Arts & Events

New: Around & About--Theater: Berkeley's Inferno Theatre Stages 'The Tempest,' Free, in Hinkel Park"

Ken Bullock
Saturday July 23, 2016 - 12:07:00 PM

"If by your art, my dearest father, you have/Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them./The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,/But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheeck,/Dashes the fire out." 

(From the Director's Notes: "The tempest rages, expressing Prospero's uncontrollable anger ... the tempest itself a dramatic invention, aimed to ignite action and unlock the vortex of human passion right from the start.") 

"Shakespeare's plays are always taken seriously," said Guilio Perrone, founder, stage director and designer of Inferno Theatre, which will be staging 'The Tempest' for free outdoors at Hinkel Park over the next three weekends. "But there's another side to his work we want to bring out--the theatricality, a sense of improvisation; how the actor makes the piece their own " 

Perrone was reflecting on the making of Inferno's production, their third free summer show in the amphitheater at Hinkel Park, and their first alone after two productions (Heinrich von Kleist's 'Penthesilea' and The Bard's 'King Lear'), both directed by Perrone, in collaboration with Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, which has just closed their free production of Beaumarchais' 'Marriage of Figaro' at Hinkel. 

"It's almost as if there're two different plays or more," he continued. "The play of Alonzo and his brothers [the usuper Duke of Milan, cast ashore by the shipwreck brewed up by exiled Duke and sorceror Prospero]; that of Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano, the clowns, right out of Commedia; and the play of [the romance between] Miranda [Prospero's daughter] and Ferdinand [Alonzo's son]. ... Different parts of society, and they don't all meet until the end. There's truth in every group. And there's much left unresolved when the Europeans leave, separating themselves from this island populated with spirits ... We want to concentrate on those different--very different--aspects of human relationships. Miranda and Caliban grew up together on the island; they have stories together. She's not a lady of the court! She has to discover the [European] world that she lost, find it through catharsis. Even Prospero renounces magic, becomes a politician again--but before renouncing it, he unfolds his magic on the island" 

And the magic: "Dark, black magic, always a possibility ... not just about the spell but about becoming something else, enjoyment of the element." 

Perrone, who studied Commedia Dell'Arte in his native Italy, designing and directing plays and opera, and worked at Pontedera with the Grotowski Center there, came to California years ago and has directed the renowned Dell'Arte School of Physical Theater at Blue Lake, near Eureka, before moving to the Bay Area, working as a freelance designer up and down the coast--and founding Inferno Theatre six years ago, staging his play 'Galileo's Daughters' at the Berkeley City Club. "We started almost underground. Within three years, we'd worked a lot in the community, founded our Diasporas Festival [running the last three years at South Berkeley Community Church, Inferno's home] with other performing arts companies and performers, and started staging free shows at Hinkel Park. This will be our first year doing that alone." 

He reflected on Shakespeare's plays--after 'lear,' this is the second he's ever directed--and the life his company has found of its own:"Shakespeare had a troupe; we'd like to recreate a little of that feeling of a troupe. We'll have worked together for two months; a real troupe takes years to grow. But we got into the spirit of the theatricality. And of the spirit of the island, which is pure invention, magic, what moves the story around. 

"It's like going back to childhood, creating with your imagination. Theater is an experience--and this experience should appeal to grown-ups and also to kids, to their sense of discovery. A new generation's sense of metamorphosis, how one thing can become another. That stories can change." 

Perrone's written in his Director's Notes about his commitment and that of his players in 'The Tempest' to "investigate the destiny of the theater as theatricality's pushed to the limits, requiring the audience to abandon themselves to the magic of the island and its inhabitants." 

'The Tempest,' with Simone Bloch, Thomas Busk, Andrea Ciandro, Valentina Emeri, Trevor Guyton, Karina McLoughlin, Fiona Melia, Benoît Monin, Michael needham, Jack Nicolaus, David James Silpa, Tenya Spillman, Emily Stone, Vicki Victoria, Ian Wilcox ... 


John Hinkel Park, Saturdays & Sundays, July 23 to August 7, 4 p. m. (amphitheater opens at 3 for picnicking), 47 Somerset Place off Arlington. Free. infernotheatre.org