Ilha do Desterro (Apr 2008)
Shakespearean dramaturgies in Quebec Shakespearean dramaturgies in Quebec
Abstract
“It is just this which characterizes translation: the fact that it must be perpetually redone. I feel it to be an image of Art itself, of theatrical Art, which is the art of infinite variety. Everything must be played again and again, everything must be taken up and retranslated.” An Interview with Antoine Vitez, “The Duty to Translate.” Since 1980, the theatre of the province of Quebec has been in thegrip of a passion for Shakespeare. During this period, Shakespeare’s texts have often been retranslated and have also been vehicles for radical challenges to theatrical conventions. Best known among these experiments internationally are the productions of director Robert Lepage, among them his Shakespeare cycle (Coriolan, Macbeth, La Tempête) performed in Mauberge, France (1992), Japanese versions of Macbeth and The Tempest staged in Tokyo (1993), and, above all, his A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with its infamous ‘mudwrestling’ scenes) at the National Theatre, London (1993). “It is just this which characterizes translation: the fact that it must be perpetually redone. I feel it to be an image of Art itself, of theatrical Art, which is the art of infinite variety. Everything must be played again and again, everything must be taken up and retranslated.” An Interview with Antoine Vitez, “The Duty to Translate.” Since 1980, the theatre of the province of Quebec has been in thegrip of a passion for Shakespeare. During this period, Shakespeare’s texts have often been retranslated and have also been vehicles for radical challenges to theatrical conventions. Best known among these experiments internationally are the productions of director Robert Lepage, among them his Shakespeare cycle (Coriolan, Macbeth, La Tempête) performed in Mauberge, France (1992), Japanese versions of Macbeth and The Tempest staged in Tokyo (1993), and, above all, his A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with its infamous ‘mudwrestling’ scenes) at the National Theatre, London (1993).
