Doran’s and Taymor’s Tempests: Digitalizing the Storm, a Dialogue between Theatre and Cinema

In 2017 on the Barbican stage, London, director Gregory Doran presented a very daring production of The Tempest. Working hand in hand with Intel Pentium, he created an outstanding set made of digital images that would give the vivid impression that the boatmen were actually diving in the depth of the stage during the shipwreck. Though extremely challenging, such a process whereby artificial images and theatrical immediacy were combined, was not new. Virtual technology had already been used in Julie Taymor’s film adaptation starring Helen Mirren (Prospera [The spelling of the Shakespearean name—Prospero—was changed into Prospera to fit the female gender]) and Ben Whishaw (Ariel) in 2010. Both productions had received mixed critical response as the poetical momentum of the script sometimes vanished to the benefit of very powerful images. Borrowing concepts developed in Marguerite Chabrol’s and Tiphaine Karsenti’s Théâtre et cinéma : le croisement des imaginaires and Steve Dixon’s Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance Performance Art, and Installation, the following paper questions the way such cinematic artefact influences the reception of Shakespeare’s play today, and whether high‑tech, while solving the difficult mise en scène of the shipwreck, belies the efficiency (and sufficiency) of scenery‑words. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast both productions and see how artificial images increasingly dominate the Shakespearean stage in order to create a more spectacular illusion of the watery world, the bodies lost at sea and the metamorphoses of the décor. On a broader scale, what are the consequences of the “invasion” of cinematographic art and I.T. in theatre? How will it shape the evolution of Early Modern drama in future stage performances, beyond the borders of seas and oceans?