The plays of William Shakespeare have been known in parts of Asia for more than 200 years.  While these plays are a central part of the medieval canon in Europe, in China and Japan, people were drawn to them as signs of modernity. Tsubouchi Shōyō completed the first Japanese translation of Shakespeare's complete works in 1928.  His interest in Shakespeare was initially intended to inspire Kabuki artists to write better plays.  More than 100 years later Shakespeare remains a popular and enduring playwright whose plays have inspired a long list of theatre, film and television makers in Asia.  Of particular importance are the adaptations of Shakespeare as source of inspiration for contemporary Asian directors, who are not only drawn to the humanistic Shakespearian worldview but seek to use his plays as a way of questioning the implicit assumptions about modern theatre.  How does Shakespeare inspire artists in Asia and how do we begin to understand the interest in Shakespeare in Asia among scholars?  How have artists adapted Shakespeare for modern and contemporay times?  This lecture will consider these questions in relation to three iconic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays; the 1957 film Throne of Blood by Kurosawa Akira, Suzuki Tadashi’s theatrical adaptation of Lear that has been performed in variations since the 1980s and Ong Keng Sen’s 2000, intercultural take-down production of Desdemona.

Peter Eckersall is the Sidney E. Cohn Professor in Theatre at the Graduate Center CUNY.  He is the deputy director of the Marvin Carlson Theatre Center at STA.  His research expertise includes, Japanese Theatre, Dramaturgy, Contemporary Performance, Politics and the Arts, and Performance and Media.  Recent publications include Dramaturgy to Make Visible: The Legacies of New Dramaturgy for Politics and Performance in Our Times (Routledge 2024), (Asian) Dramaturgs Network: Sensing Complexity, Tracing and Doing, (coedited with Charlene Rajendran, Center 42 Singapore 2023), Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre, (coedited with Barbara Geilhorn, Andreas Regelsberger, Cody Poulton, Performance Research Books 2021), The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics (ed. with Helena Grehan, Routledge 2019), New Media Dramaturgy (co-authored with Helena Grehan and Ed Scheer, Palgrave 2017), and Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan (Palgrave 2013). He is resident dramaturg of the Not Yet It’s Difficult performance group (Melbourne). Recent dramaturgy includes Everything Starts from a Dot (Sachiyo Takahashi, LaMaMa), Phantom Sun/Northern Drift (Alexis Destoop, Beursschouwburg, Riga Biennial).