IT IS the perfect combination. A beautiful park, a company of young actors and a timeless story of love and jealousy.

Head for Greenhead Park in Huddersfield over the Bank Holiday weekend and you will see all three.

A group of young performers have got together to stage Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet.

The promenade style performance involves a cast of 20 aged 14 to 27 and will take the action and the audience around the park as the story unfolds.

The show is directed by 18 year-old Jodika Gilworth, of Marsh.

It’s been a busy week for Jodika who has just had her A level results. She has been studying at Crossley Heath School in Halifax and wants to go to drama school.

Working with her as fight director and playing the lead role of Juliet is her friend, also 18, Megan Thomas.

Megan is a student at New College where one of her subjects is performing arts. She sits her A levels next year.

The two held open auditions for the production earlier in the summer and have been rehearsing in the park.

“I’ve seen quite a few productions of Romeo and Juliet and always thought that there was something more that could be done with the play,” said Jodika.

“We decided to set it in promenade style in different parts of the park that are appropriate to the action.”

The show is in modern dress and the actors have borrowed some costumes from the Lawrence Batley Theatre and conjured up other items, including props themselves.

She and Megan met when they attended the Lawrence Batley Youth Theatre and are now volunteer tutors for the group. They continued developing their skills with Benchmark Theatre and some of the Romeo and Juliet company also worked with Benchmark.

All are committed to staging theatre which is relevant to young people.

“We’d like to develop what we are doing into an official theatre company, providing immediate, relevant, accessible and high-energy theatre by young people for everyone,” said Jodika.

Certainly this weekend’s production has tested their resourcefulness as well as their acting and staging skills.

“We are hoping to keep in touch with everybody who has been involved and perhaps do more productions – though perhaps not with such a big cast,” said Jodika.

Those involved in this weekend’s show include costume designer Hannah MacNamara who is at Huddersfield University and musician Sam Lloyd, a member of local band 5 Minutes Drive, who is providing live original music for the event.

“While outdoor productions of Shakespeare aren’t that uncommon, we feel this one is unique in that it was conceived, organised and shaped by two Huddersfield 18-year-olds with no funding, no professional support and very little experience of the organisational side of theatre,” said Jodika.

What they lack in experience, this young company clearly makes up for in creativity and ambition.

It’s something that seems to run in the Gilworth family. Last year, Jodika’s younger brother Jonathan, known as Jono, was centre stage in a major professional theatre production in Leeds.

Jono, then 12, appeared in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s spy thriller Hapgood. He was one of two young actors cast as the sons of actress and comedienne Josie Lawrence, who plays the spymaster Hapgood of the show’s title.

Doubtless he will be going to Greenhead Park this weekend to see his big sister’s production of Romeo and Juliet.

The performances begin tomorrow night and cast and audience will meet near the cafe in Greenhead Park at 6pm. Expect the show to last for about two and a half hours.

There will be repeat performances on Sunday and on Bank Holiday Monday. Fingers crossed for good weather.