VIDEO: Hartford Stage's ROMEO AND JULIET Inspires High School Student To Help Mend Wounds

"It was a small act by a single student," Lisa Loomis tells The Hartford Courant, "but it is having a great impact on our school."

Loomis, head of Hartford's Capital Prep Magnet School's English department, was in attendance at a recent Thursday matinee performance of Hartford Stage's production of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET, which plays through March 20th.

She was accompanying 17 Capital Prep students, mostly freshmen who will soon be studying the play in class. Also included were members of the school's girls basketball team, whose recent victory over Farmington High School was marred when, after the game, a group of Farmington students chanted "SAT scores" to mock their rivals.

Administrators stopped the chant, but wounds created by the controversial incident have lingered. Farmington Principal Bill Silva has sent letters to students and parents about taking ownership of students' behavior and how to move forward "in a way that puts out the best representation of who we are and to repair the damage that was done to another school and to another student body."

So when Farmington High senior Danny Ha, attending the performance with his school group, noticed that the students sitting in front of him were wearing Capital Prep student uniforms, he approached them during intermission.

"We're sorry about everything that went down at the game last week," Ha told them. "That's not a proper representation of Farmington High School. I like to think we're a very accepting school of tolerant people. I don't think that's us."

"We're cool," one Capital Prep student replied.

"Over the course of our nine ROMEO AND JULIET student matinee performances, we will host approximately 4,300 students from all over the tri-state area," Hartford Stage's education enrollment and marketing coordinator Erin Frederick wrote in an email. "It was purely coincidental that both Farmington and Capital Prep ended up at the same show and even more coincidental that they ended up seated right behind each other. I'd call it a very happy accident for all involved."

"I made a point to my theater teacher that this is a whole play about fate - I couldn't believe they were seated right in front of us," said Ha, who will study acting and theater at the University of Hartford next year. "If I wasn't given the opportunity to talk to a Capital Prep student, I don't think I would have gone out of my way to do it. But I had the opportunity, so I did what I think I should have done."

Katie Buckley, an English and theater teacher at Farmington who chaperoned the group, said she often brings her classes to Hartford Stage.

"It's interesting that it happened at the theatre," Buckley said. "We go to the theatre to understand the human experience."

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The video shows Capital Prep students, faculty members and parents at a town hall assembly to talk about the incident after the basketball game.