Our Story

   We all know that William Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet but you're probably wondering how our little college click became "Romeo & Juliet." For the most part it was a combination of work done by me, Amalia my best friend and my household Deo Volente. We didn't take on Romeo & Juliet until senior year. Until then we referred to ourselves as "The Gatsbys'" after the book "The Great Gatsby." I think because at our core we were two 'couples' and a third wheel for lack of a better description.
     Confused about households? Our campus didn't have sororities or fraternities we had households. Their purpose was to help our spirituality grow and mature by focusing on a covenant. Mine was Deo Volente and our covenant was to discern, accept and surrender to God's Will. Justin was originally a Knight of the Holy Queen and they had a strong covenant to the Blessed Mother.
     Romeo & Juliet came out in 1996 (junior year) and after we'd seen everyone else's first choice for a movie we finally saw Romeo & Juliet. As I recall the men were lost and the women were enthralled by the movie. I was watching it as a communications major for a few reasons. I needed to do a movie review for my Intro. to Media class, study the first 10 minutes for my scriptwriting class and look at editing for my TV 1 class. From a communications major perspective the movie was amazing, particularly the editing which goes hand in hand with the direction. For a few days the movie was all I could talk about.
     About 7 months after it hit theater it was out on video around the time of my birthday. While everyone was hanging out at the Fort Steuben mall I decided to buy part one of the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack. Justin knew how much I loved the movie so he purchased the video as a 21st birthday gift. So now I had the movie and the soundtrack. While I was home one weekend I decided to watch the movie and patch my tape deck to the television and record the whole movie on an audio tape.
     Here's where art becomes reality. Justin decided to enter a deep discernment for the priesthood and we decided he could focus better if we stopped communicating. It was rough on me not being able to talk to one of my best friends but I survived. Our households were only hearing 'our' side of the story and it was difficult for them to understand everything. Deo Volente became used to seeing me tear stained from missing Justin and had seen us ignore each other. I had to stop my household from talking to him about the situation and TPing his car. Lord only knows how his households thought of me. A conflict between households was there so we jokingly started to refer to Deo Volente as the Capulets' and Justin's three households (Knights of the Holy Queen, Living Stones, & Koinonia) as the Montagues'. TWO HOUSEHOLDS BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY IN FAIR VERONA WHERE WE LAY OUR SCENE. Verona being The Franciscan University of Steubenville campus where we attended college. Justin wasn't in 3 households at the same time but since he was focusing on priesthood he was required to join Living Stones and then Koinonia.
     Around this time Amalia bought me part 2 of the soundtrack and since I need some noise to work I really got into the movie. You could almost always hear the movie or soundtrack being played in my room. Since I shared a hall in the dorm with my household sisters they always heard it too. This earned me the nickname Juliet. Now if I'm Juliet who is Romeo? Justin. Not that we were a couple then. We were good friends that some how ended up being the ring-leaders to our friends. Justin, I can understand why, he had the car. Me, I have to question. Maybe it's because I did the liaision work between the friends by calling everyone and letting them know what the plans were and figuring out how to get where we were going, stuff like that. I guess you could say I was the secretary. Oh well, what ever I was gave me wonderful memories with the friends God blessed me with.
     I played volleyball for my household and we had these team shirts with our nicknames on the back. That's when I officially became Juliet. Since Amalia and I had so many classes together we had lots of time to talk and often had lunch together. She knew my household called me Juliet. Amalia is the dearest friend anyone could ask for and I told her everything on my mind. Even if I didn't she could figure it out. One day at lunch I told her that if I was Juliet she was my nurse. It was funny and true to some extent so we cast all of our other friends with appropriate Romeo & Juliet characters. Since gossip at FUS could be a problem Amalia and I sometimes just talked in a Romeo & Juliet code. Silly but fun.
     The icing on the cake would have to be my TV 2 project. I love editing and I love montages. The montage at the beginning of Romeo & Juliet is incredible. I thought it would be a cool idea to take the beginning montage and instead of keeping the original players to edit in us in the parts we had been nicknamed. Then just to take all the videos I made over the course of our time together and make music videos. The Romeo & Juliet montage ended up being the perfect beginning to the video. It's something we can look back on to laugh at and remember how crazy we were. Thus, our Romeo & Juliet story.