At Home in the World :::: Notes by Alexa Alice Joubin
...continue reading "“Shakespeare and Censorship,” Hay Festival, 2016"
My research on Shakespeare and intercultural global performances took me to London, where I was working on a book on how diasporic artists approach Shakespeare and how their works are received. One day, I rented a bike and rode along the Thames. One section was flooded due to high tide, and I rode with the ducks.
This section of beautiful Chelsea seems to be flooded often during high tide of the Thames. Ducks swam on the street.
Photo taken at "Pedra do Telegrafo", State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (May 2016)
Can we entertain the idea that The Taming of the Shrew can be performed and received as comedy in the post-Women’s March US? If so, would the laughter be empathetic and solidary rather than callous? The answer lies in physical theater which is uniquely poised to activate elements of farce in the play. Shrew is one of the Shakespearean comedies that tends to clash with modern sensibilities and is therefore generally considered challenging to stage. ...continue reading "Taming of the Shrew as Slapstick Comedy"
“My angel!” A woman’s voice is heard outside a hut in the snow in Kashmir in 1995, a landscape devoid of colors other than mostly black, white, and deep blue. Ghazala’s son, Haider, a lone fighter, is hiding inside the severely damaged hut. Having sustained gun-shot wounds, he is surrounded by the soldiers led by his uncle Khurram who plans to kill him with a shoulder-launch rocket, but Ghazala, caught in between her lover and her son who is intent on avenging his father’s death, convinces Khurram to give her one last chance to persuade Haider to give up his revenge plan and surrender. Soft spoken, Ghazala may not appear to be a particularly strong woman at first glance, but she is taking on the active role of a liaison, negotiator, and now a game changer.
Shakespeare has become a boomerang business in the twenty-first century—a phenomenon that is fueled simultaneously by globalized local economic and cultural developments. His plays have been traveling the world since his lifetime and now returned to Britain with many different hats, making the familiar strange and bringing home the exotic. U.K. tours have come to define some of the most memorable productions today, and international collaborations have inspired artists in Britain and elsewhere. Boomerang Shakespeare encompasses a range of events, including non-Anglophone productions, co-productions by British and foreign artists, local events celebrating Shakespeare’s global afterlife, and British productions that incorporate elements from more than one culture in its cast, style, or set.
================================
"Boomerang Shakespeare: Foreign Shakespeare in Britain." The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare Vol. 2: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 1094-1101. Open-access full text available
================================
How to cite this article:
Alexa Alice Joubin, "Boomerang Shakespeare: Foreign Shakespeare in Britain," Shakespeare on the Move, https://blogs.gwu.edu/ajoubin
Chaucer and Shakespeare, the global literary icons, play a major role in the digital world. This cross-disciplinary symposium puts the legacies of Chaucer and Shakespeare in conversation with each other. Speakers will explore the intersections and connections between the afterlives of Chaucer and Shakespeare in world cultures.
...continue reading "Global Chaucer and Shakespeare in a Digital World"
Voodoo Macbeth? Heir apparent of the Denmark Corporation in Manhattan? A pair of star-crossed lovers from feuding families selling chicken rice in Singapore? In the past century, stage, film, and television adaptations of Shakespeare have emerged in the UK, US, Canada, and the performance cultures of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Asia/Pacific, Africa, Latin America, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and far-flung corners of the globe. Shakespeare’s plays often feature locations outside England, Scotland, and Wales, and characters from various parts of the world. In fact, the history of global performance dates back to Shakespeare's lifetime.
================================
How to cite this article:
Alexa Alice Joubin, "Shakespeare gone global," Shakespeare on the Move, https://blogs.gwu.edu/ajoubin