Sea-Changes (Production Concept)

Power can be real and imaginary. An Island can be in the Mediterranean and everywhere. But can you be forgiven, and not forgiven? Our production of The Tempest will feature characters who are all trying to come out on top of a history that has just started picking up. Some wield weapons, some wield influence, and some wield otherworldly forces. For a moment, thanks to a storm, they find themselves stranded on an island that beguiles them with its simplicity. The weight of their power, and the choices they’ve made to keep it, becomes more clear the longer they stay. Do we believe they’ll be any different when they leave - if they leave? Do we think history will be any different because of the time we’ve spent in the theater, watching them reconsider? This is what we hope our production of The Tempest is going to be, and the questions it’s going to prompt our audiences to ask of themselves.

Magic, Aether, and the Cost of Power

One of John Dee's magic sigils

Our Production of The Tempest features magic that may take many forms, but still comes down to the power to make ‘something’ out of ‘nothing.’ Even when it is violent or destructive, it is still essentially creative, and is primarily influenced by the neoplatonic magic of John Dee, a philosopher and magical practitioner who was close to Queen Elizabeth, and a contemporary of Shakespeare’s. (Horvath 33) This kind of magic was thought of as an imaginative window into Abrahamic religions, and practitioners imagined themselves imitating, taking part in, or directing God’s power. (Horvath 31) For simplicity’s sake, we refer to this as quality “Aethereal,” a sense that ‘something’ has come from ‘nothing,’ perhaps due to the boundary between idea and material getting blurred, allowing some new bit of Aether to come from nowhere. Ariel is Aethereal, in all his forms. The Tempest itself is Aetherial. The disappearing banquet is Aetherial. Caliban is not.

While Prospero is the most powerful force on the island, the Neapolitans have plenty of experience with Aether too, even if they don’t have experience with magic. Antonio and Sebastian pull a plot to kill Alonso out of air (out of thin air), and, even when they are discovered, those lions they claim they heard certainly come from nowhere. Trinculo and Stephano’s dreams for ruling the island have enough weight to move Caliban, even though he’s seen this happen before (the booze, of course, helps). And then there’s Prospero, who, in our production, will be entirely reliant on Ariel for all of his magic, and it should feel as though he’s caught an angel in a bottle, clipped its wings, and put it on a leash. In an inverse of Dr. Faustus’s “deal with the devil” style of magic, it’s actually the magical being, not the magus, who has to barter and bargain for their freedom, even when they have less power in the negotiation. This will become particularly profane when Prospero punishes Ariel for trying to get his freedom “early,” and uses his magic to hurt Ariel, but, since Ariel is all of Prospero’s magic, Prospero will make Ariel hurt himself.

By the end of the play, each of the characters will have trafficked with a power that may have been too much for them, except maybe for Ferdinand and Miranda. Maybe. The play is unclear about whether they are more guileful than we think. At the very least, they don’t pay a cost for the power they’ve used in the course of the play, though they may eventually after it ends.

An Island That is the Great Globe Itself

Some of GiordanoBruno's "MemorySeals"

The island is beguiling in its simplicity - magic comes from nowhere, spirits are trapped in the landscape, and while it’s not a den of lies or iniquity, things are never exactly as they seem. The world of The Tempest is allegorical, which fits the play’s categorization as a Romance, but an allegory for what? What is it trying to get us to see in a new light?

If magic is a metaphor for power in our production, and the Island as written is somehow pulsing or teaming with magic in its own right, then our Island is filled with memories of previous conflicts. If Prospero has had 15 years on the Island to study magic, and has bargained Ariel into whatever tremendous godlike feats he wishes, why not assume that Prospero could look into the future? Brush up against the past? Conjure his wishes from near and far? He may not ever be able to get Antonio to admit he’s wrong, but if he wants to summon a convertible from the 60s, what’s stopping him? And why, say, is it at one point an overgrown and rusted set piece where Miranda and Ferdinand curl up together, and at another point suddenly summoned back to life by Ariel to be the “hounds” that chase Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban away? The world of our production of The Tempest is filled with Aether, but Aether with a history. Instead of a “timeless” setting, it’s a setting that’s beside several different times. And the reason all these elements from different time periods are beside each other is to examine how the Aether gives way, with a little bit of inquiry.

‘Something’ only seems to come from ‘nothing.’ In reality, something always comes from something, through work. Prospero’s magic is all done by Ariel. The strange circles and sigils left over from fights between Caliban and Prospero (really, fights between Caliban, and Prospero and Ariel) only seem like God’s power, but they aren’t, they’re an incredibly lopsided collaboration between Ariel and Prospero. Ariel’s subjugation is a way for Prospero to claim the fruits of Ariel’s labor. It begs the question, if Ariel and Prospero are both so powerful, and can make so many things together between the two of them, why can’t they cooperate as equals? Our Island is filled with relics of their failure to achieve a liberated relationship that speak to our failure across histories to be able to step out of our violent hierarchies and build a better world. (Prospero could travel on a dragon, but apparently he chose a convertible.) The hope is, perhaps, that these relics have gone through a natural ‘sea-change.’ No matter how long these class conflicts have waged, between Prospero and Ariel, or between the Haves and the Have Nots, the natural world still makes a little bit of progress on its own, ‘into something rich and strange.’

Prospero’s Apology

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bruno_De_Umbris_ombre.JPG

If magic is a metaphor for power, and our Island is filled with evidence of all the ways power has been pettily misused throughout history, it’s important to focus the climax of our play on the limits of power. Even Aether, which seems to come from nowhere, and seems to stolen (or at least borrowed) from God, cannot force someone to apologize they did. You, however, can will yourself to apologize for the things that you’ve done wrong, and maybe, in so doing, find a way to move on from the way you’ve been wronged in turn. But it has to be honest. You have to put yourself at the mercy of the party you are apologizing to. You cannot manipulate them. This is the way we are playing Prospero’s apology.

And, in fairness, we, as artists, do have something to apologize for. We have been manipulating the audience - to question the power hierarchies that control their lives, to believe in magic, to shake their emotions out of dormancy and see what we can find. We may not be able to change the outside world with a play, but we can try to change ourselves and show you that change is possible. And so, with that in mind, the apology is a moment when the lights come up. The cast changes onstage, and walks out through the house when they’re done, as Prospero gives his speech. The set is struck, the sound blares on then off at one point. If Prospero can get the audience to applaud, music seems to come from nowhere, and he is allowed to leave. If not, ushers will open the doors, and he has to watch the audience go.