ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the issues by foregrounding a set of performances, theatrical and cinematic, of Twelfth Night, produced in the UK, the US, and Canada, all of which have been located, somewhat surprisingly, in India, situated in either colonial or contemporary times. India was transformed into William Shakespeare’s location, another England, providing a “local” habitation and illuminating the contradictions of the play. Location is always significant in a Shakespeare production, and as Elizabeth Schafer observes, “Illyria has often been a very forceful presence” the choice of which impacts mood, tone and characterizations and determines the comedic flavor that usually ranges from the festive to the permissive or repressive. More crucially, the translation adaptation took a tongue-in-cheek post-colonial liberty and wittily worked in some trenchant potshots at Shakespeare’s structure, narrative and characterization. The proliferation of the intercultural and the canonization of Global Shakespeare has ruffled spectatorship and muffled discourse.