03-07-2008, 12:36 AM
The Bard in India today
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Bard in India today
K. SRILATA
What has Mr. William Shakespeare got to do with our lives today? A lot, apparentlyâ¦Â
Photo: R. Shivaji Rao
In a modern idiom: A scene from âThanimaiyil Shakespeareâ.
Shakespeare is perhaps one of the most complex of signifiers, setting off as he does multiple and varied associations. <b>Yet, this most translatable and adaptable of all playwrights in history, who gives universalists cause for hope, has also posed the most problems for teachers of English Literature struggling to convey something of his greatness.</b> A typical Shakespeare class in progress: teacher reads out from one of his plays and delivers plot summary gleaned from York notes or A.C. Bradley. Designed, you would agree, to kill all interest in the bard.
<b>There are three reasons why many young Indians including students of English Literature shy away from Shakespeare.</b> One common complaint that students have is that: âShakespeare writes in difficult English, madamâ. The second is something I have already outlined â the pedagogy itself â the line by line reading out, the summarising, the reams of notes. The third factor, perhaps the least understood, is that young people donât see themselves in Shakespeare. <b>What has Mr.William Shakespeare got to do with their lives anyway? Which is why rendering and performing Shakespeare in Indian languages makes so much sense. Which is why the Hamara Shakespeare Festival, with plays like âHamletmachine â Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ makes so much sense.</b>
Contemporary contexts
Parnab Mukherjee, director of the play âHamletmachine â Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ and creative director of Best of Kolkata campus, says that if his theatre cannot respond to the political sub-texts posed by, say, the detaining of Dr. Binayak Sen by the Chattisgarh government, then he is still doing âthe ICSE, CBSE or UGC approved, sanitised Shakespeareâ. <b>The play uses Bangla, Assamese and English, weaving in a lot of protest literatures as additional texts. In that sense, it isnât just a translation or a transcreation but an expanded text. It borrows from Mahasweta Devi on Nandigram, portions of Shamshur Rehmanâs Bangla translation of âHamletâ and Joydevâs Geetgovindam.</b>
The idea of adaptation itself of course is not new to us. A âtranslating consciousnessâ, as G.N. Devy has argued, works in most third world countries where a dominating colonial language has enjoyed a position of privilege. In India, Devy points out, several languages are simultaneously used by language communities and it is as though these languages are part of a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The notion of the original text being sacrosanct and the translated text being inferior doesnât hold much water with us. <b>Localising Shakespeare, therefore, has never been a problem. All 17 Indian languages have translated him.</b>
In their book,<b> Indiaâs Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance, Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz provide an exhaustive history of Shakespeare in India</b>. The first performance of âThe Taming of the Shrewâ in Gujarati was held in Surat, in 1852. A 1903 Gujarati âOthelloâ became so popular that the male actor playing Desdemona adopted âSundariâ, the heroineâs name in this version, as his permanent stage name. Beginning with âThe Merchant of Veniceâ in 1870, at least 30 Shakespeare adaptations in Tamil are said to have been performed by 1900 (including nine of âCymbelineâ alone), in nearly 100 towns in Tamil Nadu. Marathi saw about 65 versions of Shakespeare â chiefly free adaptations â between 1867 and 1915, starting with a popular version of âOthelloâ composed by Mahadevshastri Kolhatkar and performed by the Aryaddharak Natak Mandali. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar translated âHamletâ into Marathi as âVikaravilasitaâ in 1883. Jahangir Pestonjee Khambattaâs âKhudadadâ, an adaptation of âPericlesâ, was performed by the Express Victoria Theatrical Company in 1898. The earliest recorded public production of Shakespeare in Bengali was of a version of âThe Comedy of Errorsâ in 1873 about which little is known. The next year saw adaptations of âCymbelineâ and âMacbethâ, and the following year of âOthelloâ. In 1893 âMacbethâ was adapted by Girish Chandra Ghosh, the doyen of Bengali theatre in his day.
<b>Sohrab Modi recreated âHamletâ in his 1935 film</b>, âKhoon ka Khoonâ. In 1963, Amrit Rai, Munshi Premchandâs son, took up the translation of Hamlet into Hindi. <b>Gulzar based his 1981 âAngoorâ (starring Moushumi Chatterjee and Sanjeev Kumar) on âThe Comedy of Errorsâ. And then of course there is the Hindi film âOmkaraâ directed by Vishal Bharadwaj.</b> <b>The two editions of the Hamara Shakespeare festival have brought us six different ways for Shakespeare to come home to us here in India.</b> Last year, the School of Drama, Kozhikode, performed âRomeo and Julietâ in Malayalam. âJungle Me Mangalâ presented by Awishkar, Mumbai, was the Marathi adaptation in Tamasha form of âMid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ. âThe Magic Hour in Khelkaliâ, combined two stories of William Shakespeare, âOthelloâ and âA Mid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ with scenes from Kathakali stories. The play used the story of Oberon and Titaniaâs fight over a little Indian boy in Shakespeareâs âA Mid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ as a basis to talk about the post-colonial experience. This year, apart from âHamletmachineâ, the festival brought us Ramu Ramanathanâs âShakespeare and Sheâ and âThanimaiyil Shakespeareâ (Shakespeare Alone), a Tamil play scripted and directed by V. Arumugham from the School of Performing Arts, Pondicherry University.
<b>To me, there are specific reasons why the idea of rendering the bard into Indian languages appeals. One is the innocent delight of travelling from one literary tradition to another, discovering that the boundaries are porous after all. The other is the more wicked political delight of translating from a globally more powerful language to a less powerful one. In giving Shakespeare a desi twist, one is also taking a potshot at reversing the hierarchy of languages set in place by that old project of colonialism and new project of globalisation. </b>Shakespeare, then, becomes a kind of reference point, a peg on which to hang our very contemporary concerns. âHamletmachine: Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ, for instance, is thrice removed from the original, based as it is on the German adaptation by Heiner Muller, âDie Hamletmaschineâ.
Changing with the times
Many a Shakespeare scholar would blanch at plays such as these. âBut where is Shakespeare in all this?â they might ask. Or âHow do we teach Shakespeare without Shakespeare or Hamlet without Hamlet?â <b>But if we want to keep Shakespeare alive for this generation of young people, we have to make him speak to them in their idiom. Shakespeare in comic form or Shakespeare performed in Tamil. It doesnât matter.</b> And, who knows, one day these young people might just decide to blow up their money over a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare instead of over an Espresso at Café Coffee Day. Either way though, Shakespeare wouldnât mind.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I also think it allows the people to highlight their problems claiming they are doing Shakespeare. I thought of this trend when I watched Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (based on Othello). Both were gangster movies but claimed to be Shakespeare adaptations. But you dont see such adaptations of Jane Austen like Kandu Kondain. Only Shakespeare attracts the protest literature types!
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Bard in India today
K. SRILATA
What has Mr. William Shakespeare got to do with our lives today? A lot, apparentlyâ¦Â
Photo: R. Shivaji Rao
In a modern idiom: A scene from âThanimaiyil Shakespeareâ.
Shakespeare is perhaps one of the most complex of signifiers, setting off as he does multiple and varied associations. <b>Yet, this most translatable and adaptable of all playwrights in history, who gives universalists cause for hope, has also posed the most problems for teachers of English Literature struggling to convey something of his greatness.</b> A typical Shakespeare class in progress: teacher reads out from one of his plays and delivers plot summary gleaned from York notes or A.C. Bradley. Designed, you would agree, to kill all interest in the bard.
<b>There are three reasons why many young Indians including students of English Literature shy away from Shakespeare.</b> One common complaint that students have is that: âShakespeare writes in difficult English, madamâ. The second is something I have already outlined â the pedagogy itself â the line by line reading out, the summarising, the reams of notes. The third factor, perhaps the least understood, is that young people donât see themselves in Shakespeare. <b>What has Mr.William Shakespeare got to do with their lives anyway? Which is why rendering and performing Shakespeare in Indian languages makes so much sense. Which is why the Hamara Shakespeare Festival, with plays like âHamletmachine â Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ makes so much sense.</b>
Contemporary contexts
Parnab Mukherjee, director of the play âHamletmachine â Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ and creative director of Best of Kolkata campus, says that if his theatre cannot respond to the political sub-texts posed by, say, the detaining of Dr. Binayak Sen by the Chattisgarh government, then he is still doing âthe ICSE, CBSE or UGC approved, sanitised Shakespeareâ. <b>The play uses Bangla, Assamese and English, weaving in a lot of protest literatures as additional texts. In that sense, it isnât just a translation or a transcreation but an expanded text. It borrows from Mahasweta Devi on Nandigram, portions of Shamshur Rehmanâs Bangla translation of âHamletâ and Joydevâs Geetgovindam.</b>
The idea of adaptation itself of course is not new to us. A âtranslating consciousnessâ, as G.N. Devy has argued, works in most third world countries where a dominating colonial language has enjoyed a position of privilege. In India, Devy points out, several languages are simultaneously used by language communities and it is as though these languages are part of a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The notion of the original text being sacrosanct and the translated text being inferior doesnât hold much water with us. <b>Localising Shakespeare, therefore, has never been a problem. All 17 Indian languages have translated him.</b>
In their book,<b> Indiaâs Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance, Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz provide an exhaustive history of Shakespeare in India</b>. The first performance of âThe Taming of the Shrewâ in Gujarati was held in Surat, in 1852. A 1903 Gujarati âOthelloâ became so popular that the male actor playing Desdemona adopted âSundariâ, the heroineâs name in this version, as his permanent stage name. Beginning with âThe Merchant of Veniceâ in 1870, at least 30 Shakespeare adaptations in Tamil are said to have been performed by 1900 (including nine of âCymbelineâ alone), in nearly 100 towns in Tamil Nadu. Marathi saw about 65 versions of Shakespeare â chiefly free adaptations â between 1867 and 1915, starting with a popular version of âOthelloâ composed by Mahadevshastri Kolhatkar and performed by the Aryaddharak Natak Mandali. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar translated âHamletâ into Marathi as âVikaravilasitaâ in 1883. Jahangir Pestonjee Khambattaâs âKhudadadâ, an adaptation of âPericlesâ, was performed by the Express Victoria Theatrical Company in 1898. The earliest recorded public production of Shakespeare in Bengali was of a version of âThe Comedy of Errorsâ in 1873 about which little is known. The next year saw adaptations of âCymbelineâ and âMacbethâ, and the following year of âOthelloâ. In 1893 âMacbethâ was adapted by Girish Chandra Ghosh, the doyen of Bengali theatre in his day.
<b>Sohrab Modi recreated âHamletâ in his 1935 film</b>, âKhoon ka Khoonâ. In 1963, Amrit Rai, Munshi Premchandâs son, took up the translation of Hamlet into Hindi. <b>Gulzar based his 1981 âAngoorâ (starring Moushumi Chatterjee and Sanjeev Kumar) on âThe Comedy of Errorsâ. And then of course there is the Hindi film âOmkaraâ directed by Vishal Bharadwaj.</b> <b>The two editions of the Hamara Shakespeare festival have brought us six different ways for Shakespeare to come home to us here in India.</b> Last year, the School of Drama, Kozhikode, performed âRomeo and Julietâ in Malayalam. âJungle Me Mangalâ presented by Awishkar, Mumbai, was the Marathi adaptation in Tamasha form of âMid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ. âThe Magic Hour in Khelkaliâ, combined two stories of William Shakespeare, âOthelloâ and âA Mid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ with scenes from Kathakali stories. The play used the story of Oberon and Titaniaâs fight over a little Indian boy in Shakespeareâs âA Mid Summer Nightâs Dreamâ as a basis to talk about the post-colonial experience. This year, apart from âHamletmachineâ, the festival brought us Ramu Ramanathanâs âShakespeare and Sheâ and âThanimaiyil Shakespeareâ (Shakespeare Alone), a Tamil play scripted and directed by V. Arumugham from the School of Performing Arts, Pondicherry University.
<b>To me, there are specific reasons why the idea of rendering the bard into Indian languages appeals. One is the innocent delight of travelling from one literary tradition to another, discovering that the boundaries are porous after all. The other is the more wicked political delight of translating from a globally more powerful language to a less powerful one. In giving Shakespeare a desi twist, one is also taking a potshot at reversing the hierarchy of languages set in place by that old project of colonialism and new project of globalisation. </b>Shakespeare, then, becomes a kind of reference point, a peg on which to hang our very contemporary concerns. âHamletmachine: Images of Shakespeare-in-usâ, for instance, is thrice removed from the original, based as it is on the German adaptation by Heiner Muller, âDie Hamletmaschineâ.
Changing with the times
Many a Shakespeare scholar would blanch at plays such as these. âBut where is Shakespeare in all this?â they might ask. Or âHow do we teach Shakespeare without Shakespeare or Hamlet without Hamlet?â <b>But if we want to keep Shakespeare alive for this generation of young people, we have to make him speak to them in their idiom. Shakespeare in comic form or Shakespeare performed in Tamil. It doesnât matter.</b> And, who knows, one day these young people might just decide to blow up their money over a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare instead of over an Espresso at Café Coffee Day. Either way though, Shakespeare wouldnât mind.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I also think it allows the people to highlight their problems claiming they are doing Shakespeare. I thought of this trend when I watched Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (based on Othello). Both were gangster movies but claimed to be Shakespeare adaptations. But you dont see such adaptations of Jane Austen like Kandu Kondain. Only Shakespeare attracts the protest literature types!