This work-in-progress performance investigates the portrait of the mind and persona of Shakespeare’s Prospero, created the sound patterning in the language of the play, to expose the sound-world Shakespeare creates through words.
The performance draws exclusively on text from The Tempest and incorporates the little-known original music for the play written by Shakespeare’s colleague, the composer Robert Johnson.
Dates:
13 April – 7:30pm
14 April – 1:00pm and 7:30pm
Price:
Tickets £7, concessions £5
Starring:
Gerrard McArthur, Russell Harcourt
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Video Artist: Ben Glover
Musical Director: Nikki Aitken
Lighting Designer: Elliot Jones
Director: Christopher Hurrell
Background: In no other play of Shakespeare, is the action, and even the disposition of the other characters so utterly the construction of the central protagonist. Shakespeare uses the device of a ‘stage magician’ – a Faustian necromancer, to explore a single character through all the stage action of the drama. It’s not too fanciful to suggest that the entire enchanted island is a landscape of Prospero’s mind.
This expressionist approach to characterisation is fuelled by the most knotted, ornate and ethereal language in the Shakespearean canon. That language creates a sound world that is simultaneously the world of the island, and a sonic portrait of Prospero’s psyche.
More information about this creative development project and the research which informs it is available at christopherhurrell.com/hear-my-soul-speak
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