The Roots:Shakespeare and Popular Culture in the 20Th and 21St Centuries Prix Du Mémoire De La Société Française Shakespeare 2013
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Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare Ressources et prix du mémoire Back to the roots:Shakespeare and Popular Culture in the 20th and 21st centuries Prix du mémoire de la Société Française Shakespeare 2013 Livia Segurado Nunes Sophie Chiari (éd.) Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/1949 ISSN : 2271-6424 Éditeur Société Française Shakespeare Référence électronique Livia Segurado Nunes, « Back to the roots:Shakespeare and Popular Culture in the 20th and 21st centuries », Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare [En ligne], Ressources et prix du mémoire, mis en ligne le 03 juin 2013, consulté le 08 janvier 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/1949 © SFS LIVIA SEGURADO NUNES Back to the roots Shakespeare and Popular Culture in the 20th and 21st centuries Mémoire pour la deuxième année du Master Recherche Lettres, Langues & Cultures Etrangères - Etudes Anglophones Présenté à l'Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1) Sous la direction de: Mme Sophie Chiari Session de juin 2012 2 Table of Contents Table of Contents............................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 - Shakespeare and popular culture..........................................11 1.1. Shakespeare and Popular Culture Studies............................. 1.2. Defining ‘culture’.................................................................. 1.3. Defining ‘the popular’........................................................... 1.4. Theories in the 20th century: Mass culture .......................... 1.5. Theories in the postmodernist period ................................... 1.6. Shakespeare as ‘high’ culture................................................ 1.7. Shakespeare and popular theatre........................................... CHAPTER 2 - Shakespeare festivals...........................................................30 2.1. Festivity in Elizabethan England........................................... 2.1.1. Theatre and festivity........................................................... 2.2. The genesis of Shakespeare festivals..................................... 2.3. Shakespeare festivals around the (English speaking) world today................................................................................... 2.4. Shakespeare Festivals and their features............................... 2.4.1. Summer holidays and Festivals.......................................... 2.4.2. Outdoor performances........................................................ 2.4.3. Festivals and comedies....................................................... 2.4.4. Shakespeare, education and festivals.................................. 2.5. An idyllic fraternization......................................................... CHAPTER 3 - Romeu e Julieta: A case study.............................................52 3.1. Cultural identity in Brazil...................................................... 3.2. Modernism and the Manifesto Antropófago ........................ 3.3. Shakespeare in Brazil ........................................................... 3.4. Grupo Galpão........................................................................ 3.5. Grupo Galpão’s Romeu e Julieta........................................... 3.5.1. Creating Romeu e Julieta.................................................... 3.5.2. The texts – A dialogue between Shakespeare, Pennaforte and Rosa..................................................................... 3.5.3. The scenic choices: Circus, precipitation, street theatre and the audience .............................................................. 3.5.4. Shakespeare para inglês ver, or, Shakespeare as you like it ............................................................................................ 3.6. New perspectives for popular theatre ................................... CONCLUSION............................................................................................82 LIST OF WORKS CITED...........................................................................88 Books and Articles:...................................................................... 3 Online Sources:............................................................................. APPENDIX 1: SURVEY.............................................................................96 APPENDIX 2: PHOTOS GRUPO GALPÃO ...........................................101 APPENDIX 3: FESTIVALS TABLE........................................................104 APPENDIX 4: MINACK THEATRE........................................................105 APPENDIX 5: INTERVIEW – EDUARDO MOREIRA..........................106 APPENDIX 6: FREVO..............................................................................113 APPENDIX 7 : BAROQUE ‘MINEIRO’..................................................114 APPENDIX 8: DVD – ROMEU E JULIETA AT THE GLOBE..............115 ATTACHED SHEETS...............................................................................116 4 5 INTRODUCTION In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘identity’ is defined as “the quality of being the same” and as “the sameness of a person or a thing at all times or in all circumstances” (1.a. 2.a.)1. In a clash with these definitions, Stuart Hall, one of the founding names of Cultural Studies2, described identity as being multiple, historically defined and subject to constant transformations, depending on how it is represented in different contexts (223-37). This shifting and multifaceted quality is true for individuals, groups and societies, as well as for the image of an author and his or her works, assuming different identities at different times. One of the best examples of this fluctuating feature of identity is the English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616). His name and image have become a sign that encompasses a variety of qualities, a tool for reshaping other cultural objects, becoming a brand most commonly recognizable as sophisticated, important, erudite, complex, artistic, universal, intellectual, a natural genius, etc. But these qualities are part of only one side of his identity. One of the forces that have produced other facets of Shakespeare in our time is popular culture. In its search for identity, culture in general can carry out at least two functions: one of sacralisation, unifying a community around its myths, its beliefs and its memory, or the opposite, i.e a function of desacralization, dismantling a given system or standard, stripping hidden mechanisms, demystifying an element. Positioned against academic and high cultural assumptions that they possess the ‘authentic’ Shakespeare, contemporary popular culture communicates with audiences searching for other meanings and values. Shakespeare has become a site of contestation, instead of a simple repository of cultural wisdom; or as Dennis Kennedy once affirmed: “Shakespeare is now a machine to make theatre, to reveal other cultures, to observe their constant change” (quoted in Galery 42). Today we can wonder if Shakespeare’s force really lies in the idea that he is the “universally relevant inventor of the human3” (Linnermann 8), or 1 All my references to the OED will be taken from the lastest online version. 2 School of thought founded by Hall, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, in Birmingham, in 1964. Scholars in this line focus on interdisciplinary investigations of cultural phenomena in different groups or societies. For a detailed discussion on British Cultural Studies, see John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (1994) pp.vii-xi. 3 Certainly a reference to Harold Bloom’s famous work: Shakespeare, the invention of the human (1998). 6 rather in the fact that he is a universally available resource, valuable, flexible, free, and allowing a vast number of reappropriations likely to generate new meanings. “It is this universal availability which constitutes the foundation of the cultural value of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century”, Linnermann stated (8). Shakespeare’s value is also based on his ability to contain, articulate and negotiate binaries, as the middle ground where tensions can interplay. In the live action of the theatre, the scenic space is not simply the place where the text is performed and illustrated, but where cultural structures become significant, in a three-dimensional world where these structures can interact with each other. Because I believe that culture can be “a terrain on which there takes place a continual struggle over meaning, in which subordinate groups attempt to resist the imposition of meanings which bear the interests of dominant groups” (Storey ix), I have chosen to investigate how culture can relate to identity discourses – more specifically, how popular culture, as opposed to high culture assumptions, can dialogue with identities through the figure of Shakespeare in theatre performance. One of my arguments is that as the stratification of culture is always subject to transformations and changes, then the boundaries between cultural divisions cannot be natural, universal, impermeable and immutable, but rather constructed, particular, porous and variable. I thus set myself to investigate examples in which the popularization of Shakespeare allows new or non-canonical interpretations, promotes visibility of new identities and resistance ground towards hegemonic and/or universalizing