After 37 years, Karla Boos — the visionary founder of Quantum Theatre — is set to “return to the ‘normal’ world,” retiring from her role as artistic director of the company she founded. The Tempest will mark her final bow with Quantum, staged at the Carrie Blast Furnaces, where the company has enjoyed some of its greatest triumphs.

Quantum Theatre Founder Karla Boos and Her Final Bow with The Tempest

In his analysis of The Tempest, the critic Jan Kott commented on the way the play’s themes reflect the function of theater itself. “The actual three hours of theater,” Kott wrote, “like the imaginary hours in the ‘forest’ of Shakespearean comedies, is the time of metamorphoses after which the dramatis personae and spectators return to the ‘normal’ world.”

Karla Boos, founder of Quantum Theater is about to undergo her own transformation into retirement.

“I decided to do The Tempest … before I knew what it was about — believing it was a fairy tale about forgiveness, which it is not. Not for a minute,” Boos says. “Shakespeare speaks with great mystery, but great authority — and briefly — on all the giant subjects in this play.”

The Tempest as Shakespeare’s Farewell

The Tempest, which is set to run July 17-Aug. 23, was likely the final play that Shakespeare wrote alone (though he later collaborated on others). Many believe that its exiled magician, Prospero, was the last role the Bard played himself. People see the play, then, as Shakespeare’s farewell — particularly in light of its concluding speech, in which Prospero asks, “As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.”

It seems to be a joyous and fitting culmination for Boos, who takes a pragmatic attitude toward this change in her career. The theater landscape, she says, is “so different from the early years of Quantum. It is so different. But maybe that’s just part of the cycle of things — there’s turnover from an older generation, of which I am part, and we are making way. And I believe the way will be filled by people with new ideas.”

Returning to the Carrie Blast Furnaces

That transition is echoed in the location, as Quantum’s artists return once again to Carrie Blast Furnaces, a landmark of industry that has changed into a space for creation.

“The layers of history are right here among us; [that’s] very present to me,” she says. “Doesn’t the Carrie Furnace just point it out to everybody — in a way that we can all appreciate?”

The specific performance location within the historic site is different from those used in King Lear and Hamlet.

“We’ve turned away from the structure — which, of course, is omnipresent — toward nature. [The site] is reclaimed by nature … [it feels] isolated in nature, in Western Pennsylvanian, Appalachian nature.”

A Longtime Collaboration with Jeffrey Carpenter

It’s a reunion not only with the site, but with Boos’s longtime collaborator Jeffrey Carpenter, who played the title role in King Lear and directed Hamlet — and who has worked on various Shakespeare pieces with Boos for nearly three decades.

Carpenter, who will play Prospero, is “one of those naturally inclined toward Shakespeare people,” she says, “and so am I.”

“She is the artist in the most traditional sense of that word,” Carpenter says. “To watch all of the scale [and] the scope of that play out over the last 30 years is kind of breathtaking.”

The Future of Quantum Theatre

Quantum has confirmed the first shows that will follow Boos’ tenure: radio island, a suspenseful thriller by Carnegie Mellon alum Liza Birkenmeier, and Cassandra, a world premiere by Morag Shepherd set at an unusual “healing retreat.”

The company will present radio island from Oct. 23-Nov. 15 — two short months after The Tempest closes. There’s no rest, it seems, for a company dedicated to pushing forward.

“There will be a new artistic director, and a future that is different from the past for Quantum,” Boos says. “It’s labor and magic — a little magic, for sure.”

The Tempest

Carrie Blast Furnaces
July 17-August 23
quantumtheatre.com

Story by Sean Collier
Photography by Laura Petrilla

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