Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s tragedies have been performed in the Sinophone world for over two centuries. Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are three of the most frequently adapted plays. They have been re-imagined as political theatre, comedic parody, Chinese opera, avant-garde theatre, and experimental theatre in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. This ground-breaking anthology features the first English translations of seven influential adaptations from 1987 to 2007 across a number of traditional and modern performance genres in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Each of the book's three sections offers a pair of two contrasting versions of each tragedy - in two distinct genres - for comparative analysis. This anthology is an indispensable tool for the teaching and research of Sinophone theatre's engagement with Western classics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.   

Alexa Alice Joubin is Professor of English, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theatre, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she co-founded and co-directs the Digital Humanities Institute. Her books include Shakespeare and East Asia (2021), Race (2019), and the co-edited volumes Cinematic Allusions to Shakespeare: International Appropriation (2022), Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance (2018), and Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (2014).