At the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, something new is happening. They’re introducing British Sign Language and hip hop as a means to communicate the show in a different way. The Globe Theatre is hosting the World Shakespeare Festival and trying something new. The festival will feature seventy different performances, in a variety of languages without the aid of surtitles as a part of Globe to Globe.
Love’s Labour’s Lost will be performed with British Sign Language. Othello will be adapted, allowing for the Q Brothers from Chicago to help tell the story through hip hop. Cymbeline is being performed by a theatre company emerging from the newly formed country of South Sudan. Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia have taken on the three Henry IV plays, adding their own flavor, as well as being the first time the three will be performed at London’s Globe Theatre. New Zealand’s addition of Troilus and Cressida focuses on Maori culture.
I find this idea of doing Shakespeare in a variety of languages and means intriguing. When most people think of Shakespeare, they think of the plays we all have had to read. Instead, the Globe is doing something new, something to showcase how these plays can be done all over the world. As Artistic Director of the Globe Dominic Dromgoole describes it, it will be “bizarre and exciting.” I cannot think of two better words to describe what is happening at the end of April 2012. We are forced to change how we interpret Shakespeare, opening ourselves up to these interpretations.
