Translating and performing China for the English-speaking stage: Royal Shakespeare Company’s re-staging of The Injustice to Dou E

Yangyang Long ()
Additional contact information
Yangyang Long: Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Palgrave Communications, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Contemporary China is increasingly open in its interaction with the global cultural community, generating one of the most prestigious projects—the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Chinese Classics Translation Projects” (2015–2023). This article examines this project’s first production Snow in Midsummer, a performance based on a new translation of the Chinese classic Dou E Yuan (窦娥冤, The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth). Through exploring the multiple agents involved in the RSC’s re-staging of the play, this article traces the processes of translation and performance characterised by an oft-hidden collaborative agency. It uncovers the collaborative agency at work and argues that the agency in this theatre production aims to set the conditions to make the original Chinese classic new, so as to enable its rejuvenation and transformation. Key finding of this article is that the collaborative agency of the translator, playwright, director, stage designer, and actors/actresses in re-staging has enlivened the 13th-century Chinese classic with enriched narratives and produced a performance that is nuanced and relevant to the contemporary world. This article makes a case for the paradigmatic shift from a product-based approach to theatre translation to a process-based one. It opens new avenues to future research into the question of complexity of collaborative agency in restaging the foreign classic to the contemporary English-speaking audiences for both areas of theatre translation for performance and transnational theatre production.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-024-03772-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:11:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-024-03772-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-03772-1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().