The concept for "Prospero's Ghost" was originally born on a campus in the early 1990s when I was teaching drama at "Campus Camp" a summer program for 9 to 15 year olds at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.
During a tour of the Alumni Theatre on campus (a space I was intimately familiar with having worked there as a theatre technician, stage-hand and actor during my time as a student at Carleton), I had the students sit on the dimly lit stage while I told them the creepy story of how late one night I was in the theatre alone cleaning up when I encountered the ghost of the theatre, whom I nicknamed "Prospero's Ghost.”The tale was about a construction worker (one who adored Shakespeare, particular The Tempest) who died in a fall from the roof of the theatre when the building was being constructed; and that he often appeared when the theatre was quiet and dark, holding a copy of The Tempest in his hands
I re-adapted the same tale for a ghost story I told to the staff at the Chapters (a Canadian book chain) in Ancaster, Ontario during the Halloween season of 1997 – explaining how I'd encountered the ghost walking around with a copy of The Tempest in his hand one night. Again, it was the ghost of a Shakespeare-loving construction worker who had died while the building was being built.
Flash forward more than 10 years and the legend of Prospero's Ghost has found a new life. When I was looking at doing the Campus Chills project, I was eager to include a tale set at McMaster University where I worked at the time. I thought it would be neat to re-adapt the "Prospero Ghost" story into an academic setting at Mac. But it wasn't until I sat down and started trying to flesh out the background of the ghost with my friend and colleague Kimberly Foottit that the tale took on an entirely new light.
Prospero's Ghost was reborn and more fully fleshed out than ever before thanks to Kim's creative insights. And while we were working on making the ghost more authentic and giving him a good reason for haunting, we figured we would have some fun and incorporate the Espresso Book Machine at Titles Bookstore as well as the Kirtas scanner at the Mills Library into the storyline – really give Professor Prospero a reason to come back from the dead and seek his revenge on the librarians and booksellers who would dare exploit his precious text.
Working with a talented writer like Kim was just what this tale needed. I could not have pulled off the story so successfully on my own – in retrospect when I look back at it, I see how the story and characters are given greater strength and more rounded dimension with having gone through Kim's imagination and pen.
So, after almost two decades of telling the tale of Prospero's Ghost, I have happily landed, with my talented colleague, on what I think is the penultimate version of this tale.
Though I'll be honest – if the mood catches me, I'll gladly gather a small group together with the lights down low and tell the tale of how late one night, working all by myself at Titles Bookstore, I encountered the ghost of Professor Marshall Emerson and barely lived to tell the tale.
Aksara