Ninth graders saw “Romeo and Juliet” at the Shakespeare Theater this week. The tale of feuding families and the unlikely lovers caught in between is a dramatic follow-up to last year’s students’ experience with the more whimsical “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Each year students in the upper school have the chance to read a Shakespeare text and perform scenes from the play after visiting a performance at Shakespeare Theater Company or The Folger Shakespeare Library. In recent years, upper school students have also seen “Othello,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Comedy of Errors,” “Henry IV Part I,” “Twelfth Night,” and “The Tempest.” Live performances help bring the words of the Bard into reality for students, so that young readers can appreciate the witty banter, double entendres, brutal swordplay, and epic tragedies on the stage. Meanwhile, Ms. Kolb’s eighth grade theatre students are planning to put on a student-directed production of “Macbeth” in the spring at the Folger library.