{"title":"Cross-Cultural Casting in Britain: The Path to Inclusion, 1972-2012","authors":"Jami Rogers","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.19.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay uses three productions to chart the progress of the integration of performers of African and Afro-Caribbean descent in professional British Shakespearean theatre. It argues that the three productions―from 1972, 1988 and 2012―each use cross-cultural casting in ways that illuminate the phases of inclusion for British performers of colour. Peter Coe’s 1972 The Black Macbeth was staged at a time when an implicit colour bar in Shakespeare was in place, but black performers were included in the production in ways that reinforced dominant racial stereotypes. Temba’s 1988 Romeo and Juliet used its Cuban setting to challenge stereotypes by presenting black actors in an environment that was meant to show them as “real human beings”. The RSC’s 2012 Julius Caesar was a black British staging of Shakespeare that allowed black actors to use their cultural heritages to claim Shakespeare, signalling the performers’ greater inclusion into British Shakespearean theatre.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"19 1","pages":"55 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42423289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I fear I am not in my perfect mind.” Jan Klata’s King Lear and the Crisis of Europe","authors":"M. Cieślak","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.19.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In his Shakespearean productions Jan Klata tends to radically experiment with sets, texts, and contexts. He puts the plays in culturally and politically specific locations, experiments with bi- or multilingual productions, and incorporates other texts into the Shakespearean frame. In this way, he uses Shakespeare as a means to address contemporary problems and tensions that are vital for his geopolitical reality, exploring the issues of national identities, the cultural legacy of Europe and its nations, as well as past conflicts and present crises. Klata’s King Lear (Narodowy Teatr Stary, Kraków, 2014), set in the religious context of the Catholic Church and using mostly Polish language, with only decorative additions in foreign languages, does not engage in European politics with the same directness and force as his earlier productions. And yet, as I wish to argue, this performance is also strongly concerned with European identity, and may, therefore, be seen as a valid voice in the discussion on how Shakespearean productions help to understand our current-day reality.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"19 1","pages":"107 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44119533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"King John in the “Vormärz”: Worrying Politics and Pathos","authors":"R. Gillett","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.19.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article picks up on a tendency of recent criticism to look to Shakespeare for insights into contemporary politics, and extends it backwards to the period of German history known as the “Vormärz”―the period between 1815 and 1848. It establishes parallels between that period and the current debates about Brexit, and shows how equivalent issues are reflected in the accounts of King John given by three leading German critics of the “Vormärz” period―which also successively demonstrate the deleterious rise of German nationalism. These issues include: the weaknesses, mistakes and crimes of the powerful, and their effect both on the nation directly afflicted with them, and on others; the issue of national sovereignty and its relationship to the fellowship of nations; the struggle against arguably alien ways of thinking; the dividing line between necessary compromise and rank betrayal; the dilemma of choice; and the poisoned chalice of democratic freedom. And the parallels they establish between Shakespeare, the “Vormärz” and us are as instructive as they are unsettling.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"19 1","pages":"71 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41839912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shakespeare's Literary Lives. The Author as Character in Fiction and Film","authors":"Cornelis Heijes","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.19.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.09","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"19 1","pages":"179-182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67663210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Floresta que Anda (The Moving Forest). Dir. Christiane Jatahy. Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II, Lisbon, Portugal","authors":"F. Rayner","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.12","url":null,"abstract":"In Act 5 Scene 5 of Macbeth, a startled Messenger informs Macbeth: “As I did stand my watch upon the hill / I looked toward Birnam and anon methought / The wood began to move” (5.5.32-34). Hearing this, Macbeth realizes that his sense of infallibility is misplaced: “If this which he avouches does appear, / There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here” (5.5.46-47). In Christiane Jatahy’s adaptation, Birnam Wood morphed into a technological forest and the fear that Macbeth senses when it comes towards him created the basis for a collective challenge to the global disorders unleashed by very contemporary tyrants. When the audience entered the performance space, there were no comfortable seats from which to watch the tragedy of Macbeth unfold. Instead, the audience climbed onto the stage itself, where there were four viewing screens and a bar in the corner. The screens projected the stories of four individuals: Igor, a Brazilian political prisoner, Michele, a working-class Brazilian black woman who saw her uncle murdered by the police in a Rio de Janeiro slum, Aboud, a refugee from the Syrian civil war currently living in Germany, and Prosper, a war refugee from the Congo now living in São Paulo, Brazil. These stories of political persecution and exile were not filmed in conventional documentary style. While the characters narrated their experiences to camera, the visual images focused not on their faces but on fragments of arms, legs, eyes, tables, parakeets, flights of stairs. Their testimonies were interspersed with apparently random comments by mothers, friends and children who strayed into the film. Audience members chose how long they stayed with each of these stories and in which order. They could supplement the viewing with visits to the bar or engage in private conversations.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"1 1","pages":"179 - 188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67663443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interview with Bryan Reynolds","authors":"Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.02","url":null,"abstract":"Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney (later as KKC): Professor Reynolds, first of all, I would like to thank you for accepting our invitation to deliver your plenary lecture at the conference, “Experiment in Drama, Theatre, Film and Media,” organized at the University in Lodz in October 2017. Your lecture was the conference’s most important event, addressing directly the theory and practice of the current experiments in theatre. Could you, please, say how experimenting influences the idea of modern theater?","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67663163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hamlet Underground: Revisiting Shakespeare and Dostoevsky","authors":"C. Thurman","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This is the first of a pair of articles that consider the relationship between Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from the Underground and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Acknowledging Shakespeare’s well-known influence on Dostoevsky and paying close attention to similarities between the two texts, the author frames the comparison by reflecting on his own initial encounter with Dostoevsky in David Magarshack’s 1968 English translation. A discussion of previous Anglophone scholarly attempts to explore the resonance between the texts leads to a reading of textual echoes (using Magarshack’s translation). The wider phenomenon of Hamletism in the nineteenth century is introduced, complicating Dostoevsky’s national and generational context, and laying the groundwork for the second article—which questions the ‘universalist’ assumptions informing the English translator-reader contract.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"18 1","pages":"79 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42494862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shakespeare in Hawai‘i: Puritans, Missionaries, and Language Trouble in James Grant Benton’s Twelf Nite O Wateva!, a Hawaiian Pidgin Translation of Twelfth Night","authors":"Rhema Hokama","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1974, the Honolulu-based director James Grant Benton wrote and staged Twelf Nite O Wateva!, a Hawaiian pidgin translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In Benton’s translation, Malolio (Malvolio) strives to overcome his reliance on pidgin English in his efforts to ascend the Islands’ class hierarchy. In doing so, Malolio alters his native pidgin in order to sound more haole (white). Using historical models of Protestant identity and Shakespeare’s original text, Benton explores the relationship between pidgin language and social privilege in contemporary Hawai‘i. In the first part of this essay, I argue that Benton characterizes Malolio’s social aspirations against two historical moments of religious conflict and struggle: post-Reformation England and post-contact Hawai‘i. In particular, I show that Benton aligns historical caricatures of early modern puritans with cultural views of Protestant missionaries from New England who arrived in Hawai‘i beginning in the 1820s. In the essay’s second part, I demonstrate that Benton crafts Malolio’s pretentious pidgin by modeling it on Shakespeare’s own language. During his most ostentatious outbursts, Malolio’s lines consist of phrases extracted nearly verbatim from Shakespeare’s original play. In Twelf Nite, Shakespeare’s language becomes a model for speech that is inauthentic, affected, and above all, haole.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"18 1","pages":"57 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46550260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shakespeare in Digital Games and Virtual Worlds","authors":"Eleni Timplalexi","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.09","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Shakespeare’s plays have long flirted with using various artistic and medial forms other than theatre, such as cinema, music, visual arts, television, comics, animation and, lately, digital games and virtual worlds. Especially in the 20th and 21st century, a fascination with Shakespeare both as a historical and theatrical figure and as a playwright has become evident in screen based media (cinema, television and video), ranging from “faithful,” almost documented performances of his plays to free style adaptations or vague film references. Digital games and virtual worlds carry on this tradition of the transmedial journey of Shakespeare’s plays to screen based media but top it up with new forms of interaction and performativity. For the first time in the history of mankind everyone can enjoy firsthand from his armchair and for free the experience of taking part in a play by the Bard by entering a virtual world as if it was a stage and by assuming roles through avatars. The article attempts first to introduce the reader to the deeper needs that gave rise to animation, a fundamental aspect of digital gaming and virtual worlds. It then tries to illuminate the various facets of digital performance and gaming, especially in relation to Shakespeare-themed and inspired digital games and virtual worlds, by putting forward some axes of classification. Finally, it both suggests some ideas that may be of use in rendering the Shakespeare gaming experience more “complete” and “theatrical” and ends by acknowledging the immense potential for the exploration of theatricality and performativity in digital games and virtual worlds.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"18 1","pages":"129 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45811768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What bloody film is this? Macbeth for our time","authors":"Agnieszka Rasmus","doi":"10.18778/2083-8530.18.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.08","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When Roman Polanski’s Macbeth hit the screens in 1971, its bloody imagery, pessimism, violence and nudity were often perceived as excessive or at least highly controversial. While the film was initially analysed mostly in relation to Polanski’s personal life, his past as a WWII child survivor and the husband of the murdered pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, in retrospect its bleak imagery speaks not only for his unique personal experience but also serves as a powerful comment on the American malaise, fears and paranoia that were triggered, amongst other things, by the brutal act of the Manson Family. We had to wait forty four years for another mainstream adaptation of the play and it is tempting not only to compare Kurzel’s Macbeth to its predecessor in terms of how more accepting we have become of graphic depictions of violence on screen but also to ask a more fundamental question: if in future years we were to historicise the new version, what would it tell us about the present moment? The paper proposes that despite its medieval setting and Scottish scenery, the film’s visual code seems to transgress any specific time or place. Imbued in mist, its location becomes more fluid and evocative of any barren and sterile landscape that we have come to associate with war. Seen against a larger backdrop of the current political climate with its growing nationalism and radicalism spanning from the Middle East, through Europe to the US, Kurzel’s Macbeth with its numerous bold textual interventions and powerful mise-en-scène offers a valid response to the current political crisis. His ultra brutal imagery and the portrayal of children echo Polanski’s final assertion of perpetuating violence, only this time, tragically and more pessimistically, with children as not only the victims of war but also its active players.","PeriodicalId":40600,"journal":{"name":"Multicultural Shakespeare-Translation Appropriation and Performance","volume":"18 1","pages":"115 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49237474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}