Shakespeare Wallah is a 1965 Merchant Ivory Productions film. The story and screenplay are by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, about a travelling family theatre troupe of English actors in India, who perform Shakespeare plays in towns across India, amidst a dwindling demand for their work and the rise of Bollywood. Madhur Jaffrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. The music was composed by Satyajit Ray. Read More
Set in Auckland, New Zealand, Broken English is a film inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and directed by Gregor Nicolas.
Many years ago, Ivan (Rade Serbedzija) fled his native Bosnia, which had broken out in war, for New Zealand. Although he has adjusted to his new home, where he works as a drug runner, he’s distrustful of his Maori neighbors. In part to anger him, Nina (Aleksandra Vujcic), one of his daughters, enters into a green-card marriage with a Chinese immigrant (Yang Li) while also dating Eddie (Julian Arahanga), a Maori cook. Ivan’s rage soon poses a threat to Nina and Eddie’s happiness.
Cast
Aleksandra Vujčić as Nina
Julian Arahanga as Eddie
Rade Šerbedžija as Ivan
Marton Csokas as Darko
Madeline McNamara as Mira
Jing Zhao as Clara
Li Yang as Wu
Elizabeth Mavric as Vanya
Temuera Morrison as Manu
For more information, visit IMDb and Wikipedia.
Romeo Must Die is a 2000 film about a gang war that breaks out between an African American gang and an Asian gang in Oakland, CA. The plot is similar to that of Romeo and Juliet and featured famed martial arts star Jet Li and singer Aaliyah in her first movie debut. Read More
Mississippi Masala is a 1991 film inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet about the interracial romance between an African American man and an Indian American woman in rural Mississippi. Read More
Tromeo and Juliet is a 1997 American independent transgressive romantic black comedy film and a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet from Troma Entertainment. The film was directed by Lloyd Kaufman from a screenplay by Kaufman and James Gunn, who also served as associate director. Read More
Chicken Rice War (Jiyuan qiaohe, dir. Chee Kong Cheah [CheeK], Mediacorp Raintree Pictures, 2000).
Supported by the Singapore Film Commission (SFC) and shot as a mockumentary with MTV-style rapid cuts and whooshing camerawork, the comedy film is Mediacorp Raintree Picture’s first movie primarily in English and the first feature-length work by CheeK, editorial director of MTV Asia (headquartered in Singapore). It frames and trivializes the feud in Romeo and Juliet by reducing the generations-old dispute between the aristocratic Montague and Capulet families, leading to bloodshed, to the rivalry between the Wong and Chan families, who own competing chicken rice stalls next to each other in a hawker center (semi-open-air food court) in the prosperous city-state.
Read MoreFilm in which Shakespeare is cited, and a sequence is set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Read More
A multicultural theater company in today’s New Delhi is staging a production of Shakespeare’s Othello. The director takes a bold step by casting an inexperienced small town actor as Othello. The new actor falls in love with the leading lady, who is also the director’s love-interest, and the two men become bitter rivals. Things become even more complicated as the actors’ theatrical personae start to seep into their lives outside the theater. Read More
In March 2000, Ong Keng Sen directed Desdemona in which – actors, musicians, designers, video/installation artists – from India, Korea, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Singapore worked together on-stage. Desdemona premiered at the Adelaide Festival and then went on to the Munich Dance Festival and the Singapore and Hamburg Festivals. This production toured Japan in 2001.
What happened to the three daughters of King Lear before they made their entrances in Shakespeare’s classic? Yellow Earth Theatre presents this seminal work exploring the formative years in three young women’s lives. Read More
Lear hands over control of his global business empire to his daughters. In his Shanghai penthouse, he asks them to justify their inheritance. The older sisters flatter their father in elegant Chinese but English educated Cordelia, no longer fluent in her father’s tongue, says “Nothing” and the loss of face sends Lear into a spiral of fury and madness. Read More
Elsinore is based on Hamlet. Created and directed by Robert Lepage. Performed by Peter Darling. Sets by Carl Fillion.
Detailed performance record for this production can be found at the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare website.
The script for Elsinore is available from this webpage.
An intricately plotted tale of thwarted love and betrayal, “The Golden Bowl” tells the story of an extravagantly rich American widower (Nick Nolte) and his sheltered daughter (Kate Beckinsale), both of whom marry only to discover that their respective mates, a beautiful American expatriate (Uma Thurman) and an impoverished Italian aristocrat (Jeremy Northam), are entangled with one another in a romantic intrigue of seduction and deceit. Read More
Search: Hamlet centers around an absent Hamlet. Each participant enters a dialogue that develops and interprets the contemporary search for Hamlet in their cultures and communities today. Read More
PRINCE OF THE HIMALAYAS is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Prince Lhamoklodan learns of his father’s mysterious death and returns home to find his uncle has taken the throne–and the widowed queen. Read More
Witty, playful and utterly magical, the story is a compelling romantic adventure in which Rosalind and Orlando’s celebrated courtship is played out against a backdrop of political rivalry, banishment and exile in the Forest of Arden – set in 19th-century Japan. Read More
