In the Winter of 2024/2025, Western WashingtonUniversity's Theatre Department worked with playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb and Director Jessica Burr of the Untitled Othello Project to re-imagine The Tempest.
Over the course of the 2021/2022 professional and academic theatre season—the first season following the COVID-19 lockdowns—there were 37 productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This number, which represents an almost 300% increase from productions in the 2019 season, seems shockingly out of place amidst the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and national calls for racial equity and reform amplified by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. While The Tempest could be argued to be a celebration of the magic inherent in live theatre, it is also a deeply problematic text that celebrates colonialism and racial inequity, framing its single Black character as a violent, ignorant slave.
The result of our work was not The Tempest. It was only really partially about The Tempest. Rather, it was about how we understand ourselves as theatre artists, as Americans in 2025, and as people confronted with an ever-changing national landscape.
Over the course of the 2021/2022 professional and academic theatre season—the first season following the COVID-19 lockdowns—there were 37 productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This number, which represents an almost 300% increase from productions in the 2019 season, seems shockingly out of place amidst the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and national calls for racial equity and reform amplified by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. While The Tempest could be argued to be a celebration of the magic inherent in live theatre, it is also a deeply problematic text that celebrates colonialism and racial inequity, framing its single Black character as a violent, ignorant slave.
The result of our work was not The Tempest. It was only really partially about The Tempest. Rather, it was about how we understand ourselves as theatre artists, as Americans in 2025, and as people confronted with an ever-changing national landscape.
