Global/local Shakespeares?

There are some intriguing new adaptations of Shakespeare coming out at the moment.

Recent examples include Haider, a version of Hamlet set in Kashmir, and a fascinating Catalan adaptation of Othello:

You can find out more about Otel.lo here.

In a recent Guardian UK article, Preti Taneja uses these examples to question what we mean by the idea of a 'global' Shakespeare. Taneja somewhat contentiously argues that these adaptations are far more authentically 'global' than, for example, the Globe to Globe production of Hamlet, currently touring worldwide. 

To consider this question from an Australian context, you might like to follow up with Kate Flaherty's book Ours As We Play It: Australia Plays Shakespeare (Crawley, W.A: UWA Publishing, 2011). Flaherty is interested in how 'meaning is generated by intersections between the imaginative plenitude of the play-text and the conscious exigencies of the cultural moment in which it is performed' (p. 4). She argues that:

'[A] performance is not a self-contained entity, that it is permeable to its contexts, and that the meanings it creates are generated through encounters with living culture.' (p. 8)