Theatres of Instruction, Theatres of Learning and Shakespeare's Tempest

Abstract

In this document, Cozzi speaks of his internment in Chile in 1974 and the role that Shakespeare played in helping him to survive his ordeal and then in facilitating his emigration to Britain. In Cozzi's reading of the play, Prospero's pedagogy gives way to a ritualised theatricality that becomes a metaphor for the way learning may occur through dream, through hallucination, or through close encounters with death. Schafer sets this discussion in the context of a recent production of The Tempest by Tara Arts.

Notes

1. All references to The Tempest are to Shakespeare in Production: The Tempest, ed. by Christine Dymkowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

2. For a more formal and detailed explication of Enzo Cozzi's theorisation of learning processes, see his ‘Masking, Curing and Learning: Towards a Syncretic Theatre for Instruction and Change’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2001).

3. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. B. Taberski (London: Methuen, 1964).

4. The Tempest, Tara Arts, directed by Jatinder Verma, opened 25 September 2007 at the Tara Studio and then toured. See also <http://www.tara-arts.com/HTML/documents/Tempestpack08> [accessed 30 January 2008]. The production programme explicitly linked Prospero to al-Qaeda figures.

5. Former dictators of the Philippines, Zaire and Nicaragua, all of whom were ousted by popular uprisings.