Tempest, Lear two Shakespeare plays with different interpretations

the whole idea of minimalism is personally appealing to me most of the ideas that i have had when it comes to plays have all been minimalistic, not because of lack of potential resources, but because minimalism really accentuates the themes and the symbols of a play and two plays that seem to fit that idea of minimalism is the Tempest by donellan and King Lear by Tadashi Suzuki
Tempest is the one shakespeare play that, when i  hear the name i have beautiful images of the sea and ocean, beautiful islands mostly because of what i had seen from the video that was shown to me about how the royal Shakespeare company once interpreted it.
The interpretation that the Russians had in this rendition of the Tempest was absolutely superb and very different to the one i saw in the video and the difference in of itself is a great inspiration. the Russian theatre company went for a minimalist stage with only a white wall and three doors, with sand placed in locations by the wall with little bits in the sand. the design t use the whiteness of the wall to display the scenes' backgrounds and the use of the sand and the items in them. it kind of made me think, why have the props backstage when you can have them on stage instead, not that all the props were on stage in tempest. The direction of the play was excellent and the choreography was very good not as much as Lear but i will get there later) the body floating in water, the characters physicality- the daughter , the air spirit and the one flimsy guy that was with caliban (trinculo?) all really accentuated their characters brilliantly. when it comes to scorched moments, it was not one area that i focused on, it was the usage of water as a running theme on the island, even if it only went so far, but using water on stage gave the play a feel of realism in amongst the minimalism. another memory that will stay is the onstage music played that to me represented the wind of the play and gave the play motion in sound.
on the other hand there is King lear as directed by Tadashi Suzuki, another play with a simple stage set up that worked to really accentuate the picture of the stage, the frozen scenes. a slight difference between these two shakespeare interpretations was in costumes, Tadashi seemed to put more effort into stylistic clothing whereas tthe tempest was very symbolic, and in movement. the was more action and motion in the Tempest, but the amount of physical control in King Lear astounded me. one point when the one evil daughter, the one with the memorable laugh, was giving a monologue i noticed that she was doing something with her eybrows, which led me to notice that she wasn't blinking. i had forgotten the importance of the eyes in Japanese theatre, and noticing the unblinking stare and actually experiencing that sort of physical control will make sure i never forget it again, i even spent a goo while of the play having staring contests with the actors, which led to some interesting revelations. one such one was that, because i was staring at a frozen picture it burned the images in my retina, so when there was any movement i could notice it because a sort of sillouhette was left behind. one such ncident i was staring and then mrs. Moon moved her head, then i had a mrs. Moon shaped image floating in mid air. not sure if such a finding is helpful in designing any of my own creations but it is certainly an interesting way of looking at the world. but one thing in King Lear i would like to use is some of the ligting techniques included in the play, most notably having thing hang from the ceiling and using their shadows to add texture to an otherwise plain stage, like gobos that the audience can see. another lighting technique i noticed was one we used in Good Soul of Schezwan (still cant spell it) and that was making a line of light that makes  stark separation between downstage and upstage with use of barn doors, but theirs was more professional. one complaint about this play that i heard is the reason i like it, the fact that the stage and the movement was less expressive and minimal allowed for there to be more emphasis on the words and meaning, and when they do move it is important and purposeful, but because of language barriers this made non japanese/koreans had trouble understanding what was going on at that particular time.