The Tempest (Der Sturm)

#language art #island #counterwind

The magician Prospero, former Duke of Milan, lives on a lonely island. Years ago, his brother Antonio plotted an intrigue, dethroned him and abandoned him in a boat on the open sea. By some miracle, he and his daughter Miranda were able to reach the safety of an island where he built himself a new world. There, he now rules over the elements, ghosts and magic creatures, like Caliban or the sylph Ariel, who are native inhabitants of the island.

As "luck" would have it, one day Prospero sights the fleet of the King of Naples, which Antonio belongs to. With Ariel’s help, he unleashes a storm capsizing his brother’s ship and the whole crew, who are left stranded on the island. Now Prospero has the upper hand and sees his chance for belated revenge or reconciliation.

The Tempest is one of William Shakespeare’s last works and his ultimate creation myth. It views the theatre as a symbolic isle of opportunities. The exceptional situation turns into an experiment on the utopian founding of a state and the experimental set-up for a completely new beginning: What would I do if I were king? In doing so, Shakespeare playfully touches upon topics such as power and oppression, exploitation and appropriation, nature and civilization.
Jakob Nolte’s approach to The Tempest is a special retranslation that sifts through the Old English original word by word. This creates a fantasy language that can be decoded by melody and sound and is as wonderfully strange as the inhabitants of the island are. Stage director Jan Bosse and the ensemble around Wolfram Koch, who takes on the role of Prospero, bring this puzzling and ecstatic text to life using the illusionary skills of theatre.

Invited to the Hamburger Theater Festival