Drawing on the achievements of the previous VF grant (no. 21920060, Shakespeare in Central Europe after 1989:common heritage and regional identity), this project aims at mapping how Shakespeare has crossed cultural, political, social borders across Central and Eastern Europe and beyond, since the division of Europe in 1945.

We are now interested in elucidating the complex aesthetic and ideological negotiations which take place when Shakespeare’s plays produced in this region travel to new or renewed destinations, in scripting the dialogue between media, genres, formats, culture and critical discourses.

This project is supported by Visegrad Fund.

Project ID #/Title: 22210007, Crossing Borders with Shakespeare since 1945: Central and Eastern European Roots and Routes

Conferences

Brno Theatralia Conference 2023

Crossing Borders with Shakespeare since 1945: Central and Eastern European Roots and Routes

The conference was hosted by the Department of Theatre Studies of Masaryk University, Brno, on 5 – 7 June 2023.

Shakespeare is deeply ingrained and valued in all our national cultures, has been central to the academic curriculum, and has served as a lingua franca for our common history and contemporary social experiences. To explore the malleability of the Shakespearean medium as it interacts with the historical connections among the region’s nations, we would like to focus on local appropriations, spin-offs, prequels, re-imaginings, written under communism or after.

A large number of these have traversed borders and have been performed, read, and subsequently adapted in other countries in our region. Making these the focus of the conference would allow us to revise both single-country and English-origins tendencies in Global Shakespeare, to contribute to a theory of cross-media and multilingual translation and transmission of Shakespeare, and to enhance adaptation theory more generally. At the same time, it will showcase individual authors and cultural achievements and thus serve as a cultural ambassador of the region.

Publications related to the project

Theatralia: Journal of Theatre Studies – Special Issue 2021/4 (Zsolt Almási, Kinga Földváry, eds.)

Shakespeare in Central Europe after 1989: Common Heritage and Regional Identity

“The evolution of this issue of Theatralia has been marked by two significant years of reckoning for the Shakespeare scholars of the post-Socialist Central European region. 2019 was a year of contemplation as the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbolic event that opened up a new era in the former Eastern bloc. 2019 was a celebration of what even in the 1980s seemed an unlikely turn. As a celebration, it occasioned looking back on what had happened since 1989, how the change from Socialism to democracy had taken place in all walks of life from the everyday through the political to the cultural spheres, and how the free flow of cultural influences affected the countries of the region. The following year, 2020 has also been a special year due to the pandemic, a situation for which people had to come to terms with the fact that things unimaginable before could happen, when everyone had to stay at home, wear facemasks, avoid the accustomed means of human contact, work from home, and in general had to learn to let go of what seemed basic aspects of life, when words like ‘fundamental,’ ‘necessary’, and ‘granted’ changed their meanings. These special years, years of celebration and pandemic may well occasion looking back on the reception of Shakespeare and taking stock.”

(Zsolt Almási, Kinga Földváry, Introduction)