The TempestFrom "Don't Call Me a Star" by
Paul Gardner, New Times, March 1974:
"Take away all the plays I did for
Joe Papp," say Sam, dismissing a long list of Off-Broadway flops, "and I wouldn't
have much of a career." In The
Tempest he plays the aging Prospero, commander of wind and sea, as a much
younger magician. He grew a beard and
added a few brown swatches nightly to his thick hair; he did not see himself
artificially stooped, grey and mascaraed. Scotchtaped to his dressing-room mirror is a memo to himself about
Prospero: "FANATIC. RECLUSE. FAITHFUL HOPER. SEEKER. LOVER."
From Current Biography,
September, 1985:
It was Waterston's talent for
investing Shakespeare's characters with a broad humanity, that made him such a
valuable addition to the Festival's roster in the early 1970s. By portraying Prospero as a vigorous,
middle-aged scholar rather than as a wizened magician, he added a poignant
dimension to the outpouring of forgiveness and reconciliation that climaxes The
Tempest and added weight and authority to Edward Berkeley's unorthodox
studio production.
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