Tickets are now available for The Tempest at Annex Theater! Click here to buy.

We’re now less than three weeks from opening, and this show is really looking like something special. The Biomechanics movement throughout is an exciting challenge to me as a performer, and I really believe that the audience will love the the stylized movement which provides a feeling of the island as being truly other-worldly. To give you some idea of what I mean, here’s a short video of Meyerhold’s original group performing samples of his Biomechanical technique – no need to turn up the sound, it’s silent.

Biomechanics is not the only thing making this production unusually challenging, either. We are working in a combination of a transverse staging (with people on either side of the stage, like a fashion runway) and the round, meaning that we will have audience members nearly all the way around us. I’ve worked this way before, but it’s always an extra challenge to find ways not only to be heard by people when you’re facing away from them, but to make their experience in that moment as fulfilling as if they could see my more expressive front side. We call this “acting with your back,” and it requires a level of physical and energetic awareness that isn’t required in a more standard, proscenium setting. Hopefully our months of careful staging will pay off, and the audience will always have something to look at.

There are plenty of other surprises in store for our audiences, and I don’t want to spoil them. So let me just encourage you to buy your tickets now for what will certainly be a unique retelling of this old tale!