July 16th: Utah Shakespeare Festival--The Tempest

​Scott O'Neil
Assistant Professor of English
Arkansas Tech University
Russellville, AR

​During our NEH Institute, we were fortunate enough to see three shows at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  The night we arrived, we saw a wonderful production of Sweeney Todd (excellently performed by all, though Bree Murphy’s Mrs. Lovett stole the show), and our second night in Cedar City was our planned trip to their production of King Lear (a show I very much enjoyed, particularly their interpretations of Kent, the Fool, and Edmund—though I will defer on this to one of our participants who wrote a full entry on the play).  Unexpectedly, we ended up with several tickets to see the USF’s black box production of The Tempest, and this show ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for me (it should be noted that The Tempest was the first Shakespeare show that I had ever acted in, so I have a soft spot for all things Francisco/Adrian, haha).

Me as Francisco/Adrian

​As one of Shakespeare’s most magical plays—and by that, I mean one of the plays with frequent depictions of magic—I find it somewhat amusing that the play has worked so well in black box/smaller space venues.  In smaller spaces, I think the magic of the show can be more easily conveyed through light and technology.  This production utilized its space wonderfully, projecting a variety of images onto its simple, wooden playing space—a space that extended up the rear wall of the theater.  This move isn’t new—the Royal Shakespeare Company partnered with Intel on a production of The Tempest five years ago that brought light and technology to the forefront of theatrical spectacle (see a short video on that show below), and one of my former high school students (hi Nick!) once used a flashlight to “create” Ariel in a box set assignment that he did in 12th grade.  What worked so well in the USF production was the fact that light was used to create so much of the world of Prospero’s island.  It almost felt like CGI but in real time.

​The black box venue suited the show in more ways than one. There were no weak points in this scaled down cast, though the bravura performance was delivered by Jasmine Bracey as Prospero.  She brought such power to the role while never losing her warmth as a parent figure to both Ariel and Miranda.  She was quite literally one of the best Prosperos I have ever seen, and I said as much in a social media post after the show (a post that was then liked by the actors playing Gonoril, Kent, and the Fool from King Lear—that’s my kind of multiverse, haha). The smaller venue gave Bracey the opportunity to explore all of the quieter aspects of a role that has traditionally been played for spectacle and bombast.
 
Even the one “problem” with the show—a blackout that caused a short five-minute delay—ultimately demonstrated the quality of this cast. The actors on stage had just lost technology—a necessary element for this show—in a scene that particularly needed it (Ariel’s appearance as a harpy).  Rather than retreat backstage or break character, all of the performers remained in place, with Steven Jensen (Gonzalo) continuing his “lost in despair” movements and Sophia K. Metcalf (a delightful Ariel) maintaining a crouched pose that had my own back aching in solidarity.  When it was clear that the delay would be a matter of minutes rather than seconds, the actors did re-set, but that kind of dedication in the face of technical trouble was impressive.