A detail from the Twitter page of @julietcap16, an online account for Juliet Capulet in a new Royal Shakespeare Company production.Since Sunday, a new Twitter user who goes by the screen name @julietcap16 has been excitedly firing off posts about her typical teenage life, her frustrations with school and the birthday party she hopes her family will throw for her. But she’s not just any social-media savvy teen: she’s the online avatar for Juliet Capulet in a 21st-century update of “Romeo and Juliet” that the Royal Shakespeare Company has started online. BBC News reported that during the project, which is called “Such Tweet Sorrow” and will run for five weeks, actors playing Shakespeare‘s star-crossed lovers (who had their disagreements about the chirping of birds) and other characters from that tragedy will play out the story on Twitter and react to real-life events. Charlotte Wakefield, a actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company who is playing Juliet, has already tweeted about her new bed and her beloved deceased mother — not to mention the Robert Pattinson cutout she keeps in her bedroom.
Michael Boyd, the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, told the BBC that the goal of the project was to bring performers and theatergoers closer together. “Mobile phones don’t need to be the antichrist for theater,” he said.