Marin Shakespeare Company

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The Tempest

August 15 - September 14, 2025

Director's Notes

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Adapted and Directed by M. Graham Smith***

Shakespeare’s great tragedies—Lear, Macbeth, Othello—often follow a familiar pattern: a powerful adult, entrusted with leadership, makes a bad decision rooted
in a personal flaw. They double down, again and again, until everything—family, society, even the self—is consumed by the consequences.

But The Tempest belongs to what we sometimes call Shakespeare’s late plays—alongside Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, Pericles. These plays begin with a similar flaw, a similar fall from grace. Yet they offer something different: a second chance. A moment of pause. A choice to turn away from vengeance and toward something more redemptive.

In The Tempest, our protagonist has made choices that led to exile and bitterness. But because of the influence of others—Miranda, Ariel, and their own self-reflection—they choose forgiveness.
They choose to relinquish control, to imagine a future not built on revenge, but on reconciliation.

This is the heart of the play: when a cataclysm severs us from the past—whether it be a storm, a betrayal, or a societal rupture—what kind of future will we create? What values will guide us? Will we repeat the harm that shaped us, or will we build something better, not for ourselves, but for those who come next?

M. GRAHAM SMITH (he/him)Director, Adaptor: The Tempest

M. Graham Smith is a freelance Director, Educator, and Producer. Recent directing credits: World Premieres of Obie winner Christopher Chen’s Home Invasion, Kevin Rolston’s Deal with the Dragon (Magic Theatre & Edinburgh Fringe), The Mortification of Fovea Munson (The Kennedy Center); Father/Daughter (Aurora); White Chip, Pickleball at B Street, You for Me for You (Crowded Fire), and White (Shotgun). Graham’s new play FDR’s VERY HAPPY HOUR, centering d/Disability and Access in an immersive environment, will receive its World Premiere at Actors Theatre of Louisville in October before heading to NYC’s Under The Radar Festival. He teaches at A.C.T. and Berkeley Rep. He’s a graduate of Wesleyan University where he directed the first workshop of In The Heights.