Community members take center stage in Seattle Rep’s ‘Tempest’

For one weekend, Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright stage will play host to dozens of nonprofessional performers, alongside several Equity actors, in a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

These four performances are the centerpiece of the Rep’s Public Works initiative, which launched in 2016 and is modeled on the program started by the Public Theater in New York. And while this mainstage production is its most visible component, it’s just a slice of the year-round Public Works efforts that involve local community groups in theater education and creation. 

For Hattie Claire Andres, associate producer at the Rep and director of “The Tempest,” Public Works is far from ancillary.

“It puts our mission and everything that we say that we aspire to be into action,” she said. “We are creating theater of, by and for the people, which is part of our Public Works program vision. It’s not just the act of doing that for Public Works. It impacts the way that we work together in all other aspects of our programming throughout the year.”

“The Tempest” kicks off the 2023-24 season for Seattle Rep, which recently announced the appointment of new artistic director Dámaso Rodríguez. And it marks the return of Public Works programming to the mainstage for the first time since 2019, after a series of virtual events during the pandemic. The shows are free to attend, but all advance tickets are spoken for. Limited walk-up tickets will be available one hour before each performance.

One of Shakespeare’s final plays, “The Tempest” weaves together comedy and tragedy as Prospero, the rightful duke of Milan (Isaiah Johnson) contends with usurping family members and the enslaved Caliban (Alexandra Tavares) on a magical island. 

This adaptation, with new songs by Todd Almond, was created for the debut of the Public Theater’s program in New York in 2013. The Rep’s staging transplants the action to a setting inspired by the San Juan Islands and the Hoh Rain Forest. And a new song by local composer Justin Huertas acts as “an anthem of the ecosystem of the play and of the community ensemble,” Andres said.

The ensemble is integral to the storytelling, with different community groups’ art forms taking center stage at various points. One group is Lynnwood’s Morning Star Korean Cultural Center, whose dancing and drumming will help bring the show’s titular storm to life.

“Any time that magic occurs on stage, there are folks from the community ensemble who are part of creating that,” Andres said.

Morning Star is one of the “cameo” partner organizations lending its members’ talents to this production of “The Tempest” specifically, but Public Works also involves year-round official partnerships with eight community organizations, including the Ballard NW Senior Center and Path with Art, a nonprofit focused on trauma recovery through arts engagement. The Rep hosts weekly theater classes at both organizations.

Andres, who’s directing a Public Works production for the first time after serving as associate director on several earlier shows, said she loves the scale of putting something on stage that features more than 60 people, all of whom bring different perspectives to the material. But she also loves the Public Works moments that take place throughout the year — moments that no audience will ever see but that might change someone’s relationship to theater.

“We are always reaching new folks and welcoming new folks into the theater-making process and into Seattle Rep,” she said. “I hope that this very visible act of the program happening on stage fuels the next group of people who want to become involved.”