The Tempest: Rerigged

The Portland Players and Offshoot Collective present an original site-responsive promenade play cycle of three dynamic and nature-connected pieces that are inspired by the original Shakespearean text to be performed on the Isle of Portland as part of the b-side Fringe Festival. These three plays in a cycle have been written, co-created and performed by groups of the local Dorset community, led by a team of professional writers and SISATA

PART 1. WILDERLAND
Secret location to be announced, 10.30am
Writing mentor: Sarah Acton
Writers: K.B.Prince, Kate Thorpe, Kathy Oborne, Perwina Whitmore, Iveta Bognarova

Miranda is in her late teens, not many people around her, loves nature. Having been exiled years ago with her father, Prospero, Miranda and her friends Caliban and Ariel vow to protect their wild island home of Portland, while Prospero seems set on burning everything he sees to make gold. But as she becomes an adult, Miranda’s future is uncertain and Ariel and Caliban have their own battles to fight. This is Tempest from a different angle, through the lens of Miranda’s coming of age and encounters with the all-powerful island witch Sycorax. When a terrible storm breaks, it looks at where natural magic and power really lie, and how to survive uncertainty and unite in harmony with forces of nature within and without.

Featuring Portland’s Island Voices Community Choir and Weymouth’s Harmonics Choir

Part 2. THE RED MOON (adult themes 12A)
Secret location to be announced, 2pm
Writing mentor: John Foster
Writers: Ian Neale, Judi Moore, Charlie Peach, Ruth Hayes, Laura Smith

2080. Fifty years ahead into the tumultuous future the haunted Portland Island is the centre of a dystopian nightmare brought about by the burning planet and by Lady Prospera, mistress of misrule, the island’s mischievous yet iron ruler.She has brought blight and ruin upon the region through her delight in chaos and destruction, her unforgiving passion for violent confrontation and neverending wars. Portland Island is populated by hundreds of malign ghosts, all victims of Prospera, who wail at dusk in the ghost tunnels of the island. Prospera’s young daughter, Miranda, is haunted by the ghost of her dead brother who warns her of her impending murder at the hands of Prospera. Foreign governments have grown impatient with the out-of-control Prospera and working through Beethoven, a terrorist organisation, send an agent to secure her imminent demise. Yet who can eradicate the indestructible Prospera?

Part 3. THE BOOK OF SYCORAX
Secret location to be announced, 6.30pm
Writing mentor: Bhadra Subramanian
Writers: Eleanor Wallace, Jacki Lambert, Jackie Burgoyne, Sarah Partridge, Sinead Gannon

Something terrible is about to happen. Ariel the immortal sprite returns to the site of their most loathed adventure, and spins a forgotten tale from hundreds of years ago: The Book of Sycorax, the story of the birth of that ignoble beast Caliban, and his mother the all powerful but all too often forgotten Witch from Algiers. After a cruel curse is set in motion out of a righteous spite, a once pristine and undisturbed island is now beset by conquerors, dark magic, and cosmic trades that deal in the souls of both the dying and the unborn. Sycorax the witch must find a way to survive on this island, while also keeping safe the last thing she holds dear in this world- her monstrous baby, Caliban. Peel back the footnotes of the great bard’s great tale with us and discover a storm that has been raging harder and longer than any tempest the sea winds can whip up.

Featuring Portland’s Island Voices Community Choir and Weymouth’s Harmonics Choir