1 of 1 2 of 1 Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter . If you’ve been to the Vancouver Playhouse, there are probably certain spaces you’re used to seeing.
The entryway; the bathrooms; the hemispherical stage and shallowly-stepped seats that fan out like a clamshell. But what if you could explore parts of the theatre you’d never seen before—while experiencing a story you know in a whole new light? That’s what you can expect from Music on Main’s latest work, The Tempest Project , which premieres on July 17 at Vancouver’s brutalist performing arts venue. Audience members will be led through the bowels of the theatre—dressing rooms and hallways and stairwells and onto the stage—to find musicians playing new compositions inspired by Shakespeare’s last (and arguably strangest) solo play.
“One of the reasons I chose The Tempest is it continues to inspire artists today,” says David Pay, Music on Main’s artistic director. He cites Crystal Pite’s The Tempest Replica , Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed , and Thomas Adès’s 2004 operatic reworking as examples of recent fascination with the 17th-century tale of magic and family. “The topics that Shakespeare lays bare are colonialism, revenge, forgiveness.
He looks at the nature of love—of filial love, of love of a daughter—or hatred between brothers; he looks at power dynamics,” Pay continues. “ Succession was a big hit, but there was no new .