NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN SHAKESPEAREAN PRODUCTIONS ON TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY EUROPEAN STAGES by STEPHANIE MICHAELA SCHNABEL A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF LITERATURE Shakespeare Institute School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham December 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis is on the one hand part of the wider field of ‘European Shakespeare’ studies which have become more and more popular in recent years. On the other hand it attempts to propose a new way at researching ‘Shakespeare’ in such a context, thereby also trying to answer the ever persistent question of how much ‘Shakespeare’ is essential for a performance to be regarded as ‘Shakespearean’? There has been a constant striving for a more trans-national approach in this field –some successful, some futile– and therefore national borders have been disregarded in this research project. This thesis instead focuses on the different kinds of media or narrative strategies employed in theatre: each chapter is concerned with a change in narration. Special attention has been directed towards translations and adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, on musical versions, on reworkings for children including a small excursion into puppet theatre, on theatrical productions of his poems, on otherness, such as a King Lear in sign language, and on selected productions from Shakespeare Festivals to try and raise awareness of the European Shakespeare Festival Network. This thesis is dedicated to my parents and my grandmother as well as my late grandfather. Without them this research project would not have been possible at all. Words cannot express how grateful I am for their support. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without a number of people. First and foremost, it would not exist without my supervisors Dr Kathryn Prince, now Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Ottawa, with whom I started work on my research project in 2007, as well as Prof. Russell Jackson, Allardyce Nicoll Chair in Drama and Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham, who took over from Kathryn in 2008. Prof. Therese Seidel (now retired), former Head of Department for Early Modern and Modern English Literature at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (Germany), as well as Dr Friedrich-Karl Unterweg, lecturer in the same department, raised my initial interest in Shakespeare considerably and as such started a process in 2003 which resulted in this piece of work. Prof. Eugene Giddens, Skinner-Young Professor in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature and Faculty Director of Research in the Department for English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford & Cambridge, who supervised me during my semester abroad at Anglia Ruskin, fully supported my plans to come back to the UK for a postgraduate degree at the Shakespeare Institute; to him I owe a sincere thank you as well. In addition to all my friends in the UK and in Germany, who have been very supportive and interested in my work over the past years, another special thank you goes to everyone at the Institute and its library (both staff and students), in particular Dr Martin Wiggins, Rebecca White, Juliet Creese and Karin Brown who helped me through the different problems and crisis which arose in the course of my research. John Settle, the nicest and most wonderful colleague I could have wished for, read parts of this thesis. Thanks a lot for doing that, John! The Malone Society awarded me a bursary for research expenses from October 2007 to October 2010 in exchange for my assistance in selling their publications: thank you so much, I fully enjoyed working with the books and with all the people I met over the years. Another special thank you goes to various people who kindly provided me with material for this thesis, did translations for me or generally allowed me to ask them about their work. They are Carla Dente and Sara Soncini, who sent me a complimentary copy of their Crossing Time and Space, András Szentpéteri from the Operettszínház in Budapest, who sent me recordings and subtitles of their Shakespearean musical versions, as well as Máté Vince, who translated some Hungarian texts for me, Prof. Emil Sirbulescu, Head of the Department for English & American Literature at the University of Craiova (Romania), who kindly offered me his 2010 program of the Shakespeare Festival there, Jerzy Limon, Professor of English at the English Institute, University of Gdansk, President of Theatrum Gendanense Foundation and Managing Director of the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre, as well as Adelheid von Weiden and Philip Parr, who responded to my enquiries about some aspects of the European Shakespeare Festival Network and its member festivals in Gdansk, Neuss and Bath in particular. The actors Frances Barber, Tim Barlow, Richard Clifford, Martin Hutson and Adam Levy as well as the great director Peter Brook did not mind me asking questions in whatever place and situation I happened to approach them; their answers served to illuminate my own ideas about various practical aspects of my research and I am forever grateful to them for it. Last but not at all least, I am very much indebted to Rev. Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, for his constant support since I first sent him an email in 2004; without him I would not have reached this stage in my life. Thank you so much, Paul! TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. General Introduction 1 2. Introduction: Shakespeare in translation 8 2.1. Hamlet at the Berliner Ensemble: more a clown than a confused young man 11 2.2. Hamlet in Almagro: never before seen on stage in Spain 19 2.3. André Gide’s Hamlet: a strong sense of clarity for performance purposes 27 3. Introduction: Shakespearean adaptations in performance 34 3.1. Hans Henny Jahnn’s Richard III: not a twisted body but a tortured soul 37 3.2. Falstafe by Valère Novarina: an adaptation of 1&2 Henry IV 43 3.3. Rose und Regen, Schwert und Wunde: A Midsummer Night’s Dream for only five actors 47 3.4. Heiner Müller’s Anatomie Titus – Fall of Rome: a proper adaptation? 52 4. Introduction: Shakespeare’s plays as musicals 58 4.1. Romeo & Juliet: Tybalt – leather clad thug or ill young man? 60 4.2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: fairies with an identity crisis? 70 4.3. Prince of Denmark: ‘This is Shakespeare’s plot. This is not Shakespeare’s play.’ 79 5. Shakespeare’s plays for children & as puppet theatre 5.1. Introduction: Shakespeare’s plays for children 85 5.1.1. Othello – self-confident general and insecure lover 87 5.1.2. Henry V – a childish feud over a French sandcastle 95 5.1.3. The Winter’s Tale – reflections on theatrical acting 104 5.2. Introduction: Shakespeare’s plays as puppet theatre 113 5.2.1. A German Richard III with a human king and puppets as the rest of the cast 116 5.2.2. Richard III by Teatteri Taiga-Matto (Finland): a mix of different styles 120 6. Introduction: Shakespeare’s poems in performance 125 6.1. Venus and Adonis, or how to combine two different poems 128 6.2. Le Viol de Lucrèce in combination with an ecclesiastical interpretation 135 6.3. Robert Wilson’s and Rufus Wainwright’s collaboration on Shakespeares Sonette 142 7. Introduction: Shakespeare and ‘otherness’ in European productions 157 7.1. Schlingensief’s Hamlet – This is your family in Zürich: neo-Nazis as actors 160 7.2. Alexander Hausvater’s König Cymbeline: German minority theatre in Romania 166 7.3. To each their own: Footbarns Travelling Theatre’s multilingual The Tempest 173 7.4. Hamlet and Macbeth as online home theatre: otherness due to technology 179 7.5. Otherness through silence: a King Lear with deaf and hearing actors 183 7.6. Hamlet in Africa: a story told from Gertrude’s point of view 189 8. Introduction: The idea of Shakespeare tourism & the European Shakespeare Festival Network 195 8.1. Shakespeare Festival im Globe Neuss: Watermill Propeller’s The Winter’s Tale 198 8.2. International Shakespeare Festival in Gdansk with a Turkmen King Lear 204 8.3. Peter Brook’s Love Is My Sin at the Shakespeare Festival Gyula 210 8.4. A work-in-progress Coriolanus at the Shakespeare Unplugged Festival Bath 216 8.5. A Lithuanian Hamlet at the International Shakespeare Festival in Romania 221 9. Conclusion 226 10. Bibliography 233 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION This collection hopes to open a discourse for a subject much ignored by Anglo-centred Shakespearean commentators. As a first attempt, it cannot pretend to inclusive coverage, whether geographical or canonical, and I certainly do not wish to suggest that it somehow contains its topic. I have selected essays that are provocative in that they make different kinds of entrances. […] What they do share is a concern for how Shakespeare appears and works on stage and in the mind in countries that lie beyond the usual exploration of critics and performance historians.