Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance

by Dennis Kennedy (Editor), Yong Li Lan (Editor)

Overview

Addressing both theoretical and practical questions surrounding Shakespeare in contemporary Asia, this book asks why Shakespeare has been of use in these vast regions of the world that have no need to call on him. By investigating some of the ways Shakespeare has been reinvented and deployed, the study notes the differences between standard western approaches and those that can be seen in Japan, China, India, and South East Asia. The contributors come from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions, West and East, and present distinctive, and sometimes conflicting, views on topics as diverse as speaking Shakespeare in Japanese, the importation and exportation of Shakespeare in Asia, and the uses of the English national poet in Indian film and Japanese popular culture. The debates which occur within the book highlight the diversity of production and reception for the world's most popular playwright, whose work is now global cultural capital.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521515528
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/04/2010
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dennis Kennedy's books include The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance, Foreign Shakespeare, and Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre. He has twice been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the USA, twice won the Freedley Award for theatre history, received the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award at the University of Pittsburgh, the Berkeley Fellowship at Trinity College Dublin, and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea. His own plays have been performed in New York, London, and many other places, and he has frequently worked as a dramaturg and director in professional theatres.

Li Lan Yong is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

Notes on contributors ix

Preface xiii

1 Introduction: Why Shakespeare? Dennis Kennedy Yong Li Lan 1

Part I Voice and Body

2 Shakespeare and the Natyasastra John Russell Brown 27

3 Speaking Shakespeare in Japanese: voicing the foreign Daniel Gallimore 42

4 Shakespeare and Beijing opera: two cases of appropriation Fei Chunfang Sun Huizhu 57

Part II Shakespeare in Asian Popular Cultures

5 All that remains of Shakespeare in Indian film Richard Burt 73

6 Shakespeare for Japanese popular culture: Shojo Manga, Takarazuka and Twelfth Night Minami Ryuta 109

7 Shakespeare's villains in Japan Kumiko Hilberdink-Sakamoto 132

Part III Transacting Cultures

8 Import/export: Japanizing Shakespeare Suematsu Michiko 155

9 Millennium Shashibiya: Shakespeare in the Chinese-speaking world Li Ruru 170

10 Shakespeare here and elsewhere: Ong Keng Sen's intercultural Shakespeare Yong Li Lan 188

Part IV Intercultural Politics

11 What use Shakespeare? China and globalization Shen Lin 219

12 Shakespeare and the question of intercultural performance John W. P. Phillips 234

13 Foreign Asia/foreign Shakespeare: dissenting notes on New Asian interculturality, postcoloniality and re-colonization Rustom Bharucha 253

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

"Fresh, illuminating and well-structured, Kennedy and Lan’s volume is more than a mere welcome and an interesting contribution to the field of Shakespeare in Asia, and, thanks to its added political, theoretical and ideological dimensions, it will become an indispensable reference for future research."
—Sederi

From the Publisher