Update on Arabic Tempest

Update - It's Sulayman Al-Bassam directing the Arabic-language Tempest at the Globe Theatre next year.
A certain lack of imagination on their part, I daresay -- but at least they can be confident it will be well done.

Latest update (May 8, 2011): I talked to Sulayman and he is no longer involved in this project.  Decided there was not so much that he could interestingly do with The Tempest right now.  Stay tuned for more on the whole Olympiad-related extravaganza, and let me know if you have more details.

The Globe goes global

After the RSC's Complete Works season, how could this not be next?  Shakespeare's 38 plays to be performed in 38 different languages. The Guardian writes:

Anyone who struggles with Shakespeare in English will next year be able to see if it is any easier in Lithuanian. Or Portuguese, Italian or Spanish, perhaps. And if all that fails – Troilus and Cressida in Maori?


In fact, there will be 38 different ways to experience it, as Shakespeare's Globe presents all of the Bard's plays, each in a different language, as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Apparently Arabic has been selected for The Tempest (stay tuned for director and cast info) -- but I bet that won't be nearly as interesting as the Urdu Taming of the Shrew!

My students email with Sulayman Al-Bassam

I've posted an email exchange on The Al-Hamlet Summit over on our class blog: http://globalshakespearesbu.blogspot.com/2010/11/student-email-dialogue-with-sulayman-al.html

Beirut conference - Shakespeare and the Orient

CFP: SHAKESPEARE’S IMAGINED ORIENT (MAY 4-6, 2011)
Due Jan 21 2011
American University of Beirut
shakespeareandtheorient@gmail.com
The American University of Beirut is hosting a three-day conference on Shakespeare’s Imagined Orient on 4-6 May 2011. Speakers include Jonathan Burton (West Virginia University), Gerald Maclean (University of Exeter, UK), Margaret Litvin (Boston University), Daniel Vitkus (Florida State University) and Richard Wilson (Cardiff University). Shakespeare studies has recently experienced a noticeable and dramatic geographical shift. As the textual landscape of Shakespeare’s drama changes, it takes new forms and now points to new horizons, namely the East and the Orient, and more particularly the Levant. From the blasted heaths of England, Shakespeare moves to the most arid and yet fertile soils of the Levant. The aim of the conference, in this emergent field, is to reconsider Shakespeare’s diffusion from both Pre and Postcolonial Middle Eastern perspectives and to examine Shakespeare’s critical relevance to understanding religion and politics on both a local scale (in the Middle East/the Orient) and globally. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, Shakespeare’s Imagined Orient aims to prove how the critical and artistic reception of Shakespeare in the Orient is paramount to apprehending and reinventing Shakespeare as a cultural and social bridge uniting the “East” and the “West” in the landscape of global culture. The organisers of the conference hope to offer a critical insight into Shakespeare and Early Modern political theology that would help refashion, remap broader issues that engage the status of cultural and religious identity, nation, and individuality in the landscape of global culture. With such issues in mind, we invite submissions concerning the following range of topics: - Representations of the Orient in Shakespeare's Work, - Christian/Muslim Representation/Interaction on Shakespeare's/the Early Modern stage, - Local/Global Shakespeare (from a Middle Eastern perspective), - Shakespeare's women and the Orient, - Desire, Phantasm, and the Orient, - Identity and Nationhood, - Material Culture and the Imagined Orient on Shakespeare's Stage.

Please send abstracts (300 words) or session proposals and brief CV by 21 January 2011. Notifications will be sent by 15 February 2011. On your abstract please include your name, institution, city and state or country, email address and phone number. E-mail your abstracts/session proposals as a Word file. Please note that each presentation is limited to 25 minutes (including questions). Full details can be downloaded from the conference website at www.aub.edu.lb/conferences/shake_orient/ Questions may be addressed to the conference chair: Prof. Francois-Xavier Gleyzon at ShakespeareandtheOrient@gmail.com
Department of English
American University of Beirut
Fisk Hall, Rm 229
PO Box 11-0236
Beirut 1107 2020 - Lebanon
The conference is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the British Council, the Anis K. Makdisi Program in Literature, the Office of the Provost, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut.

"To be or not to be" cartoon

I found this political cartoon while looking for an example of sloganized use of a Hamlet quotation for a talk I'm giving at Tufts this week.  Many of my American hearers have trouble believing that "to be or not to be" can be a passionate call to arms.
 



It's by the Palestinian artist Naji Salim Hussein al-Ali (1937-1987); you can see more of his work here: http://shaeirrahhal.jeeran.com/selections/archive/2010/6/1059177.html

Seeking video of Arab/ic Shakespeare performances

The Global Shakespeares web archive at MIT has gone live -- with virtually no content on its Arab World section. There's only my placeholder introduction. 
Yalla! Let's send our archivist friends some video to include in the site.  Any leads can be sent to me or to Prof. Peter Donaldson, the site's editor-in-chief.

Textual fundamentalists angry at Hani Afifi for postmodern adaptation

This unknown (to me) reviewer accuses the young adaptor/director Hani Afifi of "betraying Shakespeare's text," which the review (in Arabic) describes as "sacred."  Afifi's I Am Hamlet is winning all kinds of prizes, including Best Actor at the 2009 CIFET.