The Theatre Times: Along with a number of Japanese and Western canonical poets and writers, Shakespeare and his works have played a significant role in the development of Chinese and Sinophone theatres in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Hundreds of works have emerged in Mandarin and a wide range of Chinese dialects, performing styles, and genres. The encounters between ‘Shakespeare’ and genres and values represented by the icon of ‘China’ have enriched Chinese-language theatrical traditions as well as global Shakespearean performance history. In the following article, I shall focus on the challenges and changes to Chinese-language theatres.
3 comments:
I am so interested in International theatre or theater of other cultures and languages. I thing chines and Japanese theatre cultures are among the most foreign forms of theatre compared to what we have here in America. I think the heritage and history of how these theatre forms came to be what they are to day is so fascinating. It is a big goal of mine to work with theatre in a different language, and while its not an Asian language I would still definitely like to study it in the future. The Idea of translating Shakespeare, I must admit, has not really ever crossed my mind. Its obvious its been done before but I never considered a culture variation of his work in other cultures. I think, again this goes to my fascination with how other cultures handle theatre, but I am not very interested in see what this means and how its works.
The internationality of the world these days means that a lot of different cultures can now use and interpret classics in ways that even 50 years ago wouldn't have been nearly as effective. With communication allowing us to hear about this fascinating twist on a theme. Americans and Westerners often take other cultures stories and plays and adapt them to our own culture, often senselessly ignoring the original cultures behind them. This flipping of the script allows for, as the article notes, for more creative and insightful interpretation of classics such as Shakespeare. With the plays being so commonly performed and stale in most of Western culture, seeing the reinterpretations of the stories such as with 'Shamlet', changing the cultural context and providing new views on the events and characters of the play because of it. Japanese and Chinese theater are often so undervalued and under appreciated, and have such wide variances from western theater that I'm really excited to see what else comes from this, and what theater we can see now that the world is so widely connected.
How time has changed. Shakespeare was once seen as a shameful evidence of Western colonization and a polluter brought by bloody capitalism, but nowadays it is a product of international exchange. I appreciated this kind of cultural communication from a modern Chinese point of view. Even though I am happy to see the Chinese adaption of Shakespeare work, I doubt the translation can really go beyond the barrier of language. People say that theater is a universal language; however, the translation will ruin the magic in the words, rhyme, and a part of the play's soul no matter how the others aspects still work. So maybe that is why now Chinese people tend to go to theaters to see the originals, with subtitles. Personally, I am more fond of the localized version of Shakespeare than the "direct" version. Yet Shakespeare's impact on Chinese modern theater and culture is really undeniable.
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