http://hdl.handle.net/11089/31427 2026-04-03T17:50:55Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/39573 Theatre Reviews Billingham, Peter; Mercier, Stephanie; Hopkins, Lisa 2019-12-30T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/39570 Revisiting the Classics and the New Media Environments: Shakespeare Re-Told by Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood and Edward St. Aubyn Percec, Dana The versatility of the appropriation of Shakespeare in recent years has been witnessed in a variety of registers and media, which range from special effects on the stage, music, cartoons, comics, advertisements, all the way to video games. This contribution looks at some of the novels in the Shakespeare Re-told Hogarth series as effigies of the contemporary process of adapting the Elizabethan plays to the environments in which the potential readers/viewers work, become informed, seek entertainment and adjust themselves culturally, being, ultimately, cognitive schemes which are validated by today’s reception processes. The first novel in the series was Jeanette Winterson’s Gap of Time (2016), in which the Shakespearean reference to the years that separate the two moments of The Winter’s Tale’s plot becomes the title of a video game relying mainly on fantasy. Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016) rewrites The Tempest as a parable of the theatrical performance and its avatars, as undisputable authority, on the one hand, and source of subversiveness, on the other. Dunbar (2018) is Edward St. Aubyn’s response to the family saga of King Lear, where kingship, territorial division and military conflict are replaced by modern media wars, and the issues of public exposure in the original text are reinterpreted interpreted by resorting to the impact of the audio-visual on every-day life. 2019-12-30T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/39571 On a Romantic Island: Shakespeare and Mamma mia Wild, Jana B. The paper concerns the blockbuster musical film Mamma mia, loosely using some of Shakespearean patterns, topoi and plots. Set on a small Greek island, idylic and exotic, the film offers a contemporary romantic story with new/reversed roles in terms of gender, parenthood, sexuality, marriage and age, pointing to a different cultural paradigm. While the Shakespearean level is recast, remixed and probably less visible, the priority is given to the utopia of the 1970s and to the question of its outcome and transformation. 2019-12-30T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/39569 Shakespeare across the Taiwan Strait: A Developmental Perspective Sun, Yu; Zhang, Longhai Shakespeare studies in Mainland China and Taiwan evolved from the same origin during the two centuries after Shakespeare being introduced into China in the early nineteenth century. Although Shakespeare was first seen on the Taiwan stage in the Japanese language during the colonial period, it was after Kuomintang moved to Taiwan in 1949 that Shakespeare studies began to flourish when scholars and theatrical experts from mainland China, such as Liang Shih-Chiu, Yu Er-Chang, Wang Sheng-shan and others brought Chinese Shakespeare to Taiwan. Since the 1980s, mainland Shakespeareans began to communicate actively with their colleagues in Taiwan. With the continuous efforts of Cao Yu, Fang Ping, Meng Xianqiang, Gu Zhengkun, Yang Lingui and many other scholars in mainland China and Chu Li-Min, Yen Yuan-shu, Perng Ching-Hsi and other scholars in Taiwan, communications and conversations on Shakespeare studies across the Taiwan Strait were gradually enhanced in recent years. Meanwhile, innovations in Chinese adaptations of Shakespeare have resulted in a new performing medium, Shake-xiqu, through which theatrical practitioners on both sides explore possibilities of a union of Shakespeare and traditional Chinese theatre. This paper studies some intricate relationship in the history of Shakespeare studies in mainland China and Taiwan from a developmental perspective and suggests opportunities for positive and effective co-operations and interactions in the future. 2019-12-30T00:00:00Z