World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance

by Sonia Massai (Editor)

Overview

Drawing on debates around the global/local dimensions of cultural production, an international team of contributors explore the appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays in film and performance around the world.

In particular, the book examines the ways in which adapters and directors have put Shakespeare into dialogue with local traditions and contexts. The contributors look in turn at ‘local’ Shakespeares for local, national and international audiences, covering a range of English and foreign appropriations that challenge geographical and cultural oppositions between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, and ‘big-time’ and ‘small-time’ Shakespeares.

Responding to a surge of critical interest in the poetics and politics of appropriation, World-Wide Shakespeares is a valuable resource for those interested in the afterlife of Shakespeare in film and performance globally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415324557
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/19/2005
Edition description:	ANN
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sonia Massai is a Lecturer at King’s College London. She has published articles on Shakespearean appropriations and edited Titus Andronicus (New Penguin) and The Wise Woman of Hoxton (Globe Quartos). Her current projects include a book on Shakespeare and the Rise of English Drama in Print.

Table of Contents

1. Defining Local Shakespeares Part One: Local Shakespeares for Local Audiences 2. A Branch of the Blue Nile: Derek Walcott and the Tropic of Shakespeare 3. Political Pericles 4. ‘Shylock as Crypto-Jew: A New Mexican Adaptation of The Merchant of Venice’ 5. Negotiating Intercultural Spaces: Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet on the Chinese Stage 6. ‘It is the bloody business which informs thus … ’ Local Politics and Performative Praxis: Macbeth in India Part Two: Local Shakespeares for National Audiences 7. Relocating and Dislocating Shakespeare in Robert Sturua’s Twelfth Night and Alexander Morfov’s The Tempest 8. 'I am not bound to please thee with my answers': The Merchant of Venice on the German Stage 9. Abusing the Shrew on the Prague stage 10. ‘Shooting the Hero: The Cinematic Career of Henry V from Laurence Olivier to Philip Purser’ 11. Lamentable Tragedy or Black Comedy: Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Adaptation of Titus Andronicus 12. Subjection and Redemption in Pasolini’s Othello 13. 'Meaning by Shakespeare' South of the Border 14. Dreams of England 15. The Cultural Logic of 'Correcting' The Merchant of Venice Part Three: Local Shakespeare for International Audiences 16. Dancing with Art: Robert Lepage’s Hamlet 17. Hekepia? The Mana of the Maori Merchant 18. The Haiku Macbeth: Shakespearean Antithetical Minimalism in Kurosawa’s Kumonosu-jo

Editorial Reviews

'A very significant contribution to the growing body of critical literature on Shakespeare appropriations within specific theatrical and critical traditions around the globe.' - Jill Levenson, University of Toronto, Canada

'Massai's definition and focus on the importance of "locality" in worldwide Shakespeare appropriations challenges, even as it extends, other recent scholarship tracing Shakespeare's "afterlife".' - Robert Sawyer, East Tennessee State University, USA

'World-Wide Shakespeares is undoubtedly a valuable and timely addition to our understanding of what artists are doing to and with Shakespeare across the globe and how their work signifies both locally and internationally.' - Robert Ormsby, Review of Literature

From the Publisher