Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare

This volume critically analyses and theorises Asian interventions in the expanding phenomenon of Global Shakespeare. It interrogates Shakespeares universality from Asian perspectives: how this has been modified or even replaced by the global bard as a recognisable brand, and how Asian Shakespeares have contributed to or subverted this process by both facilitating the worldwide dissemination of the bards plays and challenging and resisting the very templates through which they become globally legible. Critically acclaimed Asian productions have prominently figured at premier Western festivals, and popular Asian appropriations like Bollywood, manga and anime have created new kinds of globally accessible Shakespeare. Essays in this collection engage with the emergent critical issues: the efficacy of definitions of the local, global, transnational and cosmopolitan and of the liminalities and mobilities in between. They further examine the politics of West and East, the evolving markers of the Asian and the equation of the glocal with the Asian; they attend to performance and archiving protocols and bring the current debates on translation, appropriation, and world literature to speak to the concerns of global and transnational Shakespeare. These investigations analyse recent innovative Asian theatre productions, popular cinematic and manga appropriations and the increasing presence of Shakespeare in the Asian digital sphere. They provide an Asian standpoint and lens in rereading the processes of cultural globalisation and the mobilisation of Shakespeare.