Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance

Addressing both theoretical and practical questions surrounding Shakespeare in contemporary Asia, this book asks why Shakespeare has been of use in these vast regions of the world that have no need to call on him. By investigating some of the ways Shakespeare has been reinvented and deployed, the study notes the differences between standard western approaches and those that can be seen in Japan, China, India, and South East Asia. The contributors come from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions, West and East, and present distinctive, and sometimes conflicting, views on topics as diverse as speaking Shakespeare in Japanese, the importation and exportation of Shakespeare in Asia, and the uses of the English national poet in Indian film and Japanese popular culture. The debates which occur within the book highlight the diversity of production and reception for the world's most popular playwright, whose work is now global cultural capital.

Dennis Kennedy's books include The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance, Foreign Shakespeare, and Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre. He has twice been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the USA, twice won the Freedley Award for theatre history, received the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award at the University of Pittsburgh, the Berkeley Fellowship at Trinity College Dublin, and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea. His own plays have been performed in New York, London, and many other places, and he has frequently worked as a dramaturg and director in professional theatres.

Li Lan Yong is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore.