A Shakespeare Return
If The Tempest represents the cyclical nature of history writ large, let’s go small and recall Quantum’s history with Shakespeare.
Antony and Cleopatra 1997 Twelfth Night 2011
The Merchant of Venice 1999 A Winter’s Tale 2015
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2000 King Lear 2019
Richard II 2004 Hamlet 2023
Cymbeline 2008 The Tempest 2026
And let’s not forget Shakespeare’s Will in 2019, by Vern Thiessen, starring Sheila McKenna, the story of Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway.
Jeffrey Carpenter (Prospero) has been Boos’s long companion and fellow Bard lover. They met during the very first Quantum production of Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, in 1997. Boos played Cleopatra; Carpenter was Pompeii. Jorge Guerra directed in the Industrial Arts Co-op – now the garage at the Brew House.
Quantum also has quite a history with the Carrie Blast Furnaces nested within its larger story. The Industrial Arts Co-op was populated by high school friends of Carpenter, who had seen the Furnace close down in the 1980’s. These young artistic types broke in, scavenged metal, and made huge sculptures from it, led by Tim Kaulen – including the Deer Head which loomed over King Lear. The Tempest offers the 4th distinct environment within the campus turned theater – as one has to count two for Lear: the audience took a quarter mile walk from the Deer Head space to the wild garden on the southern end.
Hamlet had a fascinating journey as well. It was meant to be performed inside the Power House, as the largest structure is known, which proved too hot and dusty, and the mostly built set was moved to the perfect location outside, where the shaft of the Blast Furnace piercing the sky embodied the culture Hamlet would eschew.
Boos is a West Virginian. She loves the back side, where Appalachian nature proves more powerful than man’s symbols of industrial might. So, with The Tempest, she invites us to a natural part of the campus, to the mythical island here, to tell our story of brutal history, and stubborn, fragile hope.
