2026 Shakerspeare Playbill - The Tempest

12 Returning to St. Louis Shakespeare Festival feels, to me, like coming home. Years ago, I had the great joy of directing Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream here in Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park—a place that has shaped my life in profound ways. There is something about gathering in this space, under the open sky, with a community of artists and audiences, that reminds me why we tell stories at all. This ground holds memory, imagination, and possibility. It feels especially meaningful to return with The Tempest. Often considered Shakespeare’s only original plot, and likely the last play he wrote on his own, The Tempest comes from a period late in his life when he was experimenting with form. It doesn’t fit neatly into comedy or tragedy, but instead exists in a liminal space between the two—what we now call a romance. It is a play that feels both grounded and dreamlike, familiar and strange. It feels, in many ways, like a farewell…and a beginning. At its heart, this is a story about transformation. A group of people, each carrying their own histories, wounds, and desires, find themselves shipwrecked on an island at a moment of profound transition. Something in the air—something unseen, almost magical—begins to stir them. Old grievances rise to the surface. Power is tested. Love is discovered, distorted, and, in some cases, redeemed. And through it all, the question lingers: how do we let go of the past in order to step into a new future? The island itself is a paradox. A utopia—literally, “no place.” A world suspended between reality and imagination, between Italy and Tunis, between memory and possibility. In our production, we have leaned into that sense of timelessness. Rather than locating the story in a specific moment, we’ve focused on character and humanity—inviting you to meet these people not as figures of a distant past, but as reflections of ourselves. Music plays a central role in this telling. Our company is filled with musicians, and we’ve embraced the idea that the island itself has gifted these characters with sound—songs and instruments that feel as though they’ve washed ashore alongside them. Music becomes a kind of magic: a way of remembering, of connecting, of transforming. DIRECTOR’S NOTE 16