In March 2024, 10 students from Coventry University and 8 from L’Escola Superior d’Art Dramàtic de les Illes Balears (ESADIB) collaborated on a three week project in rehearsing and performing an abridged version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in both English and a Catalan translation.

This project started to take shape in 2022 through an Erasmus exchange involving Professor Pau Cirer, a specialist in mask work, who visited Coventry University enabling him to share experiences with professors from the university, Joff Chafer, Tom Gorman and Kieran Steward who later visited ESADIB in 2023, becoming involved in theoretical/practical teaching and outreach exchanging knowledge and discussing future collaborations with other professors from Palma de Mallorca, such as Biel Jordà, Fanni Marí, Pau Cirer and some of the faculty.

As a result of these exchanges, the project was developed with nine students from Palma de Mallorca and ten students from Coventry, split into eight different groups, with scenes from Romeo and Juliet adapted to both Catalan and English. The three week course tackled the challenges faced by theatre actors when they perform in a foreign language, and the possibilities of improving intercultural skills as well as non-verbal acting attributes faced by actors working in a language that is not their native tongue.