Context and Co-text in Bernard Ogini’s Hamlet for Pidgin (Oga Pikin)

This article examines a phenomenon that may trigger a resurgence in the pleasure of reading or watching performances of Shakespeare’s plays in Nigeria: adaptation and translation into Naija (previously Nigerian Pidgin). Specifically, it examines how the Naija translation Hamlet for Pidgin (Oga Pikin) is prototypical for such a revival. The study adopts a comparative approach and explicates how anaphoric reformulation (AR), cataphoric reformulation (CR) and exophoric reformulation (ER) condition the translation’s peculiar lexico-semantic choices in terms of borrowing, reduplicatives, calquing and the like. These forms enter a networked relationship within the co-text and context to bring about a contemporary equivalent to Hamlet. Readers and audiences extract meaning through clues such as collocation, background knowledge and other linking strategies provided consciously or unconsciously by the author/translator. The article concludes that this translation is also significant for its shift away from the cathartic effect of Shakespearean tragedy and towards a comic mode that has greater popular appeal.

Hamlet 2021’s Outrageous Fortune

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Social Justice through Shakespeare: A critical asset

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Dances in the park: The pre-history of the Maynardville Open Air Theatre

There is a popular belief that Cape Town’s Maynardville Theatre was founded in 1955, and first used in 1956, as the brainchild of the two professional actresses Cecilia Sonnenberg and René Ahrenson. While this is true of the Shakespeare-in-the-Park productions over the years, the use of Maynardville as a performance venue dates back to 1950 and the efforts of Margaret Molteno, the Athlone Committee for Nursery School Education and the University of Cape Town Ballet Company. This article traces the evolution of the popular theatre venue from the first production of a triple bill (comprising Les Sylphides, St Valentine’s Night and Les Diversions) in a makeshift theatre in the Maynardville Park grounds in 1950, to the introduction of Shakespeare in 1956, and ultimately the outdoor theatre of today with its annual Shakespeare and ballet productions. The Shakespearean history is already well-documented, so this article focuses more specifically on the somewhat forgotten role played by ballet productions in that history. The article includes a short history of the original property and the creation of the public park, as well as a full list of the ballets and plays performed at Maynardville since 1950.

Shakespeare and “Secular Sacramentality”

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The Informers and the Shakespeares

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Looking for Shakespeare: The global and the local in Mauritian Shakespeare adaptation and classroom practice

This article considers manifestations of both global and local Shakespeares in Mauritius. It starts with Dev Virahsawmy’s Shakespeare adaptations – Toufann (1991) in particular – as a well-known point of reference, placing the globalisation of Shakespeare in a localised (Mauritian) space into perspective via a discussion of language and context. The authors then reflect on the use of YouTube in the teaching of Shakespeare in undergraduate classes at the University of Mauritius, with selected adverts and music videos exemplifying a new ‘mash-up’ form of Shakespeare. Both Shakespeare and YouTube are carriers/channels of culture; while Shakespeare remains an emblematic figure, however, tertiary level classroom practice challenges the notion that his works are ‘timeless’ and ‘universal’.

In Memoriam: Martin Orkin (1942–2021)

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On Shakespeare and Postcolonial Thinking

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Play to Learn: Shakespeare games as decolonial praxis in South African schools

The place of Shakespeare in South African secondary education has become highly contested in light of calls to decolonise the English Home Language curriculum through intentional inclusion of indigenous authors and knowledge systems, and the removal of colonial impositions such as Shakespeare. Yet removing Shakespeare from the curriculum is not the only or even the best solution for countering the violent legacies of colonialism and apartheid. This article argues that a more effective decolonial approach would be to change the way Shakespeare is taught in schools by cultivating horizontal, instead of hierarchical, dialogue within classrooms and between secondary educators and Shakespeare scholars. The authors describe their own horizontal collaboration to produce “Blood will have Blood”, a series of lesson plans and assignments centred on scenes of violence in the Shakespeare set works. Using the digital theatre game Play the Knave, the programme engages secondary school students in creative experimentation and embodied play with Shakespeare’s texts. As learners access the curriculum from their own epistemological standpoints and through their own bodies, they come to understand gendered and racial forms of violence represented in the plays and manifested in their personal and historical contexts. The article contextualises the project in terms of Practice as Research (PAR) methodology while offering preliminary findings from the programme’s implementation in Cape Town schools.