Radical Revival as Adaptation

This book examines the radical reinterpretation of precursor texts and prompts as an innovative form of adaptation for the stage. In this context, stage adaptations are defined as active and risk-taking interventions on pre-existing sources, dramatic and otherwise, that can range from single-authored plays to collaborative creations and devising projects. Radical adaptations have the potential to constitute a cutting edge pathway of exploration in performance, by virtue of operating at the intersection between experimental practice and multiple creative transpositions and crossovers among genres and media. They offer a viable platform for the negotiation of topical concerns embedded into global cultural, socio-political and historical shifts, thus cultivating a genuine bond between theatre and society. This volume considers a range of case studies, from the work of Alexandru Tocilescu to Rimini Protokoll, and is vital reading for those interested in adaptation studies and forms of contemporary theatre practice.

Jozefina Komporaly is an academic and translator. She works on cultural exchanges between European and Anglophone performance traditions, through the lens of adaptation and translation. She is the author of Staging Motherhood (Palgrave, 2006), and edited the anthologies Matéi Visniec: How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (2015) and András Visky’s Barrack Dramaturgy: Memories of the Body (2017).

“This is a sophisticated contribution to the development of varied definitions for the acts of adaptation in theatre and performance, including challenging thoughts about the boundaries of adaptability. Clear-headed, informed and informative, and suitably open to the engaged reader.” (Graham Ley, Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theory, University of Exeter, UK)

“Jozefina Komporaly's Radical Revival and Adaptation: Theatre, Politics, and Society provides a critically coherent and consistently argued frame for understanding and appreciating contemporary theatre examined as a reinvention of the traditional dramatic repertoire and of dramatised versions of other genres. It delivers a profound and innovative rethinking of radical revivals that "complicate and resituate audience engagement". In articulating the complexities of a cutting edge radical revival that recommends the author as a leader in the field, this seminal study furnishes a wonderfully condensed overview that highlights in six chapters the authority of the creator and that of the spectator united in generating and explanding a performance's "plurality and relativity of meanings".” (Professor Ileana Alexandra Orlich, Director, Romanian and Central European Cultural Collaborative, School of International Letters and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA)

“This is a sophisticated contribution to the development of varied definitions for the acts of adaptation in theatre and performance, including challenging thoughts about the boundaries of adaptability. Clear-headed, informed and informative, and suitably open to the engaged reader.” (Graham Ley, Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theory, University of Exeter, UK)

“Jozefina Komporaly's Radical Revival and Adaptation: Theatre, Politics, and Society provides a critically coherent and consistently argued frame for understanding and appreciating contemporary theatre examined as a reinvention of the traditional

dramatic repertoire and of dramatised versions of other genres. It delivers a profound and innovative rethinking of radical revivals that "complicate and resituate audience engagement". In articulating the complexities of a cutting edge radical revival that recommends the author as a leader in the field, this seminal study furnishes a wonderfully condensed overview that highlights in six chapters the authority of the creator and that of the spectator united in generating and explanding a performance's "plurality and relativity of meanings”.” (Professor Ileana Alexandra Orlich, Director, Romanian and Central European Cultural Collaborative, School of International Letters and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA)

“This pioneering study surveys an exceptionally broad spectrum of late-twentieth and early twenty-first century theatre and performance practice, unfolding aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of radical revivals of cl

assics as adaptations. Reaching well beyond the Anglophone world for illuminating case studies, this timely monograph celebrates the transnational aspect of cutting edge contemporary theatre adaptations which are artistic achievements in their own right rather than close stage realisations of easily identifiable sources. Drawing on an impressively wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of theatre and performance studies, adaptation discourse and British, North American and ‘Continental European’ theatre practice, Komporaly’s work reminds us of the subversive, revolutionary and transformative power of adaptation.” (Dr Marta Minier, University of South Wales, UK, co-editor of Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance)