FREE THYROXINE MANUFACTURING
The Tempest
April 2025
With the magi-technological setting, I wanted to create a dichotomy between the 'high-tech' Ariel and 'low-tech' Caliban. For Ariel, the type of conjuring and magic that they perform during the show aligned well with the original inspiration of AI digital assistants. Ariel's visor was a design component from the very beginning, though the technical execution was an ongoing process. I mattified the original polarized treatment, leaving a small untreated strip so that the actor's vision wasn't clouded. There were many iterations and modifications made to the visor so that it didn't affect the actor's speech or the mic placement, and was still able to be removed easily at the end of the show. I wanted the visor to be a visual symbol of Prospero's control over Ariel, so that there would be additional emotional weight to the scene in Act 5 when Ariel is released. The audience only sees Ariel's face as a person when they begin a new life of freedom.
Ariel's wings for Act 3 Scene 3 were another design challenge. The goal was to make the wings look like they were manifested from the same 'stuff' that the incorporeal Ariel manifests as to the living characters. The creative team discussed many ways to give Ariel as much presence as possible, while still making it feasible for the actor to get into this contraption and also move around safely backstage. The final result was a wood armature covered in fabric that the actor put on like a back pack. Elastic arm loops slid onto the upper arms, so that when the actor raised their arms, the wings would also flare out and extend out up to about 3ft.
The visor needed to sit higher on the face than it was originally designed to. It was meant to be worn like sunglasses, and I went through many iterations of trying to adjust the fit by altering these arms. The version in the video (right) sort of worked, but it wasn't stable enough to not shift around as the actor was moving. The final version used a wide elastic strap fitted into short, stabilizer pieces that replaced the arms entirely.
Initially I used cotterpins to attach each dowel to each other (see video) but the ends were snagging the fabric. I switched to nuts and bolts that were then loctite'd into place. I stole the canvas straps off a tote bag, secured one end to the top, and then wound the other end around the grooves I cut at the bottom. The arm bands were sewn around the poles before they were covered in fabric.
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