Tempest In High Park
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Shakespeare: Boring, irrelevant, difficult. That's how a lot of people view Shakespeare. You may be one of them. And it's certainly how The Tempest, one of the Bard's final plays, has been seen too.
But Canadian Sue Miner is attempting to change a few minds, and make the play more accessible in the process. She's changed the main character's gender, so the imperious, imposing figure of Prospero, the wizard who has been exiled to an island, becomes Prospera. The character responsible for Prospero/a's exile on that island becomes female too. Even Ariel, the fairy who acts as a counterbalance to the menacing island inhabitant Caliban, is rendered as a female spirit. Poor Caliban's outnumbered; it makes his relationship with Prospera, and her daughter Miranda, all the more twisted.
What does this gender-switch mean for audiences? And how does it change the colonial themes of the work?
Lucid Media spoke with actors Karen Robinson (Prospera) and Ron Kennell (Caliban), who star in the Canadian Stage Company's production of The Tempest, to find out -and see just how interesting Shakespeare can be!
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