Free Staged Reading of Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest

Join us for a viewing of the Postcolonial Play A Tempest (Une Tempête), livestreamed from FIAF Florence Gould Hall, NYC. UWM’s in-person livestream will be held in Curtin 175 at 6:30PM CST. Free and open to all. Masks required and no food nor drinks allowed.

Celebrated poet and activist Aimé Césaire strikingly adapts Shakespeare’s Jacobean play through a postcolonial lens. The characters and plot are largely unchanged. Prospero conjures a violent storm to drive his enemy’s ship ashore on the island on which he is exiled with his daughter. Césaire sets the story specifically on an island in the Caribbean and depicts Caliban and Ariel as black slaves to Prospero. Their opposing voices echo Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Written in the tumultuous 1960s, A Tempest uses intelligence, wit, and beauty to confront complex intersections of race, power, and anti-imperialism.

This reading will be directed by Lanise Antoine Shelley, the Artistic Director of Chicago’s House Theatre and the 2021-2022 Drama League Classical Directing Fellow. The company will feature Isabel Ellison, Carson Elrod, Kimberly Exum, Manoel Felciano, Enid Graham, Isaiah Johnson, Anthony Michael Lopez, Paul Niebanck, Jay O. Sanders, Derek Smith, and Anthony Venturini.

A Tempest marks Red Bull Theater’s return to our in-person REVELATION READINGS, our ongoing OBIE Award-winning series that offers audiences the unique opportunity to experience rarely produced classic plays performed by the finest actors working today.

Presented in collaboration with FRENCH INSTITUTE ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE (FIAF) and THE DRAMA LEAGUE. Leadership support provided by ART LAB | MEG FOFONOFF.

This event is presented in celebration of Black History Month.

Une Tempête, a play by Aimé Césaire
Based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Translated from the French by Philip Crispin

Performance: 2 hours