Tempesta

Can the wealth of writing and meaning in this work be transferred into gesture and movement?

This is the challenge facing the performance. It is an extremely arduous one because it invites a comparison with a text that has a special and absolute value in the whole of Shakespeare’s output. It is his last work and is considered as his spiritual testament, an adieu to the theatre and it is no coincidence that it presents a creator of magic onstage which, as Strehler rightly understood, alludes to a creator of theatrical wonders. In this case the playwright renews his theatrical language, offers an unusual emotional and narrative development, abandons continual changes of place and character, densely interwoven actions and leaps in time. Here there is just one place, one story and one time, according to the rules of Aristotle, which the author observes for the first time, voluntarily paying a final tribute to the idea of theatre in its purest form.

The choreographic creation meets this purity and creative linearity, but Shakespeare continues to evoke endless suggestions and dance can also grant itself the freedom to abandon the text to tell a story in another way, to evoke differently, to open up unusual imaginative realms, while continuing to follow the outline of the original narration.

At the centre, there is still the story of a father and daughter. Prospero, the Duke ousted by his brother Antonio, and Miranda who has lived on the island from such a young age that she has no memory of any other place but this. From this conflict between the two men come images like those from a far-off past in black and white, and then there is the long tale that the father tells his daughter, of his noble birth and his arrival in that lost corner of the world, which is transformed into a visual calligraphy, until the tempest that brings Antonio, his ally the King of Naples and his son Ferdinand to the island. The tempest is caused by Prospero, as if it were a great game created for Miranda’s birthday, with the aim of changing the course of things for everyone. In this transcription in gesture and movement, the only being who lives on the island, Caliban, multiplies, to become a complex, multiple entity, who appears to be born from the waves of the sea, whence he will return. Ariel never touches the ground. He is continually pushed away by the element that bears his name.

However, there is a central passage in the work that this choreographic transposition focuses on: Prospero’s initial project is one of revenge. He wants to regain his power and authority over his brother and his allies. Just a few words from Ariel, a non-human creature moved by the suffering of those ship-wrecked, make him change his mind and put him suddenly on the road to pardon, eliminating his resentment, leading him to arrange a marriage between his daughter and Ferdinand and to overcome all of his conflicting instincts. This passage is often overlooked, but it is the central theme of the whole of Shakespeare’s work. It is as if the poet wanted to repudiate his revenge tragedies and the succession of losses to launch a new, more profound message of greater humanity. Thus, the story is resolved in the sign of mercy, of understanding between individuals, outlining a bright future through the young people and leading all those who have temporarily inhabited this place to abandon it. The island and Caliban go back to being fluctuating magma.

Antonio Audino – critical consultant