The Tempest Is Coming!
April 17,18,19 - 7:30 - 10pm
The Theatre Dept. at CCSU (Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT - www.theatre.ccsu.edu) is putting on a really big show. Prospero's book is a laptop, so the evening promises to be a magical multi-media event! Thom Delventhal, who teaches and directs at CCSU will be directing The Tempest and playing Prospero.
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Interview w/ Thom Delventhal, by Dan Delventhal

Dan: Thom, you’ve been talking about this show for a while now, and I remember a few key points you made, like this is one of Shakespeare’s greatest works, perhaps one of his last, and also the unique choice you’ve made to be part of the show yourself, playing the role of Prospero. You’ve mentioned how excited you are to play such a monumental role, with so much import from the master himself and how you are going to juice the show up with creative use of music and video. I don’t remember much, but I remember the energy and enthusiasm, and of course so much of your past work, so this is a show I personally won't miss! Why would others want to catch the show?

 
Thom: You used the word juice, there will definitely be an abundance of that. The fact that its in Welte, a huge theatre—1900 seats and amazingly receptive to dynamic energy production, and that we are taking this multimedia approach-- The phrase Prospero’s books has been made famous by the title of a Peter Greenaway movie, the books are largely the source of Prospero’s power. And this became our point of departure--Prospero’s book is a laptop. “So is his magic real or imagination?” the designers asked. “Yes.” I answered. His magic is as expansive and as limited as the internet, but he has Ariel. She is a spirit, a living electric current through which he can “enter the matrix” so to speak. With the combined explosive energy of all the actors in the show (there is nothing like live theatre), and with the music--live and taped, the video(the audience is surrounded by 4 screens resembling sails), and in that tremendously vibrant space, I think this will look and feel amazing. It should be a sumptuous feast for the senses and emotions!

Dan: You normally teach acting and only direct the shows, but you are also playing a lead role along with your students this time. Why?

Thom: Well, I never really intended to be a teacher. But I started having kids so soon. And I've managed to have some rewarding professional experience as well as earn and maintain my equity card around all of it. I keep teaching, though, cause I learn so much. And One of the things I've learned is, I'm a really good actor. I learned as a teacher of acting, that I am really good at acting, and I realized that I am first and foremost an actor. That’s what God made me. I can be the best teacher for my students by playing a role. Doing the things I ask them to do. As a director and a teacher, I place myself in the “role” of the person I’m directing or teaching.  I imagine myself as them, that’s how I naturally work, and how I can best advise or direct them. So I am taking this final step to actually be in the show.  I can give my students more by doing the role. So that rather than telling them to risk, or to dig deeper, they see me doing it, they know I wouldn’t ask anything of them that I’m not willing to do myself... So far so good. Everyone is having a totally unique experience, and everyone is enjoying it; we are going through it together, walking the walk together. It has been an extraordinary amount of fun, I must say.

Dan: So why did you choose the Tempest as your production?

Thom: I wish I had a better reason for this, but it was intuition. Actually the entire faculty had agreed that we would do Hamlet. At a faculty meeting where we were finalizing the season, I suddenly knew that I--for the good of my students and I, and the department-- had to get on the boards again. And I knew this was a play with a role where I could get away with the age difference between me and my students.

I blurted out, “I don’t want to do Hamlet, I want to do the Tempest, and I want to play Prospero”. I am blessed to work with such a great crew of people, that after a brief moment of shock, and a pause, they all said, with genuine enthusiasm, “Okay then, that’s what we’ll do!”

Thom Delventhal, Prospero, Ben McLaughlin, The Botswain, in The Tempest

Dan: I have always considered you to be a bit of an expert on Shakespeare work and performing it, would you agree with this? What kind of background do you have with it?

Thom: The word expert scares me a little bit. I have definitely been blessed to spend a lot of time working with Shakespeare. I have also been blessed with a new faculty member Sheila Siragusa, who has studied, um, there is a school of thought, I am not sure, where it originated, but we study the first folio for clues about what Shakespeare’s original intentions actually were. She has led a couple of rehearsals and she and I have had a couple of tremendous creative conversations sparking off each other. But one of the things we talked about is that we have both seem to have been blessed with insight into his language. Neither of us ever went through that awkward period of feeling like his language was foreign, so right away in high school, when I read Comedy of Errors for the first time; he opened windows into amazing worlds for me. And since then I have been blessed to study him in undergrad and grad school, to have read many of his plays on my own and to have performed in 15 - 20 productions, with some pretty tremendous artists such as Mark Rylance, the former Artistic Director of The Globe Theatre in London and Mladen Kiselov, the former Artistic Director of The Bulgarian National Theatre in Sophia.

 
Dan: You mentioned that this might have been his final work, and it may in fact be one of his best. Can you talk about that?

Thom: Well, controversies about authorship aside, scholars believe this to be the last play he wrote alone. I feel so powerfully the yearning of a mature artist to return to his family.

He had conquered London, dominated the stage for years and Stratford is a long journey. It must have been difficult to balance his profession and his family. His son had drowned at age 10, perhaps he was away when it happened. His relationship with his wife and daughters was likely strained, Just as Prospero’s is with Miranda. I think the best work is personal. I’m struggling a bit trying to balance career and family. It’s really nice to feel that I can work on something that helps me exercise my own personal perspective while examining that of the playwright’s. There’s also the freedom of the language. After over 30 plays, Shakespeare really developed a sense of play in “The Tempest.” That’s a lot of fun.

 
Dan: What is the play about?

  Danielle See (in foreground) & Kate Bunce, as Ariel

Thom: The plot is that a very learned and accomplished magician, Prospero, has an opportunity to revenge certain crimes that were perpetrated against him 12 years ago. But what the play is really about is power, forgiveness and about the way that we hold grudges and choose to dwell in our disasters, rather than celebrate the goodness that’s before us. Prospero has almost lost his daughter because he is so obsessed with revenge. And by the end of the play he realizes that he has to forgive all of those people who have wronged him and that true power can only be acquired through a balanced heart.

I have seen a lot of productions of the Tempest where Prospero’s amazing power as a magician is highlighted and his relationship with his daughter is depicted as ideal, as if there is nothing wrong. But when you examine the scenes between he and his daughter, there are signs of contention. She is a 15 year old girl and her need to be acknowledged as her own person – as an adult--is present in the text. When you consider what he does to her… Ostensibly, he has arranged a wonderful marriage for her, but he tricks her into falling in love with a man she doesn’t know. In doing so, he exhibits an extraordinary lack of respect for her autonomy as a person. In this production we depict the result of his obsessively controlling parental energy by having two actors play Miranda. Because he is so controlling she has actually split into two people, one being the dutiful daughter and the other being the rebel. When he learns the grace of forgiveness, the two halves of her personality re-unite. He also has to forgive himself, and admit that the heinous creature Caliban is actually his son. Which is kind of interesting in rehearsal because he is being played by my son, Zach Delventhal.

Dan: So although a lot of theatre is light and funny, this sounds like a visit to a therapist and minister. Is this what Shakespeare’s always about?

Thom: The simple answer to that is yes. One of the reasons Shakespeare has such enduring power, is that he has an understanding of human nature, that… is unrivaled.

As with any of his plays, when you look below the surface, you find an extraordinarily complex storm of chaotic thoughts and passions. But the spirit world does keep this play light. Their freedom and energy and sense of play gives a very real feeling of magic in that space. And of course, Shakespeare always balances the complexity with some fun. In the case of the Tempest, the monster Caliban hooks up with a jester and a butler and they go on a drinking binge. This provides some great comic relief.

Dan: How did the students respond to having you play a role in the show?

Thom: I am sure there a few thoughts and feelings that I don’t ever hear or see, but from what I perceive, they feel really excited that they get to watch me explore in the ways that I’m always telling them that they must. And they’re excited to exchange ideas with me, I, I really ... the essence of theatre is in the word Ensemble, and this basically means that no individual is as important as the group, and I strive to create a genuine atmosphere of ensemble in the rehearsal space. So there is an extraordinary sense of trust and lively exchange – we know that we can take extraordinary physical and emotional risks, because everyone in the Ensemble will support every other member of the Ensemble in whatever happens. It’s a rare thing. I don’t think that many people get to experience something like that in their lifetime.

Dan: Speaking of rehearsal, you mentioned some exercises which spawned what I picture as childlike mayhem and play with some really intense vulnerability and emotional experiences shared by all. What was that all about?

Thom: We were exploring the relationship amongst the spirits and what exactly a spirit is and how one creates a character-bio for a fairy. And we researched a lot of different cultures. We tried to understand the belief system, for example, in a Native American culture when a shaman will enter a trance and become a spirit for the people. And then I employed some exercises originated by a man named Michael Chekhov, intended to bring the actor to a place where they can physically explore the realms of their own imagination. We had spirits that were part ant, ahhh, part frog, dragon, and there was a hierarchy amongst the 10 of us, ahh…  then I put on some music that I had selected ahead of time--music has a power to go immediately deeply inside of us and release our passion and our imagination-- and I simply asked them to discover the time in their lives as spirits when they experienced their greatest delight. And the room… it… it built slowly, but after about 3 or 4 minutes, it erupted and there was such an energy of delight and playfulness that the stage managers at one point were bouncing up and down in their chairs with looks of total joy on their faces – clapping their hands like children watching what was going on.

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