A Tempest Will  Be Presented In Person, Livestream and Video On Demand

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 7:30 at the FIAF Florence Gould Hall,  55 E 59 A Tempest will  be presented in person, livestream and Video On Demand. Available online through Sunday, March 6, 2022

Celebrated poet and activist Aimé Césaire strikingly adapts Shakespeare’s celebrated Jacobean play through a postcolonial lens. The characters and plot are largely unchanged. Prospero conjures a violent storm to drive his enemy’s ship ashore on the island on which he is exiled with his daughter. Césaire’s island is located specifically in the Caribbean and Caliban and Ariel, depicted here as black slaves to Prospero, are centralized. Their opposing voices echo Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Written in the tumultuous 1960s, A Tempestconfronts complex intersections of race, power, and anti-imperialism with intelligence, wit, and beauty. This reading is directed by Lanise Antoine Shelley, the Artistic Director of Chicago’s House Theatre and the 2021 Drama League Classical Directing Fellow.

The company will feature Isabel Ellison, Carson Elrod, Kimberly Exum, Manoel Felciano, Enid Graham, Isaiah Johnson, Anthony Michael Lopez, Paul Niebanck, Jay O. Sanders, Derek Smith, and Anthony Venturini.

A Tempest marks Red Bull Theater’s return to our in-person Revelation Readings, our ongoing OBIE Award-winning series that offers audiences the unique opportunity to experience rarely produced classic plays performed by the finest actors working today. This will be the first time that we have Livestreamed an in-person event.

Presented in collaboration with FRENCH INSTITUTE ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE (FIAF)and THE DRAMA LEAGUE. Leadership support provided by ART LAB | MEG FOFONOFF.