It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the script of The Tempest. Music, dance, spells, storms, clowning, songs, sprites, and shipwreck add up to quite a spectacle. But how could we produce such a spectacle in a black box theatre? I approached this not as a problem to solve, but rather an exciting opportunity to explore. I had to simplify and decided to look at the stage as a literal blank slate. With this simpler, black-and-white set, more dazzling aspects of the play are stripped away, and the play’s passions of love, frustration, fear, joy, and regret are instead put on full display. This stage, then, becomes a space where Shakespeare’s language and Prospero’s art intersect. By using chalk words and designs on the black stage, we are able to show both Prospero’s connection to his home on the island and his creation of a liminal, theatrical world that is entirely different from our own reality. Welcome to Prospero’s world—a world defined by control, haunted by memory, and created out of “such stuff as dreams are made on”…
My heartfelt thanks to our talented cast and crew, NSR officers, Scott Jackson, Shakespeare at Notre Dame, Kat VanVleet, Stacy Bone, and the staff of Washington Hall. It has been my privilege to have been a part of this club for the past three years, and I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to direct Shakespeare’s last solo play. To all, my thanks!
--Caitlin Crosby
My heartfelt thanks to our talented cast and crew, NSR officers, Scott Jackson, Shakespeare at Notre Dame, Kat VanVleet, Stacy Bone, and the staff of Washington Hall. It has been my privilege to have been a part of this club for the past three years, and I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to direct Shakespeare’s last solo play. To all, my thanks!
--Caitlin Crosby