A cast of Saltus Year 10 to SGY students brought Shakespeare’s The Tempest to life with two performances last week — one for the public and one for Year 8 students.

They were to have performed this abridged version of the play for this year’s Bermuda Schools Shakespeare Festival, which was cancelled due to Hurricane Gonzalo.

Saltus Performing Arts faculty chose The Tempest to celebrate Shakespeare’s connection to Bermuda. Historians believe that the Bard was probably influenced by the shipwreck of the Sea Venture on our shores in 1609. Tales of its epic voyage would have been the talk of London at this time.

If you listen to Ariel’s account of the storm at the start of the play, you can hear echoes of the real voyage as described in William Strachey’s diary: “Winds and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them. For mine own part, I had been in some storms before ... Yet all that I had ever suffered gathered together might not hold comparison with this …”

Saltus students re-imagined the characters and events on an unmapped, “lost” Bermuda island — a project which allowed students to imagine our home, history and culture in an interesting new light. This year marks the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.