The Romanian Bard 106 DOI: 10.2478/abcsj-2013-0007 The Romanian Bard: A Case Study of Shakespeare’s Adaptations in Contemporary Romania DANA PERCEC and ANDREEA ŞERBAN West University of Timişoara Abstract In Romania, Shakespeare played an important role in the construction of Romania’s cultural identity and in the reshaping of political awareness during the communist dictatorship. In recent years, the Bard’s work has been translated into a contemporary, accessible Romanian language, with theatrical or musical adaptations targeted at a public whose tastes are shaped by popular culture. The authors discuss, from this perspective, two recent adaptations: The Taming of the Shrew (2005), acclimatized to contemporary Romanian realities (names, locations and folk music), and Romeo and Juliet (2009) that relocates the tragedy in the musical genre. The choice of two musical genres popular with the most widely spread segments of the public – the conservative, but less educated middle-aged group of non-theatre-goers and the youth – indicates an attempt, still new for the Romanian cultural market, to accommodate Shakespeare to the interests of two different communities of consumers, so far absent from this country’s high culture circuit. Keywords: William Shakespeare, adaptation, assimilation, Romania, local culture, theatre Introduction The field of Shakespeare studies has, in the past decade, gained a new dimension in Romania. The notion of appropriation has become attractive for Romanian scholars, who see the advantages of an intercultural approach in the analysis of Shakespeare’s reception. Looking into the dynamics of the contact between the mainstream and the sub-culture, between the national and the global identity, but also between the 107 The Romanian Bard international and the local/ regional culture, has been a fruitful line of theoretical investigation recently. In Romania, several projects have focused on Shakespeare’s assimilation and on the relevance of his work, at a given moment, for the Romanian society, education, political views, etc. (Matei-Chesnoiu 2006, 2007). The translations, dramatic productions and critical response to Shakespeare have served numerous purposes during the one century and a half since the English playwright gained visibility in the Romanian Principalities. The first translation was published in the 1850s, in a period when this region was attempting an opening towards cultural and linguistic integration among the well developed western nations. The translation of Shakespeare’s great tragedies contributed thus to the crystallization of the modern Romanian language. Under the pressure of the Junimea movement (an influential cultural association, with an influence on the political life and ideological discourse of the time), the nineteenth century translations and performances have a more radical component, echoing the ideals of the 1848 European movements.i The next significant moment in the history of Shakespeare’s appropriation is the communist period. After the proletcult of the 1950s, relative liberalization and the strategic relaxation of state surveillance occurred during the early years of Ceauşescu’s rule. Some freedom of expression fostered the rehabilitation of major literary figures and the temporary opening towards the West triggered the translation and publication, during two decades, of a record number of literary works. Shakespeare’s Complete Works were translated for the first time, Shakespearean criticism in Romanian was also published, and this engendered a flurry of Shakespearean performances in theatres all around the country, whose reception by the general public was channelled by numerous well-informed literary reviews. The broadcast, by the Romanian television, of the classical BBC Shakespeare series transformed Shakespeare into a familiar figure, while his themes and characters joined the local cultural circuit. In the 1980s, the darkest period of communism, Shakespeare was massively used for subversive purposes on the Romanian stage. Starting from his won assumption (Elsom 1994), that Shakespeare is more contemporary in some historical moments and in American, British and Canadian Studies / 108 some countries, the British critic famously noted during the 2003 Craiova Shakespeare Festival (a prestigious event, taking place on a yearly basis in Romanian theatres, with international participation): As to Shakespeare, I think that each nation sees and interprets him today according to how much they have suffered. In my opinion, the rich America and Britain – a country which has experienced no real tragedy on a national scale for a long time – are more remote from Shakespeare’s world, tormented by horrible tragedies, than you, the people in the countries of Eastern Europe. Especially the Romanians, who went through Ceauşescu’s terror, sympathize, I think, more intensely, with the heroes’ sufferings in the Shakespearean drama. This is why, when they play Shakespeare, the Romanian artists always go to the core of the matter. (interview taken by Silvia Kerim 2003: 17, our translation) In Elsom’s opinion, the dehumanization perpetrated by the absurd communist regimes in Eastern European countries may be paralleled to a sort of primitivism typical of pre-modern eras, when there was no notion of human rights. Consequently, this would enable the audiences of former communist countries to experience a feeling of kinship with Shakespeare’s protagonists through the hardships endured. Recently, an ambitious project of re-translating Shakespeare’s Complete Works has been initiated by Prof. George Volceanov, with a view to making the literary canon more accessible to the general public, especially the younger generation, who has got acquainted with Shakespeare due to Hollywood spin-offs, but is still put off by the difficult, archaic and obscure language of the Romanian translations that have been attempted so far. The first four volumes of this new collection have already been released by the Bucharest-based publishers Paralela 45, as follows: Sonnets. The Tempest, Works, vol. I, 2010; Hamlet, Works, vol. II, 2010; Twelfth Night. Two Noble Kinsmen. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Works, vol. III, 2010; The Taming of the Shrew, King John, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Works, vol. IV, 2011. The opening produced by the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 resulted in a massive re-evaluation of the agenda of the Romanian theatres, as well as the processing of classical productions, so as to respond to the aesthetic expectations and cultural needs of the twenty-first century theatre-goers, with substantial intertextual references. Thus, pop 109 The Romanian Bard culture, film culture, urban culture, consumerism, and Romanian folklore are blended in the recent adaptations of Shakespeare’s work, in an effort to address major moral and social topics, which are valid despite the distance in space and time. This paper focuses on two such recent Romanian adaptations, namely a musical production of Romeo and Juliet (2009) and an acclimatization of The Taming of the Shrew (2005). Romanian Romeos and Juliets Translated from Gerard Presgurvic’s Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour, and first staged in Romania in 2009 at Teatrul Naţional de Operetă “Ion Dacian” in Bucharest, Romeo and Juliet the musical was incredibly successful amongst the Romanian public, so much that it was still being played in Bucharest in the spring of 2010. The French adaptation, first performed in Paris in 2001, heavily relying on pop and rock music, is further adapted for the Romanian production. The narrative retells Shakespeare’s classic love-story, all the while adapting it to contemporary popular culture and local ethnic contexts. Although similar to the 1996 Hollywood success (Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann) in terms of costumes, as it mixes medieval outfits with modern biker leather trousers and jackets, the Romanian production is original in the manner in which it rewrites the parts which are adapted to the twenty-first century context. Thus, Romeo comes across as a cocky playboy, who spends his life partying and enjoying life’s pleasures, much like Romanian football players and young socialites, the offspring of Romania’s nouveau-riches – easily recognizable portraits, since the Romanian media have an appetence for this type of contemporary, prominent society figures. These representatives of the young, urban segment are sometimes highly controversial public figures, appearing as both arbiters of fashion and loathed initiators of social scandals.ii Performed so as to cater for the consumerist tastes of pop culture generations, the musical capitalizes on the motif of sexuality by means of erotic dance, provocative posture, and bright red outfits and accessories. American, British and Canadian Studies / 110 This approach transforms Juliet into a standard teenager of our time, her attractiveness residing in her sex appeal, rather than the virginal looks of the Shakespearean heroine. Consequently, the red colour becomes a symbol of her conformism to the mandates of her generation: first, Juliet wears a red dress at the ball, while, later, she wears red shoes when her parents are arranging her marriage to Paris. The assumption is that the young woman’s obedience has moved, from the level of patriarchal authority and family conventions, in the Elizabethan tragedy, to the province of her peer-group’s conventions. At the same time, the object which increases her attractiveness may also have an intertextual value: the symbolic weight of the red shoes is given by the reference to “The Red Shoes” plot (1948 film, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and 1993 Broadway musical based on the film). The shoes are made to suggest that a woman is always forced to choose between, on the one hand, honouring her family by obeying her father and marrying well, and, on the other hand, marrying the man she loves and being happy. What is perhaps most striking in the Romanian adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is the character of Juliet’s mother, who is also much more sexualized than in Shakespeare’s original play. When she is not wearing red – with the same connotations – she is seen snuggling with a man younger than her husband.