Adapting Chekhov: The Text and its Mutations

by Clayton; J. Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780415509695
• ISBN10: 0415509696
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book considers the hundred years of re-writes of Anton Chekhov's work, presenting a wide geographical landscape of Chekhovian influences in drama. The volume examines the elusive quality of Chekhov's dramatic universe as an intricate mechanism, an engine in which his enigmatic characters exist as the dramatic and psychological ciphers we have been de-coding for a century, and continue to do so. Examining the practice and the theory of dramatic adaptation both as intermedial transformation(from page to stage) and as intramedial mutation, from page to page, the book presents adaptation as the emerging genre of drama, theatre, and film. This trend marks the performative and social practices of the new millennium, highlighting our epoch's need to engage with the history of dramatic forms and their evolution. The collection demonstrates that adaptation as the practice of transformation and as a re-thinking of habitual dramatic norms and genre definitions leads to the rejuvenation of existing dramatic and performative standards, pioneering the creation of new traditions and expectations. As the major mode of the storytelling imagination, adaptation can build upon and drive the audience's horizons of expectations in theatre aesthetics. Hence, this volume investigates the original and transformative knowledge that the story of Chekhov's drama in mutations offers to scholars of drama and performance, to students of modern literatures and cultures, and to theatre practitioners worldwide.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
Foreword	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction: The Text and its Mutations-On the Objectives of the Volume	p. 1
On Categories, Techniques, and Methodologies of Mutation
Diagnosis and Balagan: The Poetics of Chekhov's Drama	p. 17
Rewriting Chekhov in Russia Today: Questioning a Fragmented Society and Finding New Aesthetic Reference Points	p. 32
The Flight of the Dead Bird: Chekhov's The Seagull and Williams's The Notebook of Trigorin	p. 57
Talking and Walking Past Each Other: Chekhovian "Echoes" in Czech Drama and Theatre	p. 68
Howard Barker's (Uncle) Vanya: Chekhov Shaken, Not Stirred	p. 87
Chekhov in the Post[ist] Context
Transtextual Crossbreeds in Post-Communist Context: An Anthropological Analysis of Horia Gârbea's The Seagull from the Cherry Orchard	p. 109
Chekhov in the Age of Globalization: Janusz Glowacki's The Fourth Sister	p. 128
Theatre and Subaltern Histories: Chekhov Adaptation in Post-Colonial India	p. 145
What Comes "After Chekhov"? Mustapha Matura and West Indian Reiterations of Three Sisters	p. 161
From Moscow to Ballybeg: Brian Friel's Richly Metabiotic Relationship with Anton Chekhov	p. 180
Performing Chekhov in Radical Mutations
Daniel Veronese's "Proyecto Chéjov": Translation in Performance as Radical Relationality	p. 203
Canadian Chekhovs: Three Very Different Mutations	p. 217
The Work of the Theatre: The Wooster Group Adapts Chekhov's Three Sisters in Fish Story	p. 238
The Japanization of Chekhov: Contemporary Japanese Adaptations of Three Sisters	p. 261
Interrogating the Real: Chekhov's Cinema of Verbatim. "Ward Number Six" in Karen Shakhnazarov's 2009 Film Adaptation	p. 274
Afterword: On Chekhov, Adaptation, and Wonders of Writing Plays: Dialogue with Patrice Pavis, J. Douglas Clayton, and Yana Meerzon	p. 295
Contributors	p. 305
Index	p. 309
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