conjuring “The Tempest” and environmental theater on Appledore Island

the set
Just a few years after Shakespeare penned his last play,“The Tempest,” in England (circa 1611), Captain John Smith was charting the waters of coastal New England. He happened upon a cluster of rocky islands which he named after himself: Smith’s Isles. They were about six miles off the coast of what would be settled 15 years later as Strawbery Banke. Almost four centuries later, Appledore Island, part of the group now known as the Isles of Shoals, is at the center of exploration still, both scientific and theatrical. Appledore hosts the Shoals Marine Lab, run cooperatively by the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University. On Saturday, Aug. 27, “The Tempest” will be performed on the island, one show only, the culmination of an experimental, experiential class called “Shakespeare and Environmental Theater,” co-taught by UNH Theater professors David Richman and David Kaye. The show is a package deal: $75 gets you a roundtrip boat ride, an island-cooked lunch, and a thoroughly unique performance of the play. Sunburned nose, no extra charge. Tickets were sold out by midsummer.

the players
Jessica Bolker cooked up the scheme. She’s associate director of the Shoals Marine Laboratory and is part of the Institute for the Development and Evolution of Wet Animals. Bolker says that Appledore is a microcosm of human and natural activity. Its systems are all within view: water and sanitation, electricity and generation, waste and compost, engineering and IT, roads and structures. It survives storm and sun, nature and man, and its transparency offers a unique perspective on how an integrated whole works effectively. Her work at the Shoals Lab involves working mostly with scientists, marine biologists and engineers. Bolker has no connection to theater; the marriage of the two programs was a happy coincidence. The idea came to her “almost the first time I ever visited the island,” even though, she jokes, “I’d never even read ‘The Tempest.’” Bolker went to David Richman to ask what he thought.

Bolker had met David Richman at informal Shabbat potlucks and get-togethers. They shared a love of the humanities. Richman, who has a Ph.D.  in English from Stanford, has been in the UNH Theater Department since 1988. In his text, “Laughter, Pain, and Wonder: Shakespeare’s Comedies and the Audience in the Theater,” a chapter is devoted to meditations upon the magician Prospero. When Bolker tried out her idea on Richman, the first thing he said to her was, ‘I’ll have to ask David Kaye to direct so I can play Prospero.’” As a Shakespeare scholar, he’d been thinking about the role for over 30 years. “I can say unhyperbolically that this chance to play Prospero in this setting is the opportunity of a lifetime,” he says.

The story takes place upon an island inhabited by two humans, a spirit and a monster. Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, explores his all-consuming preoccupation with magic, which led to his exile in the first place. His desire for vengeance grows with his acumen. When the duke-turned-occultist finds that his betrayers are sailing past, bound for a nearby port of call, he enchants a punishing storm to bring his wrong-doers within striking distance. Once they’re shipwrecked, he takes it upon himself to mete out what he considers justice and what his daughter, Miranda, considers revenge. In preparing to strike, he seriously alters his relationships to his daughter and other once-trusted companions.

Kaye is a writer, producer and director who also works in the UNH Theater Department. He’s a process guy, always exploring different ways of teaching stagecraft and especially interested in teaching improvisation, the skill of reacting to your environment and your ensemble. Watching him direct and rehearse his students is enjoyable. They have an easy rapport, and they’re willing to take chances and try new things under his direction. On Appledore Island, scientists study the ways animals adapt and evolve. Actors and animals are always reacting to their environments. As the idea for staging “The Tempest” on Appledore grew from concept to reality, Kaye wanted to explore this perspective from a fine arts point of view. A unique course of study was born: the development of “Shakespeare and Environmental Theater.”

Collaborator Richman, who lost his sight as a youngster, has a long history of negotiating tricky environments. He’s exceptionally adept at dodging obstacles, both actual and metaphoric. Richman likes to engage with dense, thoughtfully crafted scripts; in play production, he’s tuned to the words. Richman says in Shakespeare’s writing, “scenes unfold largely through the rhythm, timing, pauses, emphasis of syllables, and tonal shifts that are woven through the dialogue.” The verbal interplay of characters can infer specific action in staged work. Richman asserts that in unstaged work, the dialogue provokes myriad choices if well-considered by an actor. “All theater artists with whom I’ve worked or whose work I know rack their brains to derive the action implicit in the lines of dialogue. If several actions seem implicit in a given stretch of dialogue, we have to find and execute the one that seems right for our production and our audience. If we can’t find an action, we have to invent, and take responsibility for our invention.”

Staging an island play on an island solved a problem that’s plagued other productions: creating a sense of place. Appledore helps bring the production to life, says Richman, because “we don’t have to pretend we’re someplace we’re not. We’ll have the sea’s sound, grass and sand under our feet, wind and gulls. Every sense will be tuned.”

the circumstances
The Isles of Shoals straddle the state line between Maine and New Hampshire. Though they seem remote to us today, they’ve been well used over the centuries: as a fishing community of several hundred, privateers’ resupply station, pirate hideout, art colony, tern colony, Unitarian-Universalist conference center, sailing holiday layover, and marine research site. Rugged granite covered in rockweed pads the shores where boats once ran aground. Now it cushions the stone shelves for the occasional snoozing seals rocked by the waves’ gentle lapping.

The tempest that takes place here is both a metaphor and a storm. This production of the play is born from several premises in the minds of the Davids. Storms, inner and outer, coalesce. How we react to them shapes our worlds and subsequent views. Paradoxically, focus can be blinding. Shakespeare’s play explores the dynamics of power and control in a small space.

Consummate dramaturges, Richman and Kaye have worked together for 10 years. They’ve directed and produced each other and taught together.  “The Tempest” class was unique in that if you had a seat in the 12-person class, you had a role in the play. The question was, which role? “Casting is exciting and awful,” Kaye says. “You have so many possibilities, yet you have to have someone disappointed.” This production would be different.

Kaye describes the development process: “We started by asking ourselves what we mean when we talk about environment.” On the island that encompasses “the scenic, the aromatic, the aural, the atmospheric.” Richman and Kaye scouted the island’s “elements of the sea, rocks and rosebushes, marine life,” Kaye says, and explored how they’d use them as artistic tools, learning how they might learn to react to them. “It’s a great acting challenge to use a place that’s inconstant, unlike a theater. You learn: Be aware, and react, because you are aware.”

the process
Back on the mainland the cast had a crash course in the text. Richman worked with the students for a week, reading and discussing it line by line, word by word, character motivation by character motivation. Each role had a translator, a person who summarized in modern day speech. Coupled with Richman’s tutelage, by week’s end all 12 students knew and understood every part and how the work fit together as a whole. Then came a novel casting experience. Tucker Cummings, of Rumney, N.H., who plays the enslaved monster Caliban, describes it like this: “We had a ‘sort-of audition’ process where every person got to go for every role, regardless of gender or past experience. As part of this we had to write a character song to share with the rest of the cast.”

She wrote two songs, one for Ariel and one for Caliban. “Obviously I sang Caliban in my lowest register. He’s just been freed (in order) to follow (jester and butler) Trinculo and Stephano, so I did lots of jumping, lots of up and down. Prospero once treated me as a son until I attempted to rape his daughter, Miranda. Then he punishes me, makes a slave of me—no more treatment as a son.” To be freed was cathartic. Cummings also “read a bunch of poems from ‘Caliban: A Cultural History’ to get a long view, a perspective over time.”

For Ariel, a spirit who once served the island witch, Cummings’ song “concentrated on a high clear voice, like air and elements. When I moved, I tried to move in a liquid way, slowly as if through water, swimmingly.” When the cast members performed their songs for one another, Cummings says it was fascinating to watch the ways others envisioned the roles she wanted. And in the end, it turns out, “We all got a blank cast list and David Kaye said, ‘Cast it.’ We all did it very differently, and that’s good. It shows we’re a versatile group.”

Kaye took the cast lists home and mulled them over for a day and a half, and then each student had a role. Cummings was Caliban. She had more reservations about playing monster than sprite. “I was nervous accepting the role because I thought there were many folks who could do it. I’d seen them and I felt some were more talented than me.” A few days into practice though, Cummings was beaming— “I feel much more confident now!”

Kaye also put folks to work sketching out possibilities for costumes and props. Says Kaye, “Each person works, within some period parameters, to explore their character from a visual dimension. They’ll also make two mask designs for their character, contrasting both modern and period styles.” Kaye’s process of exploration fully engaged all the actors vocally, visually, artistically and textually.

Kaye also asked student Chris Crossen-Sills, of Norwell, Mass., who plays Gonzalo, the most respected courtier, to rough out some ideas for large puppets that would serve as the gods Iris, Ceres and Juno in the play. Crossen-Sills says he likes the cooperation of ensemble work, where “it’s about the group, a group mentality, always remembering everyone’s taking an equal part.” Kaye notes it’s exciting for students to work with Richman as Prospero because “to get the chance to act in the play with the teacher who brought the piece to life for you is an amazing experience.” Students also get to partake of the dialogue that ensues between Richman (actor) and Kaye (director). Says Kaye, “We have great arguments, all productive, very instructive. And we’re learning to make our cases for our interpretations. We don’t always agree.”

Richman’s 30 years of scholarship give him credibility, and yet he knows his role here. “An actor will do his best to try for what the director asks. When David asks me to try something, I will always try it. An actor will then say, ‘That didn’t feel quite right,’ or ‘It didn’t work’ or ‘That was just fine,’ but they must try.”

The two had experienced such a moment in rehearsal the day before. Their overarching interpretation of the play offers wholesale redemption for the characters, despite their trespasses. Kaye calls upon Richman as Prospero to pardon Caliban, which Richman, in character, balks at. He later explains, “There’s this moment at the play’s end, for Caliban to be forgiven, this subhuman monstrous creature, who has tried to rape my daughter. In (my) trying (that interpretation) he becomes forgivable and it ends up being quite a beautiful moment.” Richman’s willingness to take this direction is good role-modeling for the cast. Richman also adds later, “Honestly, I can’t think of a single thing that David’s asked of me that hasn’t worked.”

rehearsal

Six young men and six young women sit in a circle creating a soundscape that can be heard outside the door: bird screech and bells, wind and wave crash, whistles and odd cries, a simultaneous cacophony from which emerges an odd harmony. “A plague upon the howling, you’re louder than the storm!,” bawls out Liz O’Brien (Boatswain) to her “crew.” Somewhat comically, O’Brien’s terrier, Biddy, who’s come to rehearsal like an errant child, unbabysat, listens in rapt attention.

In their circle, the running of lines is fast-paced. Then a wave breaks full upon the imaginary vessel they’re the crew of—with a crash—and their vocal pandemonium echoes the rending apart of the ship. Now it’s time to add movement, the floating of the boat. A sea of their arms held aloft, ensemble en masse, actors rise like a swaying anemone, lifting up a boat maquette. With sound and motion they re-create the storm and become it, a tempest out of whose maw crisp lines are delivered. Actors move forward, deliver their lines and are swallowed again by the group. The visual metaphor is perfect but unperfected. Several run-throughs leave them sweaty, out of breath.

Kaye calls a halt to the action and intones, “You’re in the right mode. If you do this right, you will feel like you’ve been through a storm.” The technical part of this modulated chaos is tricky. Kaye elaborates, “I’m asking you to do three things, maybe four: deliver a line; keep the boat aloft, remember where the audience is, engage all bodies.” They try it again, honing the stage picture, adding physical connection; all hands on deck solidifies their motion. Kaye is positive and appreciative. “What I want for the audience is for you to become the waves, just representations of the voices on the ship.” There’s a vocal crescendo, and “We’ve split, we’ve split!” cries the bosun. On cue the ship comes high and to the center, then sinks to the sea’s bottom hidden in their midst.

Prospero
Kaye remarks of Richman’s portrayal of Prospero that “the blindness has become part of the play and part of David’s lack of sight becomes metaphoric and thematic, although actual. As Prospero becomes more consumed with his magic, he turns his back on the physical world and lives solely in the realms of the mystical and supernatural, where sight is unnecessary—he lets it go—we might almost say it’s a distraction. His hunger (for power and revenge) diminishes his inner sight, and his ability to see himself truthfully. How will he use his power becomes the question. He can squash the court, kill the island’s inhabitants. Gonzalo’s madness helps change his heart, and he “sees” what he’s become—a vengeful god—and in that moment he decides he wants to be human again.” Kaye shares that “Prospero is a magician, and David’s lack of sight often causes him to do things that appear as if magic to us (the cast), even watching him read Braille from his script.” The way he’s oriented to things challenges sighted vantage points.

With years to mull it, Richman shares that they’ve decided to play Prospero in a less righteous, more furious manner. They highlight a father/daughter strife that’s gone unexamined in other versions. As Prospero rages aloud his life’s tale and reveals to Miranda her royalty, she becomes disgusted with him and what he’s become. “Prospero moves from fury to redemption,” says Richman, “and the play exhibits also a sort of spiritual tempest he’s in. The play moves with difficulty through anger to higher and softer emotion. It’s a deep comedy that has tragic emotion. It roils through tragic circumstance but moves upward toward an earned and genial happy ending.”

to the island
Actors and director are eager to be on the island. Only a few cast members have ever been to the Isles of Shoals, and the anticipation is palpable. Many waves, literal and figurative, will crest and roll before they find themselves ashore. They’re pulling at the oars: some 14-hour days of rehearsal in different places around campus, indoors, outdoors, working to hone their craft, explore their roles and bring their vision to fruition. Clearly Kaye is proud of the job they’re doing. Although the play on Appledore should find us safely home there is an ominous disclaimer that should the seas be too high or otherwise unnavigable, the play will take place on Aug. 28 instead of Aug. 27. Popular request has also led to performances on Labor Day weekend at the Bell Center in Dover. It seems a shame to have a cast work so hard for a single performance, although the island’s magic will be trickier to attain in Dover. One hopes this sets the stage for other theatrical adventures at sea.


The Tempest
presented by the UNH Department of Theatre and Dance
Appledore Island, Aug. 27:
Although tickets are sold out, to place yourself on the waitlist, call Heather Talbot at 603-862-5126.
The Bell Center, Sept. 2 and 3:
Showtime is at 8pm on Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $15 for adults and $13 for students and seniors. To make reservations or for additional information, contact the Bell Center box office at 603-742-BELL. The Bell Center at 45 Fourth St., Dover.