Metatheatrical Storms in Georges Lavaudant’s Une Tempête… (2010) and Oskaras Korsunovas’ Miranda (2011)

The world is a bare stage in Georges Lavaudant’s production of The Tempest (2010) and a cluttered flat in the Communist Gulag in Oskaras Koršunovas’s adaptation Miranda (2011). In spite of their highly different aesthetics, both directors construct the initial storm as a metatheatrical, artificial, extremely fragile device, built with the simplest, most trivial theatrical means which enables the on‑stage and off‑stage spectators to escape into embedded fictional time and space layers. This paper investigates the ways in which these “voyages”, controlled by an authoritarian figure, frame an intellectual, sometimes political play with the meanings and forms of Shakespeare’s text, which the off‑stage spectator will be asked to enjoy and decode.