https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1112 Index de Postcolonial fr 0 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1147 The two Othello spinoffs studied here, Not Now, Sweet Desdemona (1968) and Iago (1979), depict Othello relative to 1960s and 70s movements such as Pan Africanism, Black Power, Négritude, and U.S. Civil Rights.  In this political context, the staging of Othello provides the opportunity to redefine a pivotal play of Western Europe by adding an African perspective – to put the “Moor” back in “Moor of Venice.” With its focus on issues of interracial sex, love, marriage, deceit and murder, Othello intrigues contemporary theatre audiences and directors alike. These two productions push the boundaries of adaptation, and both share specific connections in their approach to reinventing Othello: a resistance to notions of uniform “nation” or “culture,” a desire to experiment with Shakespeare as a tool for engaging audiences in contemporary political dialogue, and a rejection of the trend of the 1960s and 70s toward a black separatist aesthetic, choosing instead to incorporate postcolonial iterations of feminism, womanism and transindigenous performance practice. These two plays use Shakespeare broadly and Othello specifically as a touchstone for Western imperialism and oppression, but a touchstone that invites interrogation.  These adaptations resist textual imperialism and the iconicity of Shakespeare specifically and Western literature more broadly, and they assert personal truths in favor of historical assertions of Truth.  In this way these are productions in the act of spinning off from the original text – they reveal that adaptation is dynamic rather than a state of fixed, derivative existence. They spin erratically, even at times a bit out of control, but they kick Shakespeare’s text into cultural action via the voices of African diaspora. The performances challenge the very concepts of original and derivative texts and invite the audience to see adaptation as a process of spectacular collision that creates new matter, which in turn spins into new systems of meaning. mer., 20 déc. 2017 12:48:07 +0100 sam., 28 déc. 2019 14:40:09 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1147 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1105 This article analyzes South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys’s rewriting of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Exploring the social and political critiques contained in MacBeki and The Merry Wives of Zuma, this article argues both plays should be read as postcolonial appropriations of Shakespeare – works that alter the original plays’ language and themes for new, local purposes. Uys’s works target the legacy of colonization in South Africa by deriding neocolonial abuses and the characters who continue to revere colonial systems of power and control. In doing so, his deployment of Shakespeare eschews reaffirming the kind of European cultural hierarchy that the British playwright is often associated with in decolonizing states. In this fashion, Shakespeare’s plays are decolonized by mocking their historic elevation, while at the same time being redeployed to critique national crises such as corruption and continuing economic disparity. However, while these two plays illustrate Shakespeare’s usefulness in critiquing national crises, they also reveal the precariousness of using satire for such purposes in the quickly-shifting political landscape of contemporary South Africa. This article concludes by questioning whether Uys’s two satires were outdone by the events he was attempting to critique. jeu., 23 nov. 2017 17:01:29 +0100 mer., 20 déc. 2017 21:01:43 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1105