Shylock in the Ḥaḍramawt?: Adaptations of Shakespeare on the Yemeni Stage.
in La rivista di Arablit, a. III, n. 5, giugno 2013, pp. 5-24.
Yemen and Shakespeare are not commonly associated with each other, yet a surprisingly rich and idiosyncratic history of Yemeni Shakespeare productions exists. This article traces that history, to contextualize a recent Yemeni adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, in which Portia appears as a masked Arab warrior, and Shylock as a Hadhrami cloth trader. In productions that range from a uniquely Yemeni Othello, its final scene re-written to punish Iago, to Yemen’s variegated adaptations of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, Yemen’s Shakespearean performances provide a powerful example of “glocalized” Shakespeare: that is, adaptations of the now globalized literary tradition of the Bard, refracted through distinctly local characteristics and concerns.
