Shakespeare, Brecht, and the Intercultural Sign

In Shakespeare, Brecht, and the Intercultural Sign renowned Brecht scholar Antony Tatlow offers a meditation on cultural forms or gestures that are adapted, translated, transformed, or absorbed by another. To demonstrate how intercultural readings or performances question the settled assumptions we bring to interpretations of familiar texts, Tatlow examines Chinese and Japanese versions of Shakespearean drama, the interplay between interpretations of Shakespeare and readings of Brecht, and, in turn, the relation of Brecht to Asian theatre. Ruminating on how, why, and to what effect knowledges and styles of performance pollinate across cultures, Tatlow demonstrates that the employment of one culture’s material in the context of another defamiliarises the conventions of representation in an act that facilitates access to what previously had been culturally repressed. By reading the intercultural, Tatlow shows, we are able not only to historicise the effects of those repressions that create a social unconscious but gain access to what might otherwise have remained invisible. This remarkable study will interest students of cultural interaction and aesthetics, as well as readers with interests in theatre, Shakespeare, Brecht, China, and Japan.