Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007

This article deals with James Ivory's screen adaptation of Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl. The analysis draws on the use of fine art motifs in the mise-en-scne and the use of symbolic art objects as a way of adapting and condensing James's textual description.

Changing perceptions is a learning process. When Shakespeare's play text Macbeth was appropriated by Nikolai Leskov in his novella A Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1865), which was adapted by Dmitri Shostakovich and remediated into the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934), which was adapted again and remediated into an opera film by Shapiro as Katerina Ismailova in 1967, each new remediation carried the politics of theatrical performance inherent in Shakespeare's play, and thus the education of those who read or participated in the performance of each manifestation of the adaptation. Through discussion of the changes that take place as Shakespeare's Macbeth is remediated to A Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Russian literature, and Soviet opera and opera on film, I argue that each historically situated remediation presented a coded criticism of the way in which the authorities ruled and educated the Russian nation: adaptation as education.

Taking as a starting point Oswald de Andrade's concept of anthropophagy as a metaphor for cross-cultural interactions, this article examines some of the issues involved in translating (or adapting to a different cultural environment) a text that is itself a cannibalisation. Buarque and Guerra's play Calabar: In Praise of Treason (Editora Civilizao Brasileira), originally published in 1973, was rewritten in 1979, adapting to the new socio-political climate under which it was to be staged. The writers make use of a number of intertextual sources in order to create a text that demands constant watchfulness of their reader-translator-reader. Introducing this important Brazilian play to Anglophone audiences, this article moves on to explore some of the more practical aspects of translation in general and, in particular, of translating a political stage musical. Drawing on post-colonial theories of translation (and from ideas contained in the play itself) the article makes the case for the ubiquity and indeed necessity of treason as tool in such interactions.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most frequently performed play in the United States. This article applies Raymond Williams's concept of epochal analysis to make sense of the dizzying array of adaptations of this text taking place well after the end of slavery in the United States. By 1876, Uncle Tom's Cabin was part of the dominant culture, and the Tom plays themselves appropriated other newly emergent aspects of popular culture, including jubilee singers, World's Fairs, and circuses. These examples illustrate a process of adaptation that had little to do with fidelity to an original text and much to do with tapping into the power of iconic images. These performances, including Edwin S. Porter's 1903 cinematic adaptation, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Slavery Days, provide a fascinating window onto the concerns and preoccupations of post-Civil War America.

In Alan Lyddiard's 2003 adaptation of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire the setting of the late-1980s Berlin was fully translated into the present-day Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Designed by Neil Murray and incorporating John Alder's original film footage, the production also featured members of the community in conjunction with the Northern Stage ensemble. Partly forming a retrospective analysis of the process from my point of view as the company and production dramaturg, this essay explores the ways in which the Newcastle production functioned as an exercise in translating a city. The account of the adaptation process is framed by an analytical discussion of the original text and its transition into a particular socio-political context, in conjunction with an interrogation of the phenomenology of translation and Wenders' deliberate synaesthetic approach to the material. Finally, the article seeks to conceptualize the text with regard to its apparent inter- and cross-cultural mobility.

Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (eds), (2005), 2nd edition (2007) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 376 pp., ISBN 978-0-631-23054-0, hardback, 65.00, ISBN 978-0-631-23055-7, paperback, 18.99

Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation A Practioner's View, Phyllis Zatlin (2005) Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 222pp, ISBN1-85359-833-X/ EAN 978-1-85359-833-3, Hardback 102.72, ISBN1-85359-832-1/EAN978-1-85359-832-6, Paperback 24.95

Adaptation and Appropriation, Julie Sanders (2006) Routledge, UK New Critical Idiom, Series Editor: John Drakakis, 200 pp. ISBN 0-415-31171-3, Hardback 50.00, ISBN 0-415-31172-1, Paperback, 11.99

Vernon God Little, Adapted by Tanya Ronder from the book by DBC Pierre, NHB/Young Vic 2007, 8.99