Chapter 2 - Dominic Dromgoole’s The Tempest (2016): Labour, Technology and the Gender of Theatrical Magic

Summary

By the time Dromgoole’s production of The Tempest opened in the SWP in February 2016, many repeat audience members at the venue were expecting to experience the ‘divided forms of looking’ Escolme had noted in her review of the first season, and had chosen their seats accordingly. Primed by Karim-Cooper and Tosh’s programme note and by how much they had paid for their tickets, even audience members who had no prior experience of the space were made aware of the uniqueness of their viewpoint. This was especially the case if they had cast even just a cursory look at audience comments on the Shakespeare’s Globe website about the production of The Winter’s Tale which preceded The Tempest by just a few weeks: there, many audience members expressed dismay at the sightlines for the unveiling of Hermione’s statue in the recess of the discovery space. ‘Hiding the … all important reveal of the play in a recess was unforgiveable I feel and we felt unnecessarily excluded from the action’, complained Hermione1665.