Shakespeare in Canada Essay example -- William Shakespeare

Shakespeare in My Canada If you ask my dad about Shakespeare, he will quote you a soliloquy from Macbeth. If you ask my dad about Kathakali, he will instantly quote you a poetic epic from the Mahabharata. If you ask my dad about how Shakespeare and Kathakali fit together, in truth, he is not quite sure. I was not sure of the reasons myself, when I first started thinking about what Shakespeare in my Canada meant to me, why I immediately thought of Kathakali. Kathakali is an indigenous art form of Kerala, the southernmost state of India, and my father's home. It is an extremely expressive form of dance-drama, originally performed to tell the stories of the major Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In recent years, there have been attempts in both India and Canada to adapt Shakespearean works to the Kathakali form, with varying degrees of success. Through exploration of two such attempts, as well as brief examination of critical responses to them, I would argue that Kathakali is in fact a viable form through which Shakespearean works can be adapted in a Canadian and/or post-colonial context. As we all know, Shakespeare himself based many of his plays on already existing plays and stories. It is fitting then that "Shakespeare's works have, from their inception, been both the product and the source of an ongoing explosion of re-creation" (Fischlin, 1). As a country once colonized by the British, Canada is especially familiar with Shakespeare's near-universal power to lend a sense of cultural authenticity to any setting, be it school-house stage, or tavern theatre. Today, despite being more than a century past 2 its colonial days, Canada is still struggling to define itself as a nation. Although we ma... ...one with great potential to open new artistic doors in both Canada and India in the future. 6 Works Cited Fischlin, Daniel and Mark Fortier. "General Introduction." Adaptations of Shakespeare. Eds. Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier. London: Routledge, 2000. Khandwani, Sudha. "A Century of Indian Dance." Kala Nidhi Fine Arts of Canada. Available: . 2005. Raina, Arjun. Arjun Raina. Available: . 2004. 7 Appendix Image 1 Annette Leday performing "Stuff of Dreams" at Kala Nidhi Toronto, 2004 Available from ________________________________________________________________________ Image 2 Arjun Raina performing his KhelKali adaptation of Othello at Leela a Elahi Delhi, 1997 Available from