When you walk in here, you shed your daily self. You become a clean slate. Then you draw on a new face.” Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other. It will boost his reputation. It will heal emotional wounds.

A] wry, clever romp… Atwood knows the play, is sharp as nails and sees the potential in theatre harnessing our Brave New World of computer technology. Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Hag-Seed is Atwood’s rewriting of Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. It is the story of Felix, an artistic director for the Makeshiweg Theater Festival. The story starts with Felix’s production of The Tempest. He has lofty plans of putting on the show of the century. In addition, the play was designed in memory of the loss of his daughter, Miranda. Felix is a lonely man who has lost both his daughter and wife. His life work is put to waste, though, when the villain of the story, Tony, finds a way to cancel his play. He retreats to his lonely home in Southern Ontario where he is left waiting for twelve years. In the meantime, Tony replaces Felix as the artistic director of the festival.The play culminates in a drug fueled chaotic performance of the play, Sal and Tony are frightened and punished. The novel ends with Sal's son Freddie becoming the embodiment of the character of Ferdinand and is set up with Anne-Marie. Felix is restored to his former position and finally, like Prospero sets Ariel free, he releases the ghost of his daughter. [5] Main characters [ edit ] The cast rehearse the play and Felix comes up with a plan to get his revenge against Tony when he attends the performance. Part IV – “Rough Magic” Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together. What he couldn’t have in life he might still catch sight of through his art: just a glimpse, from the corner of his eye” – Felix using art as catharsis Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special.

Tony notified Felix one day that the board had voted to replace Felix as artistic director with Tony, and that his production of The Tempest would be cancelled. Felix relocated to a remote rural home and began plotting his vengeance. When he was home, he imagined his daughter Miranda was still alive and had conversations with her. Felix took a job teaching Shakespeare in a jail because he was afraid of being so alone. Part II - A Brave New Kingdom Prospero thinks he’s so awesome and superior, he can put down what other people think” and “He call me poison, a filth, a slave,/ He prison me up to make me behave,/ But I’m Hag-Seed!” – 8Handz and Leggs The new novels promise an intriguing opportunity to revisit the tales we know so well and see them in a new light. The Culture Trip The question of "what constitutes a prison?" is one of the central inquiries in the novel. Felix pitches The Tempest to the inmates at Fletcher Correctional Facility by explaining to them that it is a play fundamentally concerned with confinement and what happens to people when they are kept behind bars, both figuratively and literally. He challenges the men to identify each prison present in the play, and by the end of the novel, they have found all but one. Felix explains that the final prison is the play itself: Prospero requires the audience's applause to escape the island. Ending on this note suggests that Felix has also imprisoned himself in his own production of The Tempest; he has fallen victim to his own obsession with revenge, and the novel remains ambiguous as to whether he will be able to successfully escape his self-confinement. Grief and Loss A triumph... The book illuminates the breadth and depth of the whole play. The troupe's workshops on it fizz with perception as Atwood transmits the pleasurable buzz of exploring a literary masterpiece. There won't be a more glowing tribute to Shakespeare in his 400th anniversary year Peter Kemp, Sunday TimesHow interesting, I’ve never even considered this before! There’s a very convincing, though of course inconclusive, argument made by one of the characters in here to suggest this.

you don’t need to be a Shakespeare geek like me to enjoy Hag-Seed; it’s a good story, and will introduce you to the play gently, with Felix himself as your guide.” – NPR Books Hag-Seed is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published in October 2016. A modern retelling of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, the novel was commissioned by Random House as part of its Hogarth Shakespeare series. [1] Felix is the Artistic Director at the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival and is planning to perform a version of Shakespeare's The Tempestthat is innovative, creative, and new to audiences everywhere. During rehearsal for the play, however, he is informed by Tony Price, the fundraising manager, that his contract has been terminated and Tony will be taking over as Artistic Director. Blindsided, Felix boils with anger and frustration but eventually agrees to leave. That devious, twisted bastard, Tony, is Felix’s own fault” and “The secrecy, the sabotage. The snake-like subterfuge. The stupendous betrayal.”

READERS GUIDE

Rich and inventive… The play-within-a-play tripe is audaciously Shakespearean, and so is Atwood’s free-ranging imagination and witty way with language. Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday It’s the words that should concern you, he thinks at them. That’s the real danger. Words don’t show up on scanners.” – Felix Both Prospero and Felix realise that seeking retribution does not set them free. Themes, Quotes, and Techniques Theme Through Felix’s ghost daughter, Atwood makes the point that characters like Miranda – meek, obedient, virtuous and existing only in relation to the men around them – are not real, existing only as the products of patriarchal fantasy