To "Hamlet" or Not to "Hamlet: Notes on an Arts Secondary School Students’ "Hamlet"

Authors

  • Estella Ciobanu Faculty of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania
  • Dana Trifan Enache Faculty of Arts, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.10

Keywords:

„Hamlet” (Romanian theatrical production, 2018), student actors, role doubling, collective character, gender identity, cross-cultural echoes

Abstract

This article discusses a 2018 theatrical production of Hamlet with Romanian teenage arts students, directed by one of the article’s authors, actress and academic Dana Trifan Enache. As an artist, she believes that the art of theatre spectacle depends pre-eminently on the actors’ enactment, and hones her students’ acting skills and technique accordingly. The other voice in the article comes from an academic in a cognate discipline within the broad field of arts and humanities. As a feminist and medievalist, the latter has investigated the political underside of representations of the body in religious drama, amongst others. The analytic duo reflects as much the authors’ different professional formation and academic interests as their asymmetrical positioning vis-à-vis the show as respectively the play’s director and one of its spectators. Their shared occupational investment, teaching to form and hone highly specialized professional skills, and shared object of professional interest (broadly conceived), text interpretation, account nevertheless for the possibility of fruitful interdisciplinary reflection on the 2018 Hamlet. This in-depth analysis of the circumstances of the performance and technical solutions it sought challenges stereotyped dismissals of a students’ Hamlet as superannuated, flimsy or gratuitously provocative. Furthermore, a gender-aware examination of the adaptation’s original handling of characters and scenes indicates unexpected cross-cultural and diachronic commonalities between the dramatic world of the 2018 Romanian production of Hamlet and socio-cultural developments emergent in pre-Shakespearean England.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Estella Ciobanu, Faculty of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania

Estella Ciobanu is associate professor at the Faculty of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania. She teaches Identity and Gender in the USA, Culture and Religion in the USA, Postmodernism, and British and American Cultural Icons. Her academic interests include iconization studies and gendered representations of the body in literature, medieval theatre, cartography, anatomo-medical practices and the arts. She is the author of Representations of the Body in Middle English Biblical Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), The Body Spectacular in Middle English Theatre (Bucureşti: Ed. Etnologică, 2013), The Spectacle of the Body in Late Medieval England (Iaşi: Ed. Lumen, 2012) and over fifty articles, and co-author (with Petru Golban) of A Short History of Literary Criticism (Kütahya: Üç Mart Press 2008).

Dana Trifan Enache, Faculty of Arts, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania

Dana Trifan Enache is associate professor at the Faculty of Arts, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania. Her academic activity and research concern teaching acting technique (speaking voice, stage improvisation skills, and generally the art of the actor) in the Professional Acting programme. She has supervised academic projects, workshops and student symposia, has participated in international conferences, and has also performed in Romanian productions of Eugène Ionesco’s The Lesson, Vaclav Havel’s The Beggar’s Opera, Molière’s Tartuffe, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and Euripides’s The Bacchae.

References

Albanese, Denise. Extramural Shakespeare. Reproducing Shakespeare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230112940

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973). 2nd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
Google Scholar

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space (1968). New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Google Scholar

The Chester Mystery Cycle. Ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills. Early English Text Society s.s. 3. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford UP, 1974.
Google Scholar

Ciobanu, Estella. Representations of the Body in Middle English Biblical Drama. The New Middle Ages. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90918-9

Cixous, Hélène. “Castration or Decapitation?” Signs 7.1 (1981): 41-55. Originally published as “Le Sexe ou la tete?” in Les Cahiers du GRIF 13 (1976): 5-15.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/grif.1976.1089

Cohn, Ruby. Modern Shakespeare Offshoots. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976.
Google Scholar

Csapo, Eric. Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater. Malden, Oxford, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444318036

Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 5th ed. Rev. M. A. R. Habib. Malden, Oxford, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325988

Fischlin, Daniel. Introduction. Outerspeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation. Ed. Daniel Fischlin. Toronto, Buffalo, London: U of Toronto P, 2014. 3-50.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442669369-003

Gianakaris, C. J. “Stoppard’s Adaptations of Shakespeare: Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth.” Comparative Drama 18.3 (1984): 222-240.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.1984.0025

Hamlet – Colegiul Național de Arte “Regina Maria” Constanţa. Theatrical production directed by Dana Trifan Enache, 2018. Video of the performance, 4 Sept. 2018. Faculty of Arts, Ovidius University of Constanţa. YouTube premiere 5 May 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e72m904suLw&t=2049s
Google Scholar

Huang, Alexa. “Global Shakespeares as Methodology.” Shakespeare 9.3 (2013): 273-290.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2013.827236

Huang, Alexa and Elizabeth Rivlin. Introduction: Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation. Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation. Ed. Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin. Reproducing Shakespeare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 1-20.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375773_1

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2006.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203957721

Desmet, Christy, Sujata Iyengar and Miriam Jacobson, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation. Routledge Literature Handbooks. London, New York: Routledge, 2020.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168968

Joubin, Alexa Alice. “Global Shakespeare.” The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. 2nd ed. Rev. Will Sharpe and Erin Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015. 144-145.
Google Scholar

Joubin, Alexa Alice and Aneta Mancewicz. Introduction. Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance. Ed. Aneta Mancewicz and Alexa Alice Joubin. Reproducing Shakespeare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 1-21.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89851-3_1

Kidnie, Margaret Jane. Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation. London, New York: Routledge, 2009.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203167717

Massai, Sonia. Introduction: Defining Local Shakespeares. World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance. Ed. Sonia Massai. London, New York: Routledge, 2005. 1-11.
Google Scholar

Phillips, Susan E. Transforming Talk: The Problem with Gossip in Late Medieval England. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2007.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271034843

Rajewsky, Irina O. “Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality.” Intermédialités 6 (2005): 43-64.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1005505ar

Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge, 2016.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315737942

Schaberg, Jane. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament. New York, London: Continuum, 2004 (2002).
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Philip Edwards. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Updated ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prinţ al Danemarcei (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark). Text adaptation by Iulian Enache. Theatrical production directed by Dana Trifan Enache. Director’s copy. 2018.
Google Scholar

Spielmann, Yvonne. Intermedialität. Das System Peter Greenaway. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998.
Google Scholar

Stoppard, Tom. Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth. In Plays One: The Real Inspector Hound; After Magritte; Dirty Linen; New-Found-Land; Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth. Introduced by the author. Contemporary Classics. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.
Google Scholar

Vareschi, Carlo. “Fear and Loathing in Prague: Tom Stoppard’s Cahoot’s Macbeth.” Comparative Drama 52.1–2 (2018): 123-139.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2018.0005

Zeitlin, Froma I. “Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama.” Representations 11 (1985): 63-94.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928427

Downloads

Published

2020-06-30

How to Cite

Ciobanu, E., & Trifan Enache, D. (2020). To "Hamlet" or Not to "Hamlet: Notes on an Arts Secondary School Students’ "Hamlet". Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 21(36), 153–172. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.10

Issue

Section

Articles

Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.