Being European: "Hamlet" on the Israeli Stage
Reut Barzilai
- Vol. 21, Iss: 36, pp 27-53
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TLDR
For almost 60 years, repertory Israeli theaters mostly refused to let Hamlet reflect the "age and body of the time" as mentioned in this paper, even though local productions of canonical plays in Israel tend to be more financially successful than those directed by non-Israelis, and even when local national and political circumstances bore a striking resemblance to the plot of the play.Abstract:
One of the most prolific fields of Shakespeare studies in the past two decades has been the exploration of local appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays around the world. This article, however, foregrounds a peculiar case of an avoidance of local appropriation. For almost 60 years, repertory Israeli theaters mostly refused to let Hamlet reflect the “age and body of the time”. They repeatedly invited Europeans to direct Hamlet in Israel and offered local audiences locally-irrelevant productions of the play. They did so even though local productions of canonical plays in Israel tend to be more financially successful than those directed by non-Israelis, and even when local national and political circumstances bore a striking resemblance to the plot of the play. Conversely, when one Israeli production of Hamlet (originating in an experimental theatre) did try to hold a mirror up to Israeli society—and was indeed understood abroad as doing so—Israeli audiences and theatre critics failed to recognize their reflection in this mirror. The article explores the various functions that Hamlet has served for the Israeli theatre: a rite of passage, an educational tool, an indication of belonging to the European cultural tradition, a means of boosting the prestige of Israeli theatres, and—only finally—a mirror reflecting Israel’s “age and body.” The article also shows how, precisely because Hamlet was not allowed to reflect local concerns, the play mirrors instead the evolution of the Israeli theatre, its conflicted relation to the Western theatrical tradition, and its growing self-confidence.read more
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TL;DR: The authors prendre en compte les consequences negatives du sionisme pour les Juifs orientaux, reduits au mutisme dans l'actuel Etat d'Israel and dans la societe israelienne.
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Ania Loomba,Martin Orkin +1 more
TL;DR: Postcolonial Shakespeares as discussed by the authors explores the connections between early modern and contemporary vocabularies of colonization, 'race' and nationhood in early modern Britain and how the Shakespearean text later became a colonial battlefield and how Shakespeare circulates in our post-and neo-colonial world today.
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TL;DR: The authors argue that play and adaptation are mutually dependent processes that evolve over time in accordance with the needs of users, and that adaptation is a conceptually necessary but culturally problematic problem that results from partial or occasional failures to recognize a shifting work in its textual-theatrical instance.
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World-wide Shakespeares : Local Appropriations in Film and Performance
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