Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold

The date is March 7, 2013. The filming is going well, including the special effects. Felix returns to Toronto for costumes. In Toronto, he meets with one of 8Handz’s connections. Felix pays the man for powder (later revealed to be ketamine), gel-cap pills, a hypodermic needle, and instructions on how to make concoctions with the materials.

Estelle reveals that Sal and Tony plan to pull funding for the Fletcher literacy program. They plan on coming to the screening to prove that the program is unnecessary. Felix believes this will be excellent ammunition to anger the prisoners against Sal and Tony. Estelle gives Felix the list of people accompanying Sal and Tony; included on this list is Lonnie Gordon, the chair of the Shakespeare festival. Sal’s son Frederick, who is interested in directing, will also attend.

The date is March 13, 2013, the day of Sal and Tony’s visit. Felix has injected the grapes with ketamine for the guests and holds the pills in a bottle of painkillers in his pocket. Felix uses the threat of the literacy program’s cancellation to rile up the Players. He reminds the Players of the special plan. They will serve refreshments to the guests: Green cups are for Sal and Lonnie, blue cups for Tony and Sebert Stanley. The ski masks and gloves will make the actors invisible when 8Handz’s black light turns on. Another prisoner, TimEEz, will remove the guests’ security alarms. The prisoners question the ethics of the plan, but they trust Felix enough to follow along. The television sets have been rigged to broadcast their filmed adaptation of The Tempest to the rest of the prison while the secondary plan unfolds. 

The guests arrive and are led to their own room without issue. The men are pleased with the refreshments and eager to get the visit over with. The show begins.

Act 1, Scene 1 of The Tempest, reinterpreted by the Fletcher Correctional Players, begins. After a close-up of Ariel laughing, the lights turn off. Gunshots sound, and a voice screams that everyone must stay where they are during the lockdown.

As a gloved hand removes Frederick, Tony tells everyone to stay calm during what he assumes is a prison riot. The guests attempt to use their security pagers, but the pagers are gone. Sal is also removed. Frederick is deposited in a cell decorated like a beach. Anne-Marie joins Frederick and tells him that a madman pretending to be Prospero has cast Freddie as Ferdinand. She directs Freddie through his lines. 

Sal, Tony, Sebert, and Lonnie are brought through a tunnel where they hear the sounds of a storm. They are deposited in a larger cell decorated like a desert. Sal believes that Freddie has been killed. Sal and Lonnie immediately fall asleep in the cell’s bunks. Sebert and Tony discuss politics, and Tony admits that he climbed to power by getting rid of Felix Phillips as the artistic director. Sebert can’t get rid of Sal, who stands in his way to political power. Tony suggests that Sebert drown Sal in the cell’s toilet: Only Tony and Sebert would know that Sal didn’t die in a prison riot. He proposes that they suffocate Lonnie with a pillow and blame it on a heart attack brought on by the stress of the riot.

Unbeknownst to the politicians, 8Handz and Felix have recorded their conversation. They play Metallica on the cell’s speakers to wake up Lonnie and Sal. 

The doors of the politicians’ cell open. They walk to the “Green Room,” empty save for a bowl of grapes. Lonnie reaches for a grape, but a voice coming from his secretly implanted speaker tells him not to eat it. The other men eat the grapes, ingesting the ketamine mixture. A voice booms through the Green Room accusing the men of betraying Felix. 

Sal is inconsolable. Tony bats away an imagined threat. Sebert sees spiders crawling all over him. Red Coyote and TimEEz enter the Green Room, dressed as clowns. The voice of Caliban chants a rap accusing the politicians of being monstrous for judging the prisoners and pulling funding for the literacy program. 

The politicians and Lonnie are escorted back to the main room, where Felix makes his grand entrance. Felix tells them they’ve been in an artistic immersion experience. He demands his job as artistic director back, full funding for the Literacy Through Literature program, Tony’s political resignation, and early parole for 8Handz. Felix blackmails them with the video and audio footage of their drug use and Tony’s conversation with Sebert.

Felix brings Sal to Freddie’s cell to reunite him with his son. The guests are brought out of the main room in time for their after-party with the warden.

As Felix and 8Handz pack up their equipment, 8Handz hears a lullaby through the feed—the same lullaby Felix used to sing to his daughter Miranda.

Felix drives back to his home, perturbed that he doesn’t feel satisfied by the success of his revenge plan.