Romeo and Juliet fever is sweeping the Helen O'Grady Drama Academy as it prepares for its Holiday stage School

The Helen O'Grady Drama Academy's famous 'A musical-in-a-week!' Holiday Stage School takes place from the 17th - 22nd December in Cape Town. Children of all ages can attend. Taught by experts in the field of drama, dance and music, young people age 5-18 attend.

There are a few places left and over the past years the programme has been fully booked. Children perform in the Magnet Theatre on the Saturday for a public audience.

This year the students will be putting on a musical version of 'Romeo and Juliet' Here is the prologue from the play which is actually a synopsis.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.