An Un-Temporal Tempest

La Tempête (The Tempest) by William Shakespeare
Translation and Adaptation by Normand Chaurette
Directed By Michel Lemieux, Victor Pilon, and Denise Guilbault

MONDAY, MARCH 12 AT 7:30PM, 2007
UMASS AMHERST FINE ARTS CENTER CONCERT HALL

For my fellow classmates who couldn’t make the performance of Shakespeare’s La Tempête (The Tempest) presented at UMASS as part of their 2007 Center Series, you missed a multi-layered hybrid of a spectacle that merged virtual and actual reality to portray Prospero’s island maze of illusion. Using a seamless blend of live presentation and projected media, directors Lemieux, Pilon, and Guilbault remove “the borders that separate performance, scenography, cinema, video, dance, poetry, visual arts, lighting design, music, and sound” to transform the text into the integrated artistic expression beheld by the audience. As the directors revealed in a post-play discussion, it is in the crossing, meshing, and blurring of these boundaries, in the dynamic interplay between the disciplines and the genres, between light and dark, and the live and the simulated that the real magic of the play is experienced. The imaginative twist that adds much delight to this unique realization of Shakespeare’s 400 year-old script is that the whole of this multi-media extravaganza, in all its glorious sight, sound, and image, was conceived as if taking place solely within the cave of a single man’s psyche.

The first task, according to the creative team, was to reduce the running time of the production. Once most of repetitive expository material was removed (“Are you getting this, Miranda?”), the story condensed nicely into a brisk, densely packed ninety minutes. Normally, I strongly resist productions that seek to distill Shakespeare’s language in any way for the sake of “dumbing down” its complexities or foreshortening its vast expanses of time and place, simply to fit snugly within the increasingly dwindling attention spans of the public. Here, however, the creators accomplish a remarkably full presentation with no crucial narrative elements lost. Their deftly abridged script remains coherent and undiminished throughout.

The physical setting is minimal: a small, craggy mound representing the landscape of a deserted island or perhaps the floor of a cave, upon which, around which, behind which, and in front of the action takes place. All other indications of time, place, and mood are either alluded to or conveyed vividly by projection, music, sound, costumes, and lighting. The spectator remains very much involved in the completion of the illusion.

Only four live characters appear on stage, and even these roles do not strictly adhere to Shakespeare’s dictates, or to the conventions of traditional theater. Here, the same actor plays both Caliban and Ariel, in this case a female actor. This achieves both a “Jekyll & Hyde” effect, simultaneously contrasting and merging light with dark, and good with evil, while at the same time fluidly blending the genders. Alternately, a single actor portrays the character of Ferdinand. The full realization of his role, however, is accomplished by a clever interactive uniting of both his live performance in some scenes and his video image performance in others. Deepening the layers of illusion, Fernando’s video images are all shot live, filmed in real time somewhere offstage, then projected ingeniously onstage. All of The Tempest’s other remaining characters and their scenes are conveyed in pre-shot images only, some remarkably life-like and some digitally enhanced in terms of size and shape. These visual reproductions are “magically” interjected into the live action by means of optical technologies that interweave their enhanced figures in front of, behind, above, and below the live action on stage.

From an audience standpoint, it is impossible to tell where these images emanate from or what surface they are being projected on to, a work of stage magic that only increases the bewitching effect of this production. Oddly, the creators of the spectacle disclosed, the actors see none of the virtual images that the audience sees. When prodded in the post-show discussion, the magician/directors declined to reveal in full detail how this enchanting “trick” of illusion is accomplished. Nevertheless, they did shed some light on their unique conceptualization of the text, in which the entire play is meant to take place entirely in Prospero’s head. Prospero, according to their interpretation, is not a man at peace with himself; he is seeking reconciliation with his demons, continually dreaming and reflecting upon those dreams. Ultimately, once he allows these dreams to bubble to the surface, he can let his feelings of revenge and disappointment dissolve into acceptance, then dissipate into forgiveness.

Although Lemieux, Pilon, and Guilbault’s La Tempête relies heavily on simulation and effect, their crowning achievement is their success in developing a language that values the interface of real and the virtual, yet never allowing the actual to become subservient to the virtual. The questioning of the nature of this hybrid version of reality is very much the subtext of this production. Good magicians that they are, they introduce “bits” of virtuality into the live, present relationship already taking place between the actor and the spectator.

Finally, they are fully consigned to delegating the task of piecing together a final picture of “reality” to the observer. Enticing as many senses as possible, these three transform Shakespeare’s text into a multi-layered, participatory phenomenon.