Peter Brook, one of the most influential directors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is considered a ‘magic doctor of the theatre’ whose trick is to focus on the essential. He died in the summer of 2022 shortly after the premiere of Tempest Project, which had been created together with his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne. The production is the result of a lifetime of research on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and it reflects Brook’s art: language and shadows interact to unfold imagination in the empty space. The play ends on the final word ‘free’ – probably the last word Shakespeare ever wrote. Tempest Project is a metaphysical reflection about different notions of freedom, where biting humour meets refined poetry. The audience is invited to join the seven actors in celebrating a final encounter with theatre traditions à la Brook.
Peter W. Marx, taz
12 / 13 / 14 / 16 June, 8 pm, 15 June, 5 and 8 pm
Jugendstiltheater am Steinhof
French
German and English surtitles
85 mins.
Q&A
13 June, following the performance
Please note Age recommendation 14+
Stage, Adaption Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne Text William Shakespeare With Sylvain Levitte, Paula Luna, Fabio Maniglio, Luca Maniglio, Marilù Marini, Ery Nzaramba Light design Philippe Vialatte Songs Harué Momoyama Translation surtitles Yvonne Griesel (German), Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord Surtitles Isolde Schmitt
Production Centre International de Création Théâtrales / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris) Coproduction Théâtre Gérard Philipe – Centre dramatique national de Saint-Denis, Scène nationale Carré-Colonnes
Bordeaux Métropole, Le Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines – Scène Nationale, Le Carreau – Scène nationale de Forbach et de l’Est mosellan, Teatro Stabile del Veneto (Padua)
Supported by Cercle des partenaires des Bouffes du Nord
executed by the team of the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien
Premiere Juni 2021, Printemps des Comédiens (Montpellier)
NOTE OF INTENT
By Peter Brook
The first time I approached the Tempest, a long time ago, in Stratford, the result was far from being satisfactory. I felt that the play slipped between my fingers. To be able to express, in a convincing way, its supernatural world, was the difficulty. I tried to use all the effects that the theatre offers, but I felt instinctively that I was following a wrong track.
Then, later, in 1968, in Paris, I decided to approach it again with actors coming from many different parts of the world. I found interesting to take some scenes from the play as a basis and see how we could together rediscover it. The result was beyond all expectations.
In Elizabethan England the link to nature had not yet been broken. Ancient beliefs were present, a sense of wonder was still there.
Today, Western actors have all the qualities necessary to explore in Shakespeare’s plays all that concerns anger, political violence, sexuality, introspection. But for them it is almost impossible to touch the invisible world. In the cultures that we call “traditional”, images of Gods, magicians, witches, come quite naturally. To play a character who is not real, for a Western actor, requires real acrobatics. For the actor who has been raised in a world of ceremonies and
rituals, the way that leads to the invisible is often direct and natural.
The Tempest is an enigma. It is a fable where nothing can be taken literally, because if we stay on the surface of the play its inner quality escapes us.
For the actors as well as for the audience, it is a play that reveals itself by playing it. It’s like music.
There is a word that chimes through the play –free. As always in Shakespeare the meaning is never pinned, it’s always suggested like in an echo chamber. Each echo amplifies and nourishes its sound.
Caliban wants his freedom. Ariel wants his freedom but it’s not the same freedom. For Prospero freedom is undefinable. It is what he is looking for all through the play. The young Prospero, plunged into his books, searching for the occult, was prisoner of his dreams. On the island we could think that he became free because he had acquired all the magical powers a man can acquire. But a magician plays with powers that do not belong to humanity. It is not for a man to darken the midday sun, nor to bring the dead out of their graves.
As always in Shakespeare the meaning is never pinned, it’s always suggested like in an echo chamber. Each echo amplifies and nourishes its sound.
At the beginning of the play he uses all his powers to create a tempest, so powerful, that he can bring the ship carrying his brother, who has stolen his dukedom, into his power. Revenge devours him and he has not yet mastered his own nature, his own tempest.
And in the middle of the play he faces unexpectedly the end of his exile. He had never foreseen that two drunks and a slave could put his own life in danger. He escapes with cunning and humour, but at the same time he understands that he has to quit his magic, what he calls his art, and above all to renounce for ever revenge.
He opens himself, he realises that he cannot find his freedom alone, he cannot stay anymore on his island, he must give it back to his slave Caliban to whom it belongs, he must give back his free his faithful spirit Ariel, forgive his brother, let his beloved daughter Miranda leave him and marry his nephew Ferdinand, and now asks for his own freedom from whom?
From us all.
THE TEMPEST BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest is set on a small island. It all starts with the title’s great tempest conjured up by Prospero, the island’s ruler, so that a passing ship would shipwreck on the island: for aboard that ship are Alonso, the King of Naples, his son Ferdinand and Antonio, Prospero’s brother.
Prospero used to be the Duke of Milan, but his passion for magic distracted him so that he failed to notice his brother’s plot to topple him in order to claim sole power over Milan. Prospero and his daughter Miranda were cast out of the royal court and landed on this small island. For twelve years Prospero has now been living on this island, making it his own, together with his daughter Miranda and his servant Caliban, the son of a witch of the island and the spirit Ariel. The approaching ship bearing his brother gives Prospero the opportunity to exact his revenge. Stranded on the island, the survivors of the shipwreck are separated from each other. They wander about in the foreign land, are chased by ghosts and strange creatures and are convinced the others are dead. Ferdinand, the son of the King of Naples, happens upon Prospero’s daughter Miranda and they fall in love.
Both brothers – Prospero as well as Antonio –consider their engagement celebrations an opportunity for a scheme. Antonio intends to kill Prospero in order to secure his rule over the island and Prospero in turn sees the moment come for revenge on his brother. In the end, however, the brothers reconcile. Prospero releases the spirit Ariel as well as Caliban from their servitude and renounces magic in order to return to Milan as the Duke. His brother promises to take him along on his ship, but Shakespeare leaves it open whether that
comes to pass. In his final monologue, Prospero begs the audience to at least release him by clapping.
The text for the Tempest was probably written in the course of the year 1611. In contrast to other Shakespeare plays, there is no apparent historical or literary model. However, Shakespeare does include typical elements of comedy and romance, such as the shipwreck, magic, the unification of lovers and reconciliation.
The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final and most poetic work and leaves room for countless interpretations. Shakespeare appears to be bidding farewell to the stage via his alter ego Prospero. In the end, this Shakespeare drama is and always will be an open and contradictory text that does not permit a definitive interpretation – indeed, it may deliberately avoid that: therein lies the magic for the audience. The Tempest tells the story of the tension between nature and civilisation, the foundations of just rulership, of self-discipline and sublimation, abstinence and competition. And of freedom, as Brook and Estienne establish in Tempest Project
Peter Brook was born in London in 1925 and died in Paris in 2022. Throughout his career, he distinguished himself in various genres: theatre, opera, cinema and writing. He directed his first play there in 1943. He then went on to direct over 70 productions in London, Paris and New York. His production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970), one of his many productions in cooperation with the Royal Shakespeare Company, is still regarded as epochal today. Likewise, his opera Salomé (1949) at Covent Garden Opera or his film adaptation of his nine-hour play of the same name Le Mahabharata (1985, film 1989). In 1971, he founded with Micheline Rozan the International Centre for Theatre Research (CICT) in Paris and in 1974, opened its permanent base in the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. At this theatre, he has staged over 20 plays, including Tempest Project (2022).
Peter Brook’s autobiography Threads of Time was published in 1998; his writings, such as the standard work The Empty Space (1968), have been translated into more than 15 languages. Peter Brook’s art is characterised by simplification and experimentation. He reduces set designs and props in order to concentrate on what is essential for him: the actors and texts. ‘A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged’ (Peter Brook, The Empty Space, 1986).
Marie-Hélène Estienne is a French playwright and screenwriter known for her intensive and longstanding collaboration with Peter Brook, among others. The collaboration started at the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (CICT), where Estienne initially worked as a PR officer. In the following years, they developed, wrote and directed various plays, texts and film scripts together. Among other things, she worked as Brook’s assistant on Le Mahabharata, whose film script she also co-wrote, and co-directed Fragments, five short plays by Samuel Beckett. She also collaborated to the staging of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert! and La Tragédie d’Hamlet. Together with Brook she coauthored L’homme qui from Qui est là and Je suis un phénomène, both performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She was also involved in the development of The Suit (2012), The Valley of Astonishment (2013) and The Prisoner (2018). Most recently, she worked with Brook on text and dramaturgy for Why (2019) and Tempest Project (2022). Moreover, she wrote the French adaptation of the Can Themba’s play Le costume, and Sizwe Bansi est mort, by authors Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. In 2003, she wrote the French and English adaptations of Le Grand Inquisiteur/ The Grand Inquisitor for theatre, based on Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov. She is the author of Tierno Bokar (2005) and of the English adaptation of 11 and 12 by Amadou Hampaté Ba (2009).
PUBLICATION DETAILS Owner, Editor and Publisher Wiener Festwochen GesmbH, Lehárgasse 11/1/6, 1060 Wien P + 43 1 589 22 0, festwochen@festwochen.at | www.festwochen.at General Management Milo Rau, Artemis Vakianis Artistic Direction (responsible for content) Milo Rau (Artistic Director) Text credits Note of Intent by Peter Brook, 2020; The Tempest by William Shakespeare: Contribution by Carmen Hornbostel (Dramaturgy Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien). Picture Credit Cover © Marie Clauzade Produced by Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH (Bad Vöslau)
Main sponsors
Public funding bodies
Media partners
