Miranda

Based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’
by Theatro Poria
directed by Oskaras Korsunovas

It seems like a fairytale for adults with a lust for power and conquering it. This is ‘Miranda’, a performance directed by Oskaras Korsunovas. The inventive Lithuanian director is winning the wager he made by turning the Shakespearean postscript – the performance is based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ – into a charming theatrical treatise on the nature of power. This new reading of the play, which critics and audiences have characterised as the performance of a lifetime, allows us to see the mythical events that took place on Prospero’s island as “a repetition of the history of the world” – from a farcical perspective  in fact.

‘The Tempest’ is considered Shakespeare’s last play and it has been said that it is a poetic last will and testament, his farewell to the theatre, his philosophical and artistic autobiography. The central character, Prospero, the Duke of Milan, loses his throne when his brother Antonio usurps him and abandons Prospero and his daughter Miranda on the open sea to drown, but they end up on a desert island.

‘Miranda’, presented by Theatro Poria, takes us on a journey to the time just before the end of the Colonel’s dictatorship in Greece, when a father lives “stranded and exiled” in his own flat, with his daughter’s company. Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ provides them with entertainment, it is their recreation, a habit, while at the same time it becomes a confession, a torture and, ultimately, redemption. The Prospero-father character tries to tame the external tempest, however he cannot avoid the shipwreck within him. The Daughter-Miranda character is liberated, she defeats immobility, she dances the death of the swan.

Lithuanian director Oskaras Korsunovas draw from his own personal experience as a “subject” of the Soviet Union, and “uses” ‘The Tempest’ in order to speak about the manic desire for power. In an era of absolutism, their flat becomes an oasis, where intellectual resistance against the regime, against authority, is preserved. The director himself explains it: “I am most interested in Miranda in this play”, and he adds: “She has been considered mainly a naïve princess, however she is Prospero’s creation, she is Prospero’s soul. In the end, the creators used exile on desert islands to “raise” their own Mirandas”.

Miranda is a cell, a muzzle, a chain. She speaks about relationships of affection and interdependence. She speaks of fear, struggles and the will to live.

And this is more or less how, for all the reasons mentioned above and many others besides them, ‘Miranda’ tells a story about people trapped and condemned to live through their every day, and becomes a ‘Tempest’ capable of carrying the audience away with it.

Performance contributors
Translation: Nikos Chatzopoulos
Adaptation – Director: Oskaras Korsunovas
Actors: Laertis Malkotsis, Ioanna Pappa
Sets – Costumes: Dainius Liskevicius
Music: Antanas Jasenka
Lighting: Alekos Anastasiou
Performance dramaturg: Eri Kyrgia
Assistant set designer: Tina Tzoka
Assistant director: Eleni Michailidou