We Caliban

We Caliban is an album derived from the music composed for the choreographic piece by Shobana Jeyasingh, created by the company Shobana Jeyasingh Dance in September 2025 in the United Kingdom. We Caliban blends outstanding dance with powerful storytelling, inspired by Shakespeare’s brilliant last play, The Tempest. It is a tale about power lost and regained, written as Europe was taking its first step towards colonialism. We Caliban sees this story through the eyes of Caliban, a minor character in the play whose life is changed forever when the power games of distant lands and unknown peoples are played out in his own remote island, making him a "monstrous" servant to a new master and his young daughter.

Since the show’s music must be broadcast as a recording, it was designed with this in mind, integrating writing work performed by orchestral restitution software, field sound recordings, and electronic sounds, all reworked with DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Recordings of texts (Shakespeare and other sources from the same period) by actors and lines sung by a soprano are also present in the sound material.

From this work initially carried out to serve the choreography, I wanted to make an album, a kind of "symphonic suite" containing the main moments of the show, as well as many sketches that were part of the creative development process, but did not stay in the stage version. The album thus brings a kind of parallel narrative with its own dramaturgy, as a second way to tell this story. It is an autonomous piece to listen to, whose realization entirely with DAW seems to me to be singular.

– Thierry pécou

We Caliban

An inventive, sideways look at
Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Concept, Choreography & Direction: Shobana Jeyasingh
Text Consultant: Priyamvada Gopal
Dramaturg: Uzma Hameed
Composer: Thierry Pécou (by arrangement with Schott Music, Mainz)
Sound Designer: Fred DeFaye
Set & Costume Designer: Mayou Trikerioti
Video & Projection Designer: William Duke
Lighting Designer: Floriaan Ganzevoort