Ariel as Harpy

A commission from the British Library and Nissen Richards Studio to be included in the exhibition Shakespeare in Ten Acts, 2016, Ariel as Harpy is costume installation of a re-imagining of the first-ever appearance, in 1611 at the Blackfriars Theatre, of the shapeshifting ‘sprite’ Ariel in the guise of ‘Harpy’ in act 3, scene 3 of The Tempest. The play’s spectacular and technically complex scenes, such as the initial shipwreck and Harpy’s appearance, have prompted scholars to suggest that Shakespeare wrote it especially for the indoor and candle-lit Blackfriars (McMullan, 2016). There are no sources to indicate how this scene may have been staged or what Harpy may have looked like. While the initial brief was to reproduce a costume drawing by Inigo Jones of a winged, breastplated, tunic-and-legging wearing Fiery Spirit from Thomas Campion’s Lords’ Masque (1613), I demonstrated through my then un-published research (Barbieri, 2017), how Jones’ design, for an aristocratic Jacobean court masque, (or ballet de cour, a predecessor of classical ballet) was incompatible with the retributional dramaturgy of the scene.

• https://www.wsd2017.com/exhibition/
• http://www.wsd2017.com/scenofest/detail/...
• https://www.nissenrichardsstudio.com/pro...
• http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/designer...