Colonizing in a Tempest
Hello and Good Morning to all you Shakespeare fans, historians, and fellow out of the box thinkers! Today I will describe how my class managed to take two very different topics and combine them into one. A match made in heaven (or whatever you believe in).
We started out by reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It’s a story about Prospero who was a duke of Milan, but he began to study magic. He became so focused in magic that his brother was able to tale over his dukedom. The new duke banished him and his daughter Miranda from Milan, into the open ocean in a small life boat. The two washed up on the shore of some island. While there, prospero enslaved the inhabitants, they were a spirit called aerial, and Caliban (the son of a witch called Sicorax).
Years later, he created a storm with his magic, the storm (aka a Tempest) sinks the ship of all those who betrayed him. He got aerial to bring them all to shore so that he can get his revenge. His daughter Miranda fell deeply in love with Ferdinand, the prince of Milan. In the end, prospero forgave all those who did him wrong, and freed his slaves. Ferdinand and Miranda get married, and they all return to Milan. Prospero gets his dukedom back, and rules more readily.
On another note, we also learned about colonialism in New France and what that looked like. We learned about fur trading, the fight between the HBC and the NWC. We learned the story of the fall of New France, about the society and lives of those in New France, and about “the steps to colonialism”.
As I was learning and reading and discussing and understanding both the Tempest and New France, I began to notice the great many similarities between the two. It is actually very likely that Shakespeare wrote the piece based off of what he saw going on in the world in New France at the time.
So… what did we do this time?
Took The Tempest and based the play in New France, focusing in on whichever section our group was given to focus on. Then we would take the new version and turned the highlights of the storyline and turned it into a tableau presentation.
My amazing group consisted of Jason, Jackson, and Grace. Check out their blogs for more insight of what happened. We had the section of fur trading to fit into Act Four of the Tempest.
For the performance, I got to play prospero, Jason played trinculo and Ferdinand, Jackson played Miranda and Caliban, and grace was in charge of the lighting, sound, and playing the backdrop. They were a great group, and think that together we created something worth remembering! Not that I could forget if I wants to, I learned so much, and love the stage!
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