Category: adaptations

The canon of literature.  What do we mean by that?  In my mind a canon composes the best (whatever we judge this by) and the most famous pieces of art.  All together this canon serves to tell us multiple stories about the human condition.  We call these “classic tales”:  Boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy make bold gesture of love to girl, and eventually boy wins girl.  They are stories we can relate to: Man with wife and children are poor, man wants to make a better life for his family, man decides to gamble family earnings to double income, man looses it all.  They are stories about politics, about families, about wars and tragedies, about the hopeless, and about the hopeful.  We see their stories as we see our own, little glimpses into the lives of each and every one of us.  We all want to watch a play where we see ourselves on stage, where we are the main character fighting to make it through the depression, the divorce, the lay off, the adultery, and into the place where we find peace, forgiveness, joy, and love.  I think there are common forces that drive us all to the theatre, and in the canon of plays (which we call the classics) we can see these universal themes.  Though I am not fond of that word, “universal”, I mean by it that some stories have spanned not only geography and society, but also the test of time.  These classic tales still mean something to audiences today as the day they were written.  But there is still more to be said from these scripts.  An adapter can take these plays, rebuild them, and arrive at a new piece of work that can rival its counterpart.  Susan Jonas in Aiming the Canon at Now states that she does this often, with the desire to reveal the source text’s own biases about gender, as well as race, sexual preference, and other issues and sensitivities.  It is true that there is always another side to any story.  Jonas says that she rewrites plays not to specifically find a new meaning, but to give a voice to the silenced.  For her this canon of literature does not always bring up happy stories of “universal truths”, but instead stories where one side is voiced louder than the other, and minorities are rarely given the respect they deserve.  Jonas says that she not only re-envisions these plays, but she argues with them, and in the end, infiltrates the very heart of their world.  This is a completely new concept to me.  Should we be adapting plays to (in essence) re-write them for the characters and issues that have been over looked and put to shame, or prehaps not even brought up at all?  Oscar Wilde said, “our one responsibility to history is to rewrite it.”  Does this also translate to our canon of literature?  Taking Jonas’s approach opens up all new ways of thinking and avenues to take our adaptations.  We should be using the canon as a point of reference for our own work and our re-writes.  By looking at the past, Jonas states, we can see where we came from, where we are now, and how we got there.  There is more to be done than simply taking a play and adapting it for a new generation, we have a responsibility as artists to bring forth those issues of inequality, whether they be based on race, gender, or sexual preference. There is always something new to say.  Let us be bold and say it.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemed to repeat it. -George Santayana

Why do we shy away from adaptations when it comes to the theatre?  Going from stage to screen, or literary source to screen is commonly done and encouraged.  We see a movie coming out we know is based off of a famous trial, or an even more famous classical story, and we rush to buy our tickets and overly expensive popcorn.  But when an “adaptation” of a Shakespearean play is produced on stage people wonder, “why didn’t they just do the original?”  Are we worried about over-stepping our mark on these already great works of art?  Have they already said in their original text all that needs to be said, or can we discover something new, something relevant to our times?  When I think of all the shows I have seen growing up in a Canadian city with a lively theatre culture, I can name only a handful of shows which have been called “adaptations.”  Now there is something to be said for authenticity, for seeing the play the way the original Playwright imagined, or at least as accurate to that interpretation as we can muster.  But I think, and here I am speaking for Canadians, or realistically theatre going Canadians, that we are missing something when we dismiss all plays that are not completely “original.”  These reincarnations of Chekhov, or Poe, could be beautiful masterpieces in and of themselves, which not only hold onto the original themes of the script or writing, but also bring to light new meaning and freshness to a potentially over done performance of The Seagull, or The Raven.  Linda Hucheon in Creators and Critics on Adapting states that adaptions can create multiple reinterpretations in new contexts and can also ask the audience to reconsider their position on a famous piece of theatre.  Likewise in Performing Adaptions Hucheon’s counterparts say that adapting a play from the literary canon can create a lens to view and understand contemporary social and political issues.  An adaptation done well can give new meaning to an audience who are well versed in its source text.  Instead of fearing the uncertainty of an audience or critic’s reaction, we as playwrights should embrace the challenge of creating a piece of work that is equally masterful in its own interpretation of a classic piece of theatre.