David Glass’s TEMPEST

As we come to the final production of KL Shakespeare Players’ 15th anniversary year, we would like to invite you and your students to DAVID GLASS’ TEMPEST, one of the most distinctive and engaging productions in our repertoire.

First premiered at klpac in 2019, the production was devised with UK physical theatre pioneer David Glass. It began with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but what emerged from the devising process is not a conventional staging of Shakespeare’s play.

The production keeps the central framework and key characters: Prospero and his daughter Miranda live on an island with Caliban and Ariel, until Antonio, Sebastian and Ferdinand arrive following a shipwreck. From there, however, the story takes its own unexpected direction, with a very different context, new relationships, twists and surprises.

With just seven actors and a simple set, the production uses movement, music, lighting and smoke to create a highly theatrical, cinematic experience.

For this revival, Lim Kien Lee directs, closely following the original staging created with David Glass in 2019.

THE STORY
Set in the last days of humanity, this production follows Prospero, an alchemist and shaman who holds the world’s knowledge in his beloved books.

He shelters his adolescent daughter Miranda on an isolated island, where she believes that her father and the island creatures, Caliban and Ariel, are the only inhabitants of the destroyed Earth.

Until she encounters other human beings.

A great tempest washes Antonio, Sebastian and Ferdinand onto Prospero’s island. As these survivors encounter Prospero, Miranda and the strange inhabitants of the island, long-buried secrets begin to surface.

So begins a story of humankind’s last days.