This book reviews the "playing" of Shakespeare in which there is a re-staging and a re-writing -- through adaptation, appropriation, or acculturation -- of the Western Shakespeare into the gestural, symbolic, stylized, or ritualized worlds of Asian theatre languages. It examines this interface in aesthetic, theatrical, cultural and political terms, looking at key issues in intercultural performance, how it re-configures the text, genre and gender and how it can intervene in the shaping of ethnicity, identity and postcoloniality. Contributors examine how differing cultures negotiate such encounters, and the implications of this worldwide re-playing for Shakespeare’s theatre. Focusing specifically on the work of major directors in the central and emerging areas of Asia -- Japan, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines -- the chapters show how performing Shakespeare in Asia not only revitalizes indigenous theatre forms, but generates an alternate cultural capital which is exploited in the global market.
Reviews

"This rich and thought-provoking collection is a welcome and timely addition to recent studies focussing on Shakespeare in Asia and charting, more generally, what Trivedi aptly describes as a 'surge of creativity in Asian theatre'." - Sonia Massai, Theatre Research International

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia: An Introduction, Poonam Trivedi Part I: Re-playing Interculturality 1. Other Shakespeares in Asias: An Overview, James Brandon 2. Asian Theatres, Mnouchkine and Shakespeare: The Search for a Theatrical Form, Brian Singleton 3. Shakespeare and the Indian Image(nary) : Embod(y)ment in Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Poonam Trivedi 4. "What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?" : Re-playing Shakespeares on the Japanese Stage, Minami Ryuta Part II: Re-playing Textuality / Theatricality 5. Fooling with Lear: A Performance History of Suzuki Tadashi`s King Lear 06), Ian Curruthers 6. Six People in Search of "To be or not to be …": Hamlet’s Soliloquy in Six Chinese Productions and the Metamorphosis of Shakespeare Performance on the Chinese Stage, Ruru Li 7. Is This Shakespeare?: Inoue Hidenori’s Adaptations of Shakespeare, Yoshihara Yukari 8. From Proscenium to Paddy Fields: Utpal Dutt’s Shakespeare Jatra, Tapati Gupta Part III: Re-playing Ethnicity, Identity and Postcoloniality 9. And Never The Twain Shall Meet? Shakespeare and Philippine Performance Traditions, Judy Celine Ick 10. The Stages ‘Occupied by Shakespeare’: Intercultural Performances and the Search for ‘Koreanness’ in Post-colonial Korea, Kim Moran 11. Shakespeare in the Shadows: Cultural Alienation, Politics and Eddin Khoo’s Shadow Puppet Adaptation of Macbeth, Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah and C. S. Lim 12. The Peripheral Body of Empire: Shakespearean Adaptations and Taiwan’s Geopolitics, Peichen Wu 13. "No World without Verona Walls"...