ABSTRACT
Taiwan’s contemporary playwrights have adapted Shakespeare’s plays since the late 1980s. Lee Kuo-Hsiu’s Shamlet (Hamlet [1992]) and Wu HsingKuo’s The Kingdom of Desire (Macbeth [1986]), Hamlet (1990), and Lear Alone (King Lear [2001]) are some well-known examples. However, it should be noted that these adaptations focus mainly on Taiwan’s modernity rather than on the originality of Shakespeare. More crucially, one can learn much about the geopolitical situation of Taiwan and its complicated relationship with China in these adaptations too. Wu Hsing-Kuo’s latest production, The Tempest (2004), reminds one of Taiwan’s colonial history and its postcolonial contemporary society. In his adaptation of The Tempest in 2004, Caliban is transformed into a Taiwanese aborigine, and his role was actually performed by a Taiwanese aborigine from the Paiwan tribe. In contrast, Prospero was performed by Wu himself, who is originally from mainland China. Such casting strongly suggested the various divisions among Taiwan’s ethnic groups. Wu’s Prospero was dressed in jingju (Peking opera) costumes, and his costume symbolized the incoming new national regime led by Chiang Kai-Shek after the Japanese colonial rule. The colonial implications of these fi gures in the Taiwanese version of The Tempest also remind us of Osero, Japan’s fi rst adaptation of Othello, presented by Kawakami Otojirô.
