Backstage: All the world's onstage — a single stage — as theater troupes from around the globe perform all of Shakespeare's plays in three dozen languages in the Bard's symbolic London home.
Shakespeare's Globe theater announced details Tuesday of a festival that will see all 37 of William Shakespeare's plays performed in 37 languages, from Urdu to Swahili, over six weeks in 2012.
2 comments:
This is a truly unique idea. We all like to say that theater is going to change the world and bring people together and to some extent it does but this group seems to really have achieved that. Shakespeare is so accessible to so many people that to have it in more languages just makes it more accessible. I wonder when translating Shakespeare, does one translate the letters or actual words or the idea's that are presented. Because Shakespeare's writing is so poetic and also so many of the words are not used today I wonder if in some languages it is hard to adapt. Also the coolest play I have ever seen was a production of Mid summer in 15 languages and they would switch in and out of them. It was at a thrust stage and there was a giant sand pit, it was incredible how much of the play I still understood and how hearing it in other languages made me that more aware because I really wanted to figure out what they were saying.
I am so excited for next summer!! The Olympics are one of my favorite global events, for all the sappy, idealistic, patriotic reasons: the whole world, regardless of conflicts, comes together for a good old contest of physical skill. Adding an artistic element to this even gives me even more goosebumps, because it takes the multiculturalism that will already be present and gives it a collaborative, uniting spin. Everyone can understand the themes of Shakespeare. This festival exemplifies and adds to what I believe is the spirit of the Olympics: collaboration and celebration of our own cultures, as well as the potential of us as citizens of the world to reach out past our own comfort zones.
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