First Encounters with these Shakespeares

[shreyosi]

We have all at some point in time left the familiar shores of our culture to venture and explore the cultures and more importantly the cultural practices of our neighbours. The A-S-I-A website is my first (and comprehensive) encounter with intercultural Shakespeare of the region, namely East and South-East Asia. I am quite surprised at the close cultural and aesthetic resemblances that I found in these productions with my native art and aesthetics. The most remarkable being Panggung Arts' Ma'ma Yong, which resembles the Bengali (West Bengal, India) "jatra". A jatra is usually characterised by its use of live music, frequent song and dance sequences, high drama and intensity, colourful costumes, melodrama and slapstick humour. Some of these are also staple traits of the Ma'ma Yong performance. Like the Mak Yong musical drama form, the jatra often derives its content from myths and folklores and sadly is also a dying art form of Bengal with the advent satellite televison channels and other forms of entertainment for the rural population (who were were the main audiences of the jatra).
Please share your experiences and encounters with these productions and your initial thoughts.

[Toney]

On the other hand a production like HwaDong's Coriolanus which appears to be extremely post-modern in its treatment makes use of the dominant and more familiar artform namely naturalism. This leaves me with a persistent question and problem of classification as to what is traditional and what contemporary and what are the parameters of the classification.



Gets