Statement of Intent

Statement of Intent

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, it has been recreated multiple times by a range of different designers for both, theatre and film. I think for it to be successful in today's it needs to be different to anything done before. For me, I want to include technology and resources that are new and exciting and combine this with the techniques and traditions of entertainment that have been used for hundreds of years.

The original play is set on an unnamed Mediterranean island in renaissance Europe. Shakespeare's time was a period filled with geographical exploration and discovery. One of the biggest stories found in the newspapers and journals of that time documented. In this article it described part of a fleet of ships carrying colonists to Virginia disappearing but the crew and passengers survived. They had been presumed to of drowned but had just been blown hundreds of miles off course. The reappearance of the survivors was considered something of a miracle. I want to also set my play in the time that the tempest was written, in the early 1600’s.

For a story in the 21st century it sometimes works better for the location of the performance to actually be based around a place. As the facts of the play need to remain the same as the original, Prospero needs to still be the ex duke of Milan and the king still needs to be the King of Naples. So, for it to be transposed somewhere, it would need to make sense how they would end up there. I want to keep my adaptation location fairly traditional and keep it in the Mediterranean. Whilst researching I came across the Island of Paxi/Paxos in Greece, it is part of the smallest island group within the Ionian Islands. There is a much smaller island directly next to it called Antipaxos. The  island is best known scenic beauty, being covered by thousands of olive trees and surrounded by turquoise waters. The island was known to be constantly under attack during the middle ages by Pirates. I have chosen this place because of its natural beauty and its many trees.

I am choosing to do puppetry for Theatre and I am going to make a full working puppet for the character Ariel. Ariel is an air spirit and upon my first reading of the play I imagined her as a bird. I want her to be a magpie, they are extremely intelligent, mischievous and they are drawn to collecting shiny objects. From the story we know that Ariel was trapped in a pine tree by the witch Sycorax, in the original story she is seen as evil and put Ariel in the tree as a punishment . I want to reverse the roles. In my version Sycorax would have been a good witch and she would of been hiding Ariel away because she was aware of his powers and what they would be able to do in the wrong hands. This will also make Prospero the bad characters, upon freeing her from the tree, he exploits her powers and uses them to manipulate his brother and the rest of the crew that land on the island. Ariel will a woman. My set designs involve a large tree, standing out against the pine trees on the island, this tree will be huge and enchanting, covered in shiny objects that Ariel has gathered from the pirates that have tried to invade the island and lost their treasures. This tree will have a screen in the centre in an oval shape. This will act as a way for Ariel to transform, when commanded to the character can go into the tree. Using shadows created by  to create the illusion of turning into a bird, the puppet I make will then fly out of the top of the tree.

Prospero would of been exiled because of his misuse of magic for evil. This twists the entire story. When his brother and the crew on the island he has been planning it for the whole 12 years that he has been on the island. His daughter Miranda doesn’t know any different but constantly wonders what is beyond the island, when prince Ferdinand arrives on the island she can’t help but fall for him.