Date of Submission

Spring 2015

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Theater

Project Advisor 1

Jorge Cortiñas

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Without Prospero is a play I wrote over the course of my senior year. It culminated in a stylized staged reading in the Luma Theater at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts from March 27th to March 29th 2015. It featured Antonio Irizarry ’16, Max Green ’17, and Charlie Mai ’18. The play is a continuation on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, focusing on the character of Ariel just after the events of the play have concluded. Without Prospero explores power, loss, abandonment, and how we look at a servant/master relationship through the lens of traditional Shakespearean characters. The play became an amalgam of historical fiction, adaptation, traditional playwriting, and devised work, ultimately teaching me that no work, no matter how iconic, can never truly be finished.

With the progression of time and changing of ideals, I believe that my writing must transform as well. Every new project I start begins with me thinking about it 4-dimensionally. I start by considering how I might create a universality so the piece has the potential to still feel relevant and engaging years from now. Before I can even begin this process, the piece must hold a long lasting importance to me as well as an audience. I aim for my stories to reveal this truth and live in a captivating honesty. I work a great deal by taking inspiration, and adapting literature and plays that have this essence of being unfinished. I hope for my audience to approach my work as skeptically as possible; to ask questions about anything and everything of me that they aren’t sure of. As I write, I don’t look to innovate or be the first to tell a certain story. I write to tell the stories that I want to see. I adapt. I blend. I recycle. I do what I must in order to tell my version of the story.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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