HUMN 303 Week 4 Essay – Play Analysis

Sample Answer

William Shakespeare is a great playwright of his time with his artistic works; poems and plays, still captivating and entertaining various audiences around the world based on the themes they contain. Among Shakespeare’s most famous plays is The Tempest, which he wrote around 1610. Many consider The Tempest as among his last masterfully crafted artworks where he explored uncomfortable aspects of human feelings and offered his audience a humorous relief.

The Tempest explores revenge, magic, political deceit, intimidation, and arranged unions to get power (Shakespeare, 2021). Set in a ship and depicting the realities of Italian politics while adding mystery and magic, the play continues to have adaptations in theater today. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the play, which was performed by the Savage Rose Classical Theater in 2014, for all audiences.

Staging, Lighting, costumes, and Character of the Performance

The staging of the play by Savage Rose Classical Theater can be described as simple and depicts the original setting, where a significant part revolves around the crew weathering the storm. The stage comprised two stairways that flanked an entrance to the right and left. The team creates a convincing image as the deckhands attempt to save the ship from sinking. The lighting is dim or dark as it offers the audience a mysterious ambiance that Shakespeare liked to create in his plays (Hatchuel et al., 2020). The dim lighting also keeps the audience’s attention on the stage as it creates an illusion of being aboard the ship in a storm. As such, lighting was brilliantly used to recreate the time of the day and weather as well as translate the scenic mood.

The company used meek costumes to suit the time or era when the play was initially performed (Savage Rose, 2014). While the costumes were meek, they were different, and this aided the visualization of each character on the stage. The characters’ performance was somehow eccentric as they were overly loud and exaggerated reactions in certain situations. The emphasis on the action and voice of the characters is a heritage of many classical theater schools, especially during Shakespeare’s time when most theaters were open and one had to shout to reach the farthest row of the audience (Dinç, 2023). The characters also speak modern English since English has considerably changed over the past several centuries, and this leaves a significant imprint on the performance.

Type of Mood and Tone Created by the Performance

The Savage Rose Classical Theater performance of the play creates various tones and moods through actions and decisions that the characters make. At the start, the characters depict sorrowful and forgiving tones emanating from feelings of vengeance. The play’s mood swings and tonal changes are neoclassical (Nareerak, 2023). For instance, when two of the main characters fall in love, the tone is solemn and almost hushed. Some elements of anger also arise as illustrated by Prospero’s chastising Ariel’s quest for freedom. However, as issues and transgressions are settled, the play’s tone and mood improve to depict joy with comic effects that tickle the audience.

Performance Parts

Most parts of the play as staged by Savage Rose are easier to understand through performance. For instance, private conversations between the characters were easy to understand. These parts were exaggerated and had comic nuances that made them enjoyable. Ariel’s performance in luring Ferdinand into Prospero’s liar is easy to understand (Savage Rose, 2014). He speaks in a clear and audible voice and the scene highlights his wonder and confusion (Nareerak, 2023). The stage presence of the two made it also easy to understand the play as they commanded attention. The play resonates with the audience as it has fewer characters and limited background sounds.

Feelings about the Performance

I feel that this performance was brilliantly crafted by the crew or the company to depict the original themes while marrying them with the realities of today. For instance, the characters did not use Shakespearean English but focused on transmitting the core message to the audience. For instance, Prospero says, “The cloud-capped towers, the magnificent palaces, the solemn temples, the big globe itself, Yea, everything which it inherits, shall disintegrate” (Shakespeare, 2023). The key takeaway from the play is the theatrical visualization which is superior to the text version. The visualization assists in conveying the atmosphere, the characters’ emotions, and the mood of the play. The play does not leave one to the imagination as the text and this is essential to understanding its core themes.

Conclusion

The Tempest as crafted by William Shakespeare is a play with several tragedies and consequences as illuminated by the main characters through the performance by the Savage Rose Classical Theater. The performance of this play is brilliantly done to reflect the various issues as depicted by the author; from emotions to revenge and attempts by the characters to emphasize core messages. Watching the performance was refreshing and helped improve my understanding of the original play in the text.

References

• Dinç, D. B. (2023). Linguistic Colonialism in the Tempest by William Shakespeare. Journal of Academic Social Science Studies, 16(96) 91-106.
  DOI http //dx.doi.org/10.29228/JASSS.71928
• Hatchuel, S., & Vienne-Guerrin, N. (Eds.). (2020). Shakespeare on screen. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press. Marrouchi, M. (2020). The enigmatic nature of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. International
  Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2(1) 142-154. DOI 10.36892/ijlls.v2i1.205
• Nareerak, P. (2023). William Shakespeare Reflections on the four sublime states of mind in the Tempest. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 13(2) 494-500. DOI https //doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1302.26
• Shakespeare, W. (2021). The Tempest (play on Shakespeare). ACMRS Press.
  Savage Rose Classical Theater (2014 July 11). The Tempest – Full Play [Video]. YouTube.