Tempest Project

Almost a year after his death, Romaeuropa Festival pays homage to maestro Peter Brook, one of the most emblematic and revolutionary figures in the history of contemporary theatre and one of the artists who have made a mark on the course of the festival. Tempest Project, his final reinterpretation of the famous Shakespearean text that he challenged several times in his repertoire, seems to condense aesthetics and practices dear to the English director: «The storm is an enigma, it is a fairy tale in which nothing seems to be taken literally and if you stay on the surface its hidden quality escapes you», he wrote in the director’s notes together with director, playwright and assistant Marie-Hélène Estienne. A word that occurs very often in the play is the word “freedom”, yet, as always with Shakespeare, it is not used in an obvious way, instead becoming a suggestion that echoes throughout the play: Caliban desires his freedom, Ariel also desires a different kind of freedom and for Prospero it is imperative to liberate himself from the task he has set- revenge and all that follows- and which prevents him from being free. In a simple, yet powerful scene (common in Brook’s extraordinary theatrical vocabulary), Tempest Project confronts the concept of freedom by bringing together five performers of different nationalities to challenge the meaning of the text in search of the ardent mystery and universal values enclosed in it.