National, intercultural and transcendental Shakespeare: adaptation and translation on the Bangladeshi stage

Shahriar, Shahman (2023). National, intercultural and transcendental Shakespeare: adaptation and translation on the Bangladeshi stage. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

From colonization through decolonization to liberation, Shakespeare has remained alive in the Bangladeshi theatre. In the post-liberation era, from 1972 to 2022, the translation and adaptation of his tragedies, comedies, and histories plays has been practiced by different Group Theatres and organizations all over Bangladesh. The assimilation and reworking of Shakespeare have been a central part of the transformation of the modern and contemporary theatre, and indeed the entire cultural landscape, of independent Bangladesh. This thesis explores the historical, theatrical and theoretical contexts of Shakespearean praxis in Bangladesh, which are still unfamiliar to, unexplored and largely unmapped by scholars studying Shakespeare across the globe. The central aim of this project is to study the translation, adaptation, and staging of Shakespeare by Bangladeshi theatre artists in the context of the changing socio-political and cultural circumstances of this region. After its introduction, the thesis begins with a section on ‘History’, an account of how Shakespeare’s works arrived in the Bengal region, showing that even though these Anglophone masterpieces were taught under the Raj as part of the colonial apparatus, the playwright was also instrumentalised against the colonial power which had brought him to the subcontinent and imposed his texts upon native people. During the internal-colonial regime of Pakistan, as I shall show, Shakespearean works were appropriated in the political process of Bengali cultural nationalism, and I offer a theoretical examination of productions of Macbeth, The Tempest and Coriolanus which critically illustrates the reciprocal relationship between the political-cultural ontology of Bangladesh and Shakespeare. This thesis argues that the cases of these productions reimagines Shakespeare in Bangladesh beyond the simple binarism between the nationalist and the colonialist. These theatrical representations cultivate a shared Shakespearean iv creativity to celebrate the infinite variety of the human world and transcendental ethics, uniting diversified subjectivities in one body. From ‘History’, and from the predominantly Anglophone, the thesis moves to ‘Practice’, and the question of what Shakespeare means not just in Bangladesh but in Bengali language. Since any academic research, for instance, a PhD project involves the establishment of new knowledge, this project also examines the Shakespearean canon in order to get a new form of understanding to problematise ontologically the research itself. As a result, this PhD employs practice as research alongside the more conventional academic mode of thesis writing as well as studying the Bangladeshi productions of others, it incorporates its own. My production of Shattered Faces of Piyar Ali (based on Pericles) is designed to participate in the evolving debate of defining what knowledge is and how it can be produced. The production not only compliments the dominant method of archival research but also enhances creatively the methodological scope in researching in arts and humanities. The production, as an embodied form of knowledge, substantiates that practice or performance is also a form of knowledge. This production not only brings the alternative method in writing theatre history but also problematises the positivist method in writing history itself, something explored in the final main section of the thesis, ‘Theory.’ Although positivist historiography is employed in the course of the case studies offered in my third chapter, the commitment to research as practice demonstrated by Piyar Ali deliberately highlights the indeterminacy and performative characteristic of knowledge production. This research thus charts new territory in contemporary Shakespeare studies, formally as well as in subject-matter. The Shakespeare canon is not an objective and unchanging monolith, rather it is a multiply-unlockable storehouse that seeks performative entry, which, in turn creates a possibility of new subjectivity. This thesis concludes that new intercultural subjectivities exemplified and produced by cross-border Shakespeare require above all playful practice.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):