{"id":16043,"date":"2018-06-13T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16043"},"modified":"2018-07-09T10:50:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T17:50:39","slug":"greater-victoria-shakespeare-festival-presents-the-tempest-through-a-modern-feminist-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/06\/13\/greater-victoria-shakespeare-festival-presents-the-tempest-through-a-modern-feminist-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival presents The Tempest<\/em> through a modern feminist lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival attendees may notice something different in an old classic this year as director Chelsea Haberlin <\/b>takes <\/b>The Tempest<\/i> in a new direction, looking at the play through a modern feminist lens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe treatment of women, our perspective on colonialism, and our perspective on race are different,\u201d says Haberlin. \u201cI definitely bring my sort of 2018 feminist politics to the piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way Haberlin did this was by cross-casting: women now perform as some of the male characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d says Haberlin. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more women on stage than there were.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival is presenting The Tempest<\/em> and Pericles<\/em> this year (photo by Lara Eichhorn).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, we are dealing with sprinklers, so every night at 9 pm the sprinklers come on, and we are constantly playing chicken with the sprinklers,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot more fun to work somewhere where there\u2019s going to be surprises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haberlin finds nature a vital piece of the puzzle in creating beautiful moving pictures on the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t expect my audience to do that same work,\u201d she says. \u201cI expect them to watch it once and have it make sense. I think it\u2019s on us to make it understandable to an audience.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s like you have a big bouquet of flowers and if you fill it with baby\u2019s breath, all anyone can see is the baby\u2019s breath, but if you take out all of the baby\u2019s breath then what\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like her artistic inspirations\u2014Peter Brook, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino\u2014Haberlin is committed to the collaborative effort in creative storytelling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really love watching many minds come together to take something off the page,\u201d she says. \u201cI really love the collaborative element of it. There\u2019s not many places in life where you get to have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this journey is all worth it to Haberlin, as long as the audience allows theatre to transport them on a magical ride.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t understand every single word people are saying, it won\u2019t matter,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause the spectacle, energy, drive, and the music will carry you through the piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greater Victoria\u00a0Shakespeare Festival
\nVarious days and times,\u00a0Thursday, July 5\u00a0to Saturday, August 4
\nVarious prices,\u00a0Camosun College Lansdowne campus and Saxe Point Park
\nvicshakespeare.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 \u201cThe treatment of women, our perspective on colonialism, and our perspective on race are different,\u201d says Haberlin. \u201cI definitely bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-june-13-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16045,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043\/revisions\/16045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}