the past months and that together will comprise the script of Romeo & Julia – contemporary Arabic poems, a medieval Italian sonnet, a French chanson of which Vic has fond memories, a dialogue written by Mokhallad. “And shouldn’t we also put some Shakespeare in it?” asks somebody. “Yes, the balcony scene has wonderful lines about the sun and the moon...” They leaf through the play and find the passage, photocopy it and add it to the rest.

Hanging on the bulletin board behind them are large sheets of paper with the names of scenes, such as “memories”, “death” and “romance”. Like the pieces of a puzzle, the texts and scenes are fitted together and gradually the structure of the production takes shape. Often I will see Mokhallad standing in front of the board, busy crossing things out or adding a few words, throwing away passages or changing the sequence. Sometimes more lines are needed, and then something extra will have to be written. This is a way of working that is typical for Mokhallad and one that Vic and Gilda had to get used to at first. Because in fact, the script is not words but the bulletin board, to which new texts, drawings, songs and ideas are added throughout the rehearsals.

A week later a splendid wooden car that will be used for rehearsing is standing in the attic. In the theatre workshop the technicians are still working hard on the car that ultimately will stand on stage. In scenographer Jean Bernard Koeman’s design, the car is also a bedroom, a house and a refuge. For now, one has to imagine its ingenious fold-out parts, but Vic and Gilda’s first scenes in the car immediately appeal to the imagination.

Just like the bulletin board, the attic is steadily filling up, not only with the car, the sound and lighting, but also with lots more Romeos and Juliets. Because in this love story, the title roles are played by three pairs of performers of different ages. What would Romeo and Juliet’s childhood days have been like? Shakespeare doesn’t tell us anything about that. And what if they hadn’t died, what would their lives as a couple have been like? The different generations of Romeo and Juliet are one another’s present, past and future, they are one another’s thoughts, memories and dreams. In the second week, the youngest Romeos and Juliets come to rehearse for the first time. The three boys and three girls who will take turns performing in the shows come on Wednesday afternoon after school. They climb in, on top of and under the car, and their games give the scenes of Vic and Gilda a different dimension.

After two weeks, the last pair of Romeo and Juliets arrives. The Brazilian José Paulo dos Santos and the Australian Eleanor Campbell, who both studied at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, will be expressing the love story through dance. The first scene that Mokhallad creates with them is based on Shakespeare’s classic story. “Because without Shakespeare there would have been no Romeo & Julia”, remarks Mokhallad. Before showing other versions of a tale about Romeo and Juliet, he wants to reduce Shakespeare’s story to its essence: love and death. And then supplement it with other stories through words, movement, tones in order to make a colourful whole. Mokhallad sometimes compares his production to a museum with paintings, where the viewer walks past them. He makes moving paintings in different styles and in different disciplines, but they are all about the same thing: love. 

The following week, it’s busy in the attic. For the first time, all of the performers are together, and they are hard at work rehearsing with light and sound. Two hours later, there is a short presentation for the co-workers of Toneelhuis, who are curious about what has been going on in the attic during these four weeks. Mokhallad proudly shows them the first scenes of the production and is satisfied, but right after the presentation he’s back at the bulletin board sunk deep in thought. He crosses something out, writes something on it and hangs the scenes in a different order yet again. “We keep working on solving the puzzle,” he says with a grin.