Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival attendees may notice something different in an old classic this year as director Chelsea Haberlin takes The Tempest in a new direction, looking at the play through a modern feminist lens.
“The treatment of women, our perspective on colonialism, and our perspective on race are different,” says Haberlin. “I definitely bring my sort of 2018 feminist politics to the piece.”
One way Haberlin did this was by cross-casting: women now perform as some of the male characters.
“The character Prospero is now Prospera, Ariel is played by a woman, and Sebastian and Antonio are played by women, but they are using male gender pronouns,” says Haberlin. “There’s a lot more women on stage than there were.”
Since Haberlin specializes in site-specific theatre, which takes place in locations outside of traditional venues, she understands the joys and challenges of directing and performing outdoors.
“Currently, we are dealing with sprinklers, so every night at 9 pm the sprinklers come on, and we are constantly playing chicken with the sprinklers,” she says. “It’s a lot more fun to work somewhere where there’s going to be surprises.”
Haberlin finds nature a vital piece of the puzzle in creating beautiful moving pictures on the stage.
“They talk so much about nature [in the play] and to be actually outdoors surrounded by the colours of nature, I think, really helps to heighten the piece, brings a lot of depth that would not be there otherwise. In terms of creating, I can have characters approaching from far off as another scene is taking place. I can have people come up over the hill singing.”
Haberlin admits that Shakespeare is hard to understand; she spent hours and hours with the text to understand it so that she would be able to tell the story.
“I don’t expect my audience to do that same work,” she says. “I expect them to watch it once and have it make sense. I think it’s on us to make it understandable to an audience. It’s like you have a big bouquet of flowers and if you fill it with baby’s breath, all anyone can see is the baby’s breath, but if you take out all of the baby’s breath then what’s left is the kind of beautiful focal points, the beautiful flowers. What we are trying to do in our rendition of this piece is to take out anything that feels like it’s going to distract people from this story and from the characters, and just leave the language in and leave the action in that feels really relevant and vital.”
Like her artistic inspirations—Peter Brook, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino—Haberlin is committed to the collaborative effort in creative storytelling.
“I really love watching many minds come together to take something off the page,” she says. “I really love the collaborative element of it. There’s not many places in life where you get to have that.”
Haberlin understands the nature of the relationship between herself and the audience, as she wants to make this experience comfortable and enjoyable for those who come out to see The Tempest.
“I think a mistake that directors can make with a play like this is to really push it at the audience, but you want to make it so that they can sort of ease their way into it,” she says.
Ultimately, this journey is all worth it to Haberlin, as long as the audience allows theatre to transport them on a magical ride.
“If you don’t understand every single word people are saying, it won’t matter,” she says, “because the spectacle, energy, drive, and the music will carry you through the piece.”
Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival
Various days and times, Thursday, July 5 to Saturday, August 4
Various prices, Camosun College Lansdowne campus and Saxe Point Park
vicshakespeare.com