Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film

<p>This thesis examines the adaptation of stage plays to cinema, and of films to theatre. The creative component of the thesis consists of my full-length play script Hamlet Dies At The End, and the script of its feature film adaptation (Song’s End), plus material from my film script Roy Jiminton and the script of its adaptation to theatre. The critical component of this thesis examines seven stage-to-film adaptations and four film-to-stage adaptations, in order to illustrate the distinctions between writing for the two different mediums and to suggest principles to aid scriptwriters in adapting material between theatre and film. The thesis concludes with discussion of the decisions I made when adapting my own scripts. This thesis argues that to successfully adapt play or film scripts from one medium to the other, the adaptor must be willing to incorporate significant change in order to effectively ‘adapt’. Adaptations that merely transpose from the stage onto the screen, or vice versa, fail to engage with their new medium. This thesis also proposes a set of adaptation principles for script adaptors.</p>

Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film

<p>This thesis examines the adaptation of stage plays to cinema, and of films to theatre. The creative component of the thesis consists of my full-length play script Hamlet Dies At The End, and the script of its feature film adaptation (Song’s End), plus material from my film script Roy Jiminton and the script of its adaptation to theatre. The critical component of this thesis examines seven stage-to-film adaptations and four film-to-stage adaptations, in order to illustrate the distinctions between writing for the two different mediums and to suggest principles to aid scriptwriters in adapting material between theatre and film. The thesis concludes with discussion of the decisions I made when adapting my own scripts. This thesis argues that to successfully adapt play or film scripts from one medium to the other, the adaptor must be willing to incorporate significant change in order to effectively ‘adapt’. Adaptations that merely transpose from the stage onto the screen, or vice versa, fail to engage with their new medium. This thesis also proposes a set of adaptation principles for script adaptors.</p>

The Reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Arab Spring: The Hero Hamlet as a Symbol for the Arab Youths

This study aims at investigating the theme of heroism in four reworkings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet produced in the early period of the Arab Spring. It briefly traces how Hamlet is dramatized as a hero in Hayder Abdullah AL-Shatery’s In Waiting for Hamlet as a rewriting In Iraq, Mohammad Farouq ‘s Goodbye Hamlet and Hani Affefi’s I’m Hamlet as stage Adaptations in Egypt, and Urwa Al-Araby’s The Syrian Hamlet as stage adaptations in Syria. The study then analyses how the four plays were impacted by the sense of political hope and heroism that accompanied the Arab uprisings and seen in the Arab youths fighting their oppressive regimes for political change. The study gives a brief overview of the political situation in the region after 2010. Then, it reads the four plays in the scope of the political optimism in the four Arab countries. Finally, it intends to highlight how the Arab Hamlets are meant to be dramatic icons and symbols for the brave Arab revolutionaries fighting to achieve justice.

Evaluation of Flexibility in Adaptation Projects for Climate Change

Climate change adaptation inherently entails investment decision-making under the high levels of uncertainty. Under these circumstances, the option of deferring a decision to adapt is one of possible strategies to address uncertainty. However, this decision will potentially leave people and areas exposed to the risk of coastal flooding during the deferral. In order to address this issue, a single fixed large investment can be divided into two or more sequential investments. This reduces the initial investment cost and adds flexibility about the size and timing of subsequent investment decisions as the magnitude of climate change becomes more available. This paper employs a real option analysis framework, as an analytical tool, to evaluate adaptations including flexibility to reduce both the risk and uncertainty of climate change, against increasing coastal flooding due to sea-level rise as an example. This paper considers (i) how to design the sequence of adaptation options under the growing risk of sea-level rise, and (ii) how to make the efficient use of flexibility included in adaptations for addressing uncertainty. This research incorporates a set of flexibilities (i.e. wait or future growth) into single-stage investments (i.e. raising coastal defence from 2.5 mAOD to 3.5mAOD or 4.0 mAOD) in two or three stages so that a set of multiple-stage adaptations are created to address both the risk and uncertainty of climate change. The proposed method compares the multiple-stage adaptations in economic terms, including optimisation, providing important additional information on the efficiency of flexible adaptation strategies given the uncertainty of climate change. The results from the analysis suggest that an efficient and robust strategy can be chosen for a short- and long- term adaptation.

Arkady Dolgoruky in Cinema and Theatre: Debut Decisions

The paper investigates the fate of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent in cinema and theatre, comparing it with the stories of several film and stage adaptations of other works by the same author. The problem here discussed concerns the acceptable limits of interpretation, in cinema and theatre, of a literary work. The paper considers the following controversial aspects: - to what extent film and stage adaptations of a literary work may prove the success of the work as a piece of literature? - do film and stage adaptations expand (amplify) the contents of their literary source? - do they treat honestly the ideas and images of their source? The paper analyses the reasons why both cinema and theatre for many decades did not pay attention to The Adolescent and perhaps even deliberately bypassed it. The only film adaptation of The Adolescent so far was made in USSR in 1983 by the director Yevgeny I. Tashkov (1926-2012), with Andrei Tashkov (b. 1957) as Arkady Dolgoruky and Oleg Borisov (1929-1994) as Andrei Versilov. Of particular interest is the process of transforming the novel first-person narrative (Ich-Erzählung) into the language of cinema. However, the cinema debut of the novel and its characters cannot be described as a success. The film freed itself from the meaningfulness of the literary original, did not treat adequately its main ideas, and chose easy ways in all respects: in the script, in the work of the director, and the actors’ performances. Still more simplified has been the stage adaptation of The Adolescent at the Maly Drama Theatre in Saint Petersburg (the premiere took place on May 12, 2013). The director Oleg Dmitriyev, a disciple of Lev Dodon, abridged considerably the plot of the novel. The character of Versilov was deleted, shifting accents, and disfiguring the whole composition of the plot. In the novel, Arkady had dreamed all through his youth to come to know “the whole truth” about Versilov. In the stage adaptation, Arkady is presented not as a young and maturing person, but as a grown-up man who goes through a “middle-age crisis”: he turns into Versilov himself. He appropriates Versilov’s right to be extravagant and scandalous, thus playing the role, not of a witness but the central figure in the culmination of the story.

Od Trylogii do Chłopów. Strategie reżyserskie współczesnych inscenizatorów „wielkiej powieści”

The great Polish novel is a staging task willingly undertaken by directors. The term ‘great novel’ means a novel in the epic type. The essence of its theatrical potential is already determined by its volume – it is undoubtedly a tempting challenge for the director. Equally inspiring are the basic features of an epic itself – a wide, panoramic spectrum of the community, embedded in the discourse of breakthrough, solstice of ideas, values, and identity identifications. The text discusses five source clues leading to the stage adaptations of the ‘great novel’ – the idea of post-dramatic nature, the issue of theatrical adaptation of a literary work, the issue of the so-called ‘indecency’, the formula of engaged theater and the problem of confrontation between reading the novel with the perceptual order of theatrical staging. The second part of the text presents the producer’s strategies used in two, especially important novels staged in recent years – the Trilogy, directed by Jan Klata and Peasant Farmers directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski.

Arkady Dolgoruky in Cinema and Theatre: Debut Decisions

The paper investigates the fate of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent in cinema and theatre, comparing it with the stories of several film and stage adaptations of other works by the same author. The problem here discussed concerns the acceptable limits of interpretation, in cinema and theatre, of a literary work. The paper considers the following controversial aspects: - to what extent film and stage adaptations of a literary work may prove the success of the work as a piece of literature? - do film and stage adaptations expand (amplify) the contents of their literary source? - do they treat honestly the ideas and images of their source? The paper analyses the reasons why both cinema and theatre for many decades did not pay attention to The Adolescent and perhaps even deliberately bypassed it. The only film adaptation of The Adolescent so far was made in USSR in 1983 by the director Yevgeny I. Tashkov (1926-2012), with Andrei Tashkov (b. 1957) as Arkady Dolgoruky and Oleg Borisov (1929-1994) as Andrei Versilov. Of particular interest is the process of transforming the novel first-person narrative (Ich-Erzählung) into the language of cinema. However, the cinema debut of the novel and its characters cannot be described as a success. The film freed itself from the meaningfulness of the literary original, did not treat adequately its main ideas, and chose easy ways in all respects: in the script, in the work of the director, and the actors’ performances. Still more simplified has been the stage adaptation of The Adolescent at the Maly Drama Theatre in Saint Petersburg (the premiere took place on May 12, 2013). The director Oleg Dmitriyev, a disciple of Lev Dodon, abridged considerably the plot of the novel. The character of Versilov was deleted, shifting accents, and disfiguring the whole composition of the plot. In the novel, Arkady had dreamed all through his youth to come to know “the whole truth” about Versilov. In the stage adaptation, Arkady is presented not as a young and maturing person, but as a grown-up man who goes through a “middle-age crisis”: he turns into Versilov himself. He appropriates Versilov’s right to be extravagant and scandalous, thus playing the role, not of a witness but the central figure in the culmination of the story.

The Moor’s Political Colour: Race and Othello in Poland

This paper provides a brief outline of the reception history of Othello in Poland, focusing on the way the character of the Moor of Venice is constructed on the page, in the first-published nineteenth-century translation by Józef Paszkowski, and on the stage, in two twentieth-century theatrical adaptations that provide contrasting images of Othello: 1981/1984 televised Othello, dir. Andrzej Chrzanowski and the 2011 production of African Tales Based on Shakespeare, in which Othello’s part is played by Adam Ferency (dir. Krzysztof Warlikowski). The paper details the political and social contexts of each of these stage adaptations, as both of them employ brownface and blackface to visualise Othello’s “political colour.” The function of blackface and brownface is radically different in these two productions: in the 1981/1984 Othello brownface works to underline Othello’s overall sense of alienation, while strengthening the existing stereotypes surrounding black as a skin colour, while the 2011 staging makes the use of blackface as an artificial trick of the actor’s trade, potentially unmasking the constructedness of racial prejudices, while confronting the audience with their own pernicious racial stereotypes.

Las traducciones francesas del teatro español del Siglo de Oro (siglos XIX-XXI)

This article provides a description of translations and stage adaptations of Golden Age Spanish theatre from early 19th century to the present day. Fluctuations in taste, expectations and changing preferences of audiences, as well as the political context influenced the choice of which play was to be translated. Moreover, the degree of fidelity to the source text varies, as some are very faithful (written in verse, for example) while others are very free adaptations, and can be described as reinventions or rewritings rather than true translations. In spite of these infinite disparities between the texts considered, it is possible to detect a hierarchy that appears quite early between plays and Spanish authors, with Calderón playing a predominant role.