Festival Dramaturg Kee-Yoon Nahm spoke with director Chris Anthony about the upcoming production of The Tempest at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival (ISF). This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kee-Yoon Nahm (KN): This is your first time working with ISF, but I hear you have a connection with the Festival. Would you tell me about your background with Shakespeare and theatre in general?
Chris Anthony (CA): I grew up in St. Louis. I went to Saint Louis University for undergrad, and from there I started working at the St. Louis Black Repertory Company. But really, when people ask me why I started working in theatre, I think it is important for me to talk about my grandparents. They were very family oriented, but also community oriented. They always volunteered. I have an aunt who was Volunteer of the Year at the St. Louis United Way three times. So, there was always a spirit of community and service when I was growing up.
When I started working at the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, I worked on crew for the main stage, and I was in their touring company where we did plays about “big ideas.” Apartheid in South Africa had just ended. So, we did a play by a Chicago playwright about apartheid. After the performances, we would facilitate these intense conversations about race. We also had a play about teenagers and AIDS in the early ’90s, when it was only just occurring to people that teenagers were contracting HIV. And so, we had to facilitate conversations about safe sex. For me, community outreach and facilitating conversation were part and parcel of the art. There was no distinction between the message of the play and the conversations we had with people. It was all one fabric. I was fortunate to have that kind of training, where community involvement and service merges with the art.
Then I went to CalArts for graduate school because I wanted more training. I started working in the Community Arts Partnership office there. We had a partnership with a theatre in East LA, and I ended up working there for about 10 years. Also at CalArts, I met Cal Pritner, who founded the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. He was my Shakespeare teacher. I will admit, I was something of a Shakespeare skeptic at first. I was like a lot of actors who thought of Shakespeare as the broccoli of acting, as in: “Eat your vegetables. It is good for you. If you can do this well, people will respect you.” That sort of thing. But my work with Cal helped me embrace not just the technique, but the real people in Shakespeare’s plays. After I graduated with my M.F.A. in acting, I heard about this program in LA that needed somebody who could learn lines fast and was good with kids. So, I went to work as an emergency understudy at a program called Will Power to Youth at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, and I stayed there for 20 years as the education director. I spent a lot of time teaching and working in communities, trying to find the places where Shakespeare and social justice meet.
“For me, community outreach and facilitating conversation were part and parcel of the art. There was no distinction between the message of the play and the conversations we had with people. It was all one fabric.”
I used to say, “I do not work for Shakespeare, Shakespeare works for me.” I wanted to use Shakespeare as a tool for empowerment, but also understand the ways in which our larger society treats Shakespeare as a kind of social capital. Shakespeare is sometimes used as a way to sort people “in” and “out.” Who knows the plays and who does not? Who can catch the references? I was working with a lot of young people who were living below the poverty line. In many cases, they were recent immigrants from Central America or Korea. The students I worked with were really on the front lines of language because they were responsible for translating for their families. Sometimes they only spoke English at school because their neighborhoods were filled with people who spoke their home language. Some of them were learning their third language because they spoke their indigenous language at home, Spanish was their second language, and now they were learning English in school. So, it was a very linguistically rich environment. It was perfect for Shakespeare, because we were learning English as a second language when we were working on Shakespeare. Because I was steeped in that work, I started getting asked to do other things. Native Voices did an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and they came to us to form a partnership. We did all the professional development work and provided them with their matinee audiences. Eventually, I directed their adaptation of Measure for Measure set in an Indian boarding school. I also worked with Cornerstone Theatre Company and Fringe Benefits. Actually, people do not know this about Los Angeles, but there are a lot of arts activists there. It is because there are so many people who train all over the world and then come to LA for work.
KN: That is true. Actually, Native Voices began as a program at ISU before Randy Reinholz and Jean Bruce Scott founded the company. So, there is another connection! A lot of what you said about how Shakespeare works for you and not the other way around resonates with me. It is true that Shakespeare can turn into a form of social capital, since these plays are such a big part of American education and theatre culture. It is important to dismantle the privilege and elitism that sometimes come with Shakespeare even as we engage deeply with his plays. I am curious how your background in education and community activism influences your approach to a play like The Tempest.
CA: I think The Tempest helps us see the real human beings inside some very big ideas. When I read The Tempest, I always find myself thinking about big ideas like race, religion, and power. I think about where this play falls in the crux of American history. It was written right at the beginning of English colonization in North America. To be honest, I am also thinking about what happened in 2020, and the conversations we had writ large through the We See You, White American Theater movement. I have been thinking a lot about Shakespeare for white people. When I mentored graduate students in 2016, it occurred to me that there were things that I knew as a Black person that my white students had never thought about. And it was helpful for me to explain how we can think about these issues and frame things very directly and explicitly.
So, when I think about The Tempest, I think about Prospero as this man who was wronged and does other people wrong to exact his revenge. Shakespeare gives Prospero an opportunity to change—to see yourself for what you are and what you are doing, to be able to apologize and course-correct. But at the same time, I do not think the play does a great job of addressing the fact that Prospero believes in his right to dominion. And that is at the heart of so many of our issues around settler colonialism and race. I think that we often do not have opportunities to deconstruct whiteness—ask what the building blocks of white supremacy are. I think the idea of dominion is one. The idea that once somebody does you wrong, you can punish them forever is another. These ideas exist in The Tempest.
KN: That is a good point. In his other plays, we see Shakespeare ask incredibly deep questions about the nature of power and the inability to let go of it. We see it in plays like Macbeth or King Lear, which Shakespeare wrote before The Tempest. But compared to that, it is curious that Prospero’s dominance over the island is never questioned. It is as if the play is saying that Prospero deserves to be in control over everyone else’s lives because he was wronged a long time ago. He has so much awareness of everything that goes on in the island, but he does not seem to have the same degree of knowledge about his own self and motivations. Shakespeare did not write a scene where Prospero stops what he is doing and has a moment of introspection, like so many of his other characters do. He is a bit of an enigma, which opens space for interpretation for us.
CA: And I am grateful for that space. We should also remember that Prospero’s power is by nature derived from others. When I teach Shakespeare, I teach the Great Chain of Being, which is a hierarchy of all things in the world. There are a lot of presumptions that come with the Great Chain of Being. Men are superior to women, old people are superior to young people, and so on. It is such a clear articulation of the hierarchy that was built into everything in Shakespeare’s time, including his plays. There are so many things that are unquestioned that we need to question today.
KN: I would like to talk about what magic means in the world of The Tempest. If you hear the word “magic” without the full context of the play, you might think that magic is alluring and entertaining. But magic plays a part in the conversation about power and dominion we are having. Magic is the tool with which Prospero exerts power over everyone else on the island. Will you talk about how you see magic operating in the world of this play? How does the magic feel to you?
CA: I am hoping that the magic feels organic in our production. I think of the island itself as the source of magic that is being harnessed by Ariel and Prospero. As I see it, Prospero has the ability to cast spells and a limited ability to manipulate the elements. But when he needs something spectacular done, he turns to Ariel. I have also been thinking about language—the ways in which language comes with an entire mindset. The Great Chain of Being that I mentioned earlier has presumptions built into it, but we presume things through language that we are not even aware of. It is interesting to me that Prospero relies on language to use magic. He has studied magic through books. Dominion and magic come together for him so that the point of his magic is to control and torture others. He threatens Caliban and Ariel with torture at various points in the play.
KN: Going back to what you said about how the island itself is the source of magic, what do you think the island was like in the past? There are layers upon layers of colonial history on this island. Before Prospero arrived, there was Sycorax, who gave birth to Caliban. And Ariel and the other spirits were on the island even before that. What did the island look like when it was just them?
CA: The spirits serve Prospero, but they also have their own existence. I have been thinking a lot about when Caliban says that he knows how to curse Prospero with the language that he learned from him. The verb “curse” can mean expletives and bad language, but it can also mean to cast spells and send bad energy somebody’s way. That is what Caliban apparently got from Prospero’s language. So, what kind of language did Caliban have before that? How old is Caliban, and how much was he raised by the island as opposed to Sycorax or Prospero?
KN: The other characters and the Eurocentric Great Chain of Being treat Caliban as subhuman—he is called a monster in the play. But it is interesting that he also has some of the most beautiful language in the play. Caliban’s famous “The isle is full of noises” speech gives the audience a sensory description of the island that they have no idea about until they hear it from him. At the beginning of the play, we only hear about the island from the Europeans’ perspective, where it is a barren place far from civilization, or even a prison for Prospero. But then, Caliban’s language shows us that this island has a life of its own.
CALIBAN
(The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2)
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.
Shifting gears, I have a question about the ending of the play. Even though it seems like The Tempest wraps everything up in a nice bow at the end with Prospero forgiving those who wronged him, I wonder if Prospero himself should be forgiven for taking over the island and torturing its inhabitants. That is the big question I have about the play.
CA: That is why I appreciate our conversations about what the island was before Prospero arrived. I do feel that Prospero must be held accountable for his actions. And the mature thing for him is to apologize, rather than say that he is entitled to do what he wants because he is owed something. I am looking forward to seeing what we do with Caliban at the end of the play once we begin rehearsals.
KN: I also remember our past conversations about Miranda and Ferdinand. I think it is fair to say that they are not the most memorably written characters. They are just your archetypal young lovers who get married at the end. But you had said something about the generational aspects of claiming and ceding power. Would you talk about that and offer some new ways to think about these characters?
CA: I see Miranda and Ferdinand as Gen Z. The actors are, at least. Miranda, having grown up there, has a different idea about the island than Prospero. She also objects to the suffering of the people on the ship. Ferdinand is also of a different generation than his father, Alonso, as well as the other shipwrecked nobles. Yes, he is being raised to become the King of Naples one day. But these characters belong to a new generation with new thoughts. In the context of this world of dominion and domination, Ferdinand does not chafe at the idea of having to do work. He is willing to go along with the new situation he is in. I think they represent an opportunity for a new generation to break the curse and to find love in true friendship. At least they are not plotting rebellion like most of the other characters on the island!
KN: That is a great way to think about these characters. Also, Miranda is learning about the whole world beyond the island in a day. She meets all these new people and learns all these new things about her background that she did not know before. And when she is faced with all of that, she does not get overwhelmed. The character grows up in such a short amount of time.
CA: Yes, and I think it all hinges on her willingness to embrace something new.
KN: “O, brave new world that has such people in it,” she says. Since Miranda is Prospero’s daughter, she is also in a unique position to help Prospero undo everything he has done. She is the glimmer of hope that Prospero might repent and be forgiven for his wrongdoings.
CA: I think she shows him the way. This is a brand-new thought, but maybe it helps Prospero to see Miranda embrace change so rapidly. Yes, he needs her to marry the Prince of Naples and form this political alliance. But I am looking forward to seeing the relationship between Prospero and Miranda develop over the course of the play. He could be moved by her infectious enthusiasm.
KN: That is interesting. Perhaps Prospero realizes during the play that Miranda does not need protecting anymore. Prospero has protected his daughter her whole life. But he sees that she has the capacity to grasp these new situations that come to her. He does not have to use magic to create a picture-perfect world for her to live in. She can explore the world on her own. This is all very exciting. I look forward to exploring these questions in the room and sharing them with the audience later in the summer. Thank you.
CA: Thank you for this. It helps me figure out what I will say to the actors. I am glad to be of service.
“I used to say, ‘I do not work for Shakespeare, Shakespeare works for me.’ I wanted to use Shakespeare as a tool for empowerment, but also understand the ways in which our larger society treats Shakespeare as a kind of social capital.”
