Directions to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Bibliography
Compiled by Denise Buhr, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
The resources listed are, for the most part, published in 2000 or after and focus on specific adaptations, parodies, or reconstructions of Shakespeare’s plays. Some earlier materials are included if they seem relevant to the topic or provide information on the history or philosophy of approaches to Shakespeare.
Bate, Jonathan, and Russell Jackson, eds. Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History. Oxford University Press, 1996.
The twelve essays in this book cover over four hundred years of Shakespeare as performed on the British stage, highlighting the plays, the productions, the people who staged and performed the works, and the culture and events that impacted the theatre in each period.
Brokering, Jon M. “Ninagawa Yukio’s Intercultural Hamlet: Parsing Japanese Iconography.” Asian Theatre Journal 24.2 (2007): 370-396.
Four aspects of the director’s approach to Hamlet are discussed: transposition of the play in time and space, symbolic use of curtains and stairways, allegorical use of the Japanese doll tier as a motif, and stage techniques borrowed from kabuki and noh theatre.
Brown, John Russell. “Learning Shakespeare’s Secret Language: The Limits of ‘Performance Studies.’” New Theatre Quarterly 24.3 (2008): 211-221.
The author argues that “performance studies”, often based on isolated moments in one performance of a particular production, need to give way to the study of the “secret language” of the plays – “implicit instructions to actors that are buried in the texts themselves, at a time when there was no director to encourage or impose a particular interpretation or approach.”
Brustein, Robert. “More Masterpieces.” PAJ 30.3 (2008): 1-7.
In this essay, the author refutes an earlier position in which he “argued against slavish reproduction of classical works.” He now suggests that reinterpretation of classical works has gone too far, where staging techniques and technology overshadow and even ignore the texts purportedly being presented.
Burnett, Linda. “ 'Redescribing a World:’ Towards a Theory of Shakespearean Adaptation in Canada.” Canada Theatre Review 111 (2002): 5-9.
The author looks at four adaptations of Shakespeare’s works by Canadian playwrights: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald, Gertrude & Ophelia by Margaret Clarke, Claudius by Ken Gass, and Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears.
Coursen, H. R. Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.
The essays discuss numerous performances, particularly in film and on television.
Darragi, Rafik. “The Tunisian Stage: Shakespeare’s Part in Question.” Critical Survey 19.3 (2007): 95-106.
The author discusses adaptations by Tunisian directors of three Shakespeare plays, Richard III, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.
Dessen, Alan C. Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
The book focuses on “theatrical strategy and techniques taken for granted by Shakespeare, his player-colleagues, and his playgoers” and how these might affect interpretations of the works today.
Dionne, Craig, and Parmita Kapadia, eds. Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2008.
The essays in this collection look at the ways in which writers and performers have appropriated works of Shakespeare to create texts and performances to reflect their culture and environment.
Draudt, Manfred. “ 'Committing Outrage Against the Bard’: Nineteenth-Century Travesties of Shakespeare in England and Austria.” Modern Language Review 88.1 (1993): 102-109.
The author looks at parodies, written in the 1800s, of Shakespeare’s tragedies, particularly Othello, noting the similarities of works from two different cultures: London and Vienna.
Fayard, Nicole. “Daniel Mesguich’s Shakespearean Play: Performing the Shakespeare Myth.” Theatre Journal 59.1 (2007): 39-55.
The author discusses the work of French director Daniel Mesguich and how he challenges traditional audience expectations about Shakespeare and his plays.
Fischlin, Daniel, and Mark Fortier, eds. Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London: Routledge, 2000.
This collection includes twelve plays adapted from Shakespeare’s works, beginning with The Woman’s Prize; or The Tamer Tamed by John Fletcher, first performed around 1611, and ending with Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears, which premiered in the author’s home country of Canada in 1997. The other plays are The History of King Lear by Nahum Tate, King Stephen: A Dramatic Fragment by John Keats, The Public (El público) by Frederico García Lorca, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht, uMabatha by Welcome Msomi, Measure for Measure by Charles Marowitz, Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller, Lear’s Daughters by The Women’s Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein, Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel, and This Island’s Mine by Philip Osment.
Fitzpatrick, Lisa. “Staging The Merchant of Venice in Cork: The Concretization of a Shakespearean Play for a New Society.” Modern Drama 50.2 (2007): 168-183.
The author discusses a 2005 late-night, site-specific, promenade performance through the city of Cork of The Merchant of Venice. The essay focuses on the purpose of the production and the techniques the Corcadorca Theatre Company used to bring their interpretation of the play to life.
France, Richard. “Orson Welles’s Anti-Fascist Production of Julius Caesar.” Forum Modernes Theater 15.2 (2000): 145-161.
The article discusses Welles’ modern-dress production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theatre in 1937 that established parallels between republican Rome and fascist Italy to create a “dazzling piece of propaganda.”
Hodgdon, Barbara. The Shakespeare Trade: Performances and Appropriations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Using stage and film versions of four plays in particular – The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream – the author explores how Shakespeare’s works and even Shakespeare himself have been appropriated and exploited by 20th century culture.
Hoenselaars, Ton, ed. Shakespeare and the Language of Translation. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004.
These essays examine some of the many languages into which Shakespeare’s works have been translated, issues that rise out of translating his texts, and how the act of translation impacts the understanding and the performances of the plays.
Holderness, Graham. “ 'Silence Bleeds’: Hamlet Across Borders: The Shakespearean Adaptations of Sulayman Al-Bassam.” European Journal of English Studies 12.1 (2008): 59-77.
“This article address the writing and performance work of Anglo-Kuwaiti director Sulayman Al-Bassam, tracing the development of his various adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet into English and Arabic ‘cross-cultural’ versions between 2001 and 2007.”
Homan, Sidney. Directing Shakespeare: A Scholar Onstage. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
The author, a professor of English, discusses productions of Shakespeare he has directed and techniques he used to create the shows. Chapters examine aspects such as cutting the text, adapting a play to a cast or theater, and using unusual set design and staging.
Howard, Jean E. Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
The author suggests that each of Shakespeare’s plays is “a blueprint for production” containing “a repertoire of techniques by which Shakespeare implicitly prepared his plays for effective stage presentation;” a presentation that creates and shapes audience response. While acknowledging that much in an actual production can and should be determined by the director, she believes that the playscripts themselves often provide both broad and minute details for performance.
Huang, Alexander C. Y. “Impersonation, Autobiography, and Cross-Cultural Adaptation: Lee Kuo-Hsiu’s Shamlet.” Asian Theatre Journal 22.1 (2005): 122-137.
The author discusses the comedy, a parody of Hamlet that provides a satirical look at Taiwanese society.
Kidnie, Margaret Jane. Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2009.
Kidnie begins by revoking the idea “that the printed text of Shakespeare’s plays provides the fixed point against which theatrical production can be monitored” and suggests that a play “is not an object at all but a dynamic process that evolves over time in response to the needs and sensibilities of its users.” She acknowledges then that determining what is authentically Shakespearean and what is adaptive is a problem. She uses examples from theatrical productions, television shows, and print editions to argue, not that anything goes, but that the accepted boundaries of what is Shakespeare and what is adaptation continue to evolve.
Kidnie, Margaret Jane. “Text, Performance, and the Editors: Staging Shakespeare’s Drama.” Shakespeare Quarterly 51.4 (2000): 456-473.
The author discusses how editorial decisions regarding stage directions in print editions of Shakespeare’s plays influences theatrical productions, particularly those that would want to recreate the works as performed in Shakespeare’s time.
Kidnie, Margaret Jane. “ 'What World Is This?': Pericles at the Stratford Festival of Canada, 2003.” Shakespeare Quarterly 55.3 (2004): 307-319.
A review of The Adventures of Pericles, a production of Shakespeare’s play that used costuming and performance techniques to move the play through numerous cultures and locales.
Li, Ruru. “ 'A Drum, A Drum – Macbeth Doth Come’: When Birnam Wood Moved to China.” Shakespeare Survey 57 (2004): 169-185.
The article examines four adaptations of Macbeth, the tragedy most performed in China, and how Chinese historical figures and traditional performing arts were used to create the productions.
Marowitz, Charles. “Cue for Passion: On the Dynamics of Shakespearean Acting.” New Theatre Quarterly 18.1 (2002): 3-9.
A look at acting styles from the 17th century to the present and the divergence between American and British approaches to performing Shakespeare.
Massai, Sonia, ed. World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance. London: Routledge, 2005.
This collection looks at adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare in countries around the world and the value of those productions in saving or shaping a local or ethnic culture.
McCutcheon, Mark. “A Midsummer Night’s Mash-up: Adapting Shakespeare as a Canada Day Dance Party.” Canadian Theatre Review 111 (2002): 33-42.
The article discusses a July 1, 2000 “passing strange adaptation” of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a rave in celebration of Canada Day.
McMahon, Christina S. “From Adaptation to Transformation: Shakespeare Creolized on Cape Verde’s Festival Stage.” Theatre Survey 50.1 (2009): 35-66.
The author discusses the adaptations of Shakespeare by two directors, João Branco and Herlandson Duarte, at the annual Mindelact International Theatre Festival in the Republic of Cape Verde, off the coast of Senegal in West Africa.
Meagher, John C. Shakespeare’s Shakespeare: How the Plays Were Made. New York: Continuum, 1997.
While acknowledging that “no single approach to Shakespeare can be ruled flatly wrong, or claim exclusive validity,” this “investigation of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy—i.e., his stagecraft, his repertoire of playwriting techniques, the strategies and schemes and tactics with which he put plays together” attempts to uncover the Shakespeare his original audiences would have seen in his plays.
Novak, Peter. “ 'Where Lies Your Text?’: Twelfth Night in American Sign Language Translation.” Shakespeare Survey 61 (2008): 74-90.
The author discusses The American Sign Language Project, a multiyear effort to translate Twelfth Night into ASL, digitally record the translation, and then present a professional production from the translation. Included in the discussion are the differences between translating and interpreting, difficulties to overcome for a production that incorporated both ASL and spoken English, and the challenges of using a performed language to create a performance.
Novy, Marianne, ed. Cross-Cultural Performances: Differences in Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
The editor introduces this volume of essays by suggesting that all post-Renaissance interpretations of Shakespeare are cross-cultural. Individual writers then explore women’s responses to Shakespeare, both in the distant and more recent past. Many of the essays look at how novelists and poets have appropriated Shakespeare’s works and characters, but the book also includes discussions on actresses who choose to play, or not to play, Shakespeare in British theater of the 1980s and 90s, and on the work of theatrical directors Joan Littlewood and Deborah Warner.
Pujante, A. Luis, and Ton Hoenselaars, eds. Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003.
This collection looks at how Shakespeare’s works have been appropriated for political and cultural purposes, how translations reflect the cultures and societies for which they are written, and how both appropriation and translation influence performances of Shakespeare in Europe outside of Britain.
Purcell, Stephen. Popular Shakespeare: Simulation and Subversion on the Modern Stage. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
The author looks at post-1990 performances to establish what Shakespeare means in contemporary, popular culture and examines the debate on the “right” way to do Shakespeare. Included in the book are Personal Narratives relating his own theatregoing experiences at various productions.
Rutter, Carol Chillington. “Watching Ourselves Watching Shakespeare—Or—How Am I Supposed to Look?” Shakespeare Bulletin 35.4 (2007): 47-68.
Commentary on an April 2006 performance of the Müncher Kammerspiele Company’s Othello, which the author calls “seriously misogynist, racist, and bluntly, brutally, filthily obscene” and her students reported as “the most powerful ‘Shakespeare’ they’d ever encountered.”
Salgádo, Gámini. Eyewitnesses of Shakespeare: First Hand Accounts of Performances 1590-1890. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
This collection includes reviews by well-known critics of the time as well as extracts from diaries, letters, and memoirs recounting performances of Shakespeare’s plays.
Schoch, Richard W. Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
The popularity of Shakespeare parodies set against “pedantic critics, mediocre performers, and sensationalizing actor-managers” who would protect the “sanctity of Shakespeare as cultural and national icon” is the focus of this history of 1800s theatre in England.
Teague, Frances. Shakespeare and the American Popular Stage. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
The first half of the book examines Shakespeare in America’s history while the second part deals with American adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays into musicals during the 20th century.
Trivedi, Poonam, and Dennis Bartholomeusz, eds. India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation, and Performance. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005.
This collection of essays examines India’s long history with Shakespeare and how his works have been appropriated into Indian culture.
Watkins, Ronald. On Producing Shakespeare. New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1964.
The author attempts to prove the case “that if we want to experience the whole genius of Shakespeare, we must reconstruct the conditions of performance at the Globe.”
Wells, Stanley, ed. Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
This compilation of reviews of Shakespeare’s plays covers a 300-year period and focuses on “accounts that give a clear sense of what happened in the theatre and of the effect it had upon the spectator.”
Womack, Peter. “Secularizing King Lear: Shakespeare, Tate, and the Sacred.” Shakespeare Survey 55 (2002): 96-105.
The article discusses Nahum Tate’s adaptation of King Lear in 1680 and reasons for its continued presence on the stage for over 150 years.
Woo, Celestine. “Sarah Siddons’s Performances as Hamlet: Breaching the Breeches Part.” European Romantic Review 18.5 (2007): 573-595.
The article discusses the actress’ reasons for choosing the role and the cross-gendered costume she appeared in, as well as the historical record on her performances as Hamlet.
Yong, Li Lan. “Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona, Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative.” Theatre Journal 56.2 (2004): 251-273.
The author analyses Singapore director Ong Keng Sen’s adaptation of Othello.
Last updated: September 28, 2010