Remediating Global Media in Recent Shakespeare Productions on Romanian Stages

Abstract

The paper discusses recent Romanian Shakespeare productions of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Bucharest. It argues that global mass culture, in the form of TV sitcoms and musicals, YouTube clips and computer games, is re-circulated on Romanian stages with the result of re-mediating the older forms of Romanian Shakespeare performances. The paper interrogates the popular character of the new type of productions, which are largely unpolitical and motivated by commercial reasons. The last part of the paper presents a radical deconstruction of Shakespeare’s text in the form of a computer game, which, however, re-introduces the political orientation of older, pre- 1989 performances.

Keywords

• Shakespeare
• mass culture
• globalization
• new media