Abstract
A dreamy tempest or a tempestuous dream? This paper examines IL VENTO (The Wind), an ecological re‑imagining of The Tempest created for the 2026 World Shakespeare Congress in Verona, with original music by Maestro Federico Zandonà and musicians of the Conservatorio di Verona. Evolving from my initial proposal A Planet of Sound and Fury, a sound‑based fusion of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream interwoven with projections of Australian extractive industry, Il Vento became a five‑actor work centred on the atmospheric forces in a Shakespearean island world. The production situates the island within an extractive landscape governed by Prospero Enterprises: Miranda arrives shipwrecked; Caliban labours in the island’s logging division; and Titania appears as a displaced meža māte—a forest guardian exiled by hydroelectric inundation, recalling the flooding of Latvia’s Doles sala in 1974. At its heart moves Il Vento, the isle’s wind, merging Ariel’s airy spirit with Trinculo’s comic resilience. Drawing on this creative process, the paper explores broader questions of ecological adaptation in Shakespearean performance: how ecodramaturgy and scenography might render wind, water, and atmosphere as theatrical agents rather than static backdrops; how adaptation can reframe environmental justice within landscapes reshaped by extraction and engineered waterscapes; and how emerging sonic and digital technologies transform the conditions under which Shakespeare’s texts are reimagined for planetary environmental storytelling in an age of crisis.
