- Subtitled in English
Director: Vito Taufer
Adaptation of the play: Vesna Đikanović, Vito Taufer
Dramaturge: Vesna Đikanović
Set designer: Andreja Rondović
Costume designer: Alan Hranitelj
Music: Damir Martinović Mrle, Ivanka Mazurkijević
Video designer: Miran Brautović
Lighting designer: Vesna Kolarec
Choreography: Leo Mujić
Speech advisor: Đurđa Škavić
Adaptation to the Dalmatian dialect: Senka Bulić
Stage manager: Stella Švacov Miletić
Assistant costume designers: Ana Trischler, Ana Roko
Assistant lighting designer: Ivan Luščić-LIIK
Illusionist, props: Leonardo Krakić
Technical team
Antonio Ljubojević, light programmer
Domagoj Klasić, board operator
Rela Petric, video operator
Tomislav Kotrla, lighting technician
Marko Drnić, lighting technician
Nikša Vukosavić, followspot operator
Maroje Puhić, followspot operator
Marko Mijatović, master electrician
Sound: Marin Lucianović, Zlatko Milec, Roko Roca, Ivica Bolkovec, Lovro Zagorec
Costumers: Ana Roko, Petra Bobić, Suzana Gabelica, Ana Ljubičić
Hair and Makeup Stylists: Ivana Pleša, Darija Hrgović
Carpenters: Pero Ćorić, Senad Čobić, Tomo Glegj, Nedjeljko Špikula, Mario Havrin Gorenc, Tomislav Hrastovac
Stagehands:Lovro Zagorac, Ivica Bolkovec, Mario Havrin Gorenc, Tomislav Hrastovac
Transportation and assembling of the stage: Lovro Zagorac, Ivica Bolkovec and students
Technical Manager: dipl. ing. Vinko Dubović
Prospero, the right Duke of Milan: Luka Peroš
Caliban, a savage and deformed Slave: Franjo Dijak
Ariel, an airy Spirit: Adrian Pezdirc
Miranda, daughter to Prospero: Ružica Maurus
Ferdinand, son to Alonso, the King of Naples: Lovro Rimac
Stephano, a drunken Butler: Siniša Ružić
Trinculo, a drunken Butler: Sven Šestak
Gonzalo, an honest old Counsellor: Filip Šovagović
Alonso, King of Naples: Dušan Gojić
Antonio, brother to Prospero, the usurping Duke of Milan: Marinko Leš
Sebastian, brother to Alonso the King of Naples: Robert Španić
Master of a Ship: Edi Jertec
Mariners, Fairies, Spirits, Masks: Bojan Beribaka, Marko Capor, Matia Pijević, Denis Tomić
Musicians
Damir Josipović drums
Darko Terlević guitar, piano
--
The almost uninhabited island of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as a kind of terra nullius, is a place of endless possibilities for those who agree to inhabit it. In this no man’s land, subject to its own laws and the laws of artistic illusion, Shakespeare, in what is considered to be his last play, puts each character through extreme and laboratory-refined situations, leaving them to face their essential nature, thereby examining the capacities of human nature and the nature of its civilisational knowledge.
Prospero's island can be considered a model of human society, a microcosm of all fundamental social relations. Stripped and stripping, it is revealed as one great food chain of Power. It is clear in this context that there is no difference between a good king and a tyrant. And that history, ever since that moment when it became exclusively human, is always the same, eternal struggle, with the power of the human mind writing the same, mostly cruel history over and over again. It is also clear that human thought is aimed at conquering, and that colonisation with knowledge is built into education. That violence is global, and education for violence is the only way to ensure existence. Everything that Homo sapiens achieved, he used as leverage against life and nature, creating conflict. Our cultural memory has moved on long ago from the enthusiasm for the idea of conquering from the age of Prospero's books for Renaissance magi and his scientific knowledge of appropriating the forces of nature. From the age when human thought was lagging far behind the available means of realization, all the way to technological achievements and apocalyptic visions of the enormous potential for destruction, when we feel the tension rising in our ‘civilised’ reality. And the question of what this reality unfolding before us is, with the universal applicability of science and omnipresence of scientific rationality. When the fact that science is dominated by force and profit, by the principle of appropriation as its cornerstone, becomes another moral problem of civilisation. When magic is reinterpreted by the magic of branding, while we are enchanted by models of economic efficiency and dedicated to cracking the human code. When at the same time this age can interpret a two-thousand-year-old ethical model as a consumer model based on the consumption of ethics, and its corresponding narrative of forgiveness as an idea that, with a well-thought-out strategy, successfully uses its consumer potential.
Our receptive and media-oriented age can imagine renouncing books of magic in order to return to secular books, and Prospero’s mental and spiritual process as the realization that he cannot change anything. His magic wand has not changed a thing, the world is violence and struggle for power, as it always was. The food chain of Power is unbreakable, it is a constant of the human race in every society, while ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ The mechanism of history is unchanging, it always returns to the same point. This is where we are, from Shakespeare to this day.
Realising this, Prospero, once exiled, simply decided to reintegrate and rule. And he wants to be considered a ruler. This Prospero will therefore not lead, nor take anyone, except for two young people who are amazed by this world, the ‘brave new world’ which for them is not yet painted in Huxley's colours. He can neither be the director of morality, nor is his island Utopia. Catharsis is not possible here. Being aware of this, he knows he needs to start all over again.
The Tempest is open to many interpretations. Shakespeare's play was initially performed as part of the court festivities, while Dryden's version dominated the performance history later on. Our adaptation, in line with the principles of Shakespearean theatre, is primarily focused on the relationship with the contemporary, real and living world, which today throws at us the burning question of how we understood the conditions of our survival. We were also interested in the context of the original performance, as part of the festivities surrounding the wedding of Princess Elisabeth, daughter of James I; the form of commedia dell'arte whose strong influence is present in the entire structure of The Tempest, as well as in the Shakespearean palette of characters; an inseparable mixture of the poetic, cruel and grotesque, because beauty and ugliness in Shakespeare's and our own reality are only a matter of point of view.
Vesna Đikanović
--
--
We would like to thank the Zagreb Puppet Theatre, the Gavella City Drama Theatre, the Marin Držić Theatre, and the Lokrum Reserve for their help in the realisation of the programme.
--
