This week Austin Shakespeare opens The Tempest at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center.
Theatre is a collaborative art, coordinated in the best stagings by a precise schedule, time consuming preparation, and an accelerating rhythm as performance day comes near. The actors will fix our attention but the piece depends also upon decisions and actions of those we never see. For The Tempest the company and artistic director Ann Ciccolella are supported -- some might even say carried -- by the work of the stage manager, the dramaturg, designers, dressers, props handlers and stage hands.
A theatre buff finds it fascinating to watch those contributions coming together in final rehearsals. Last Friday after an escorted trip through the labyrinthine basement of the Long Center, ALT got to sit in the Rollins Theatre for the first melding of those arts. Lighting designer Jason Amato worked his light plot and plan through a full rehearsal.
The cast hardly missed a syllable, even as colors changed, pools of light materialized and then disappeared, and sometimes the action went forward in a penumbra. Shakespeare's intelligence and wit were embodied by the cast, many of them dressed as yet in temporary costume; Prospero's magic isle was defined by a simple wide circle with provisional backdrops. Much of the music was ready, either recorded or played live, but projected video effects for the fairy isle would not be included until the weekend.
