Discussions: Analyzing Literature

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Discussions
PART A
1) Discuss your two favorite examples of auteur-directors mentioned in the Theatre Histories text.
An auteur director is considered the primary artist and not the playwright, actor or writer. Peter Brook’s theatre experiment, the manifesto The Empty Space and plays such as (1968),
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, make him one of the most influential auteur director (McConachie et al. 2). Brook experimented with expressive ways of telling stories that represented the auteur vision of performance. Suzuki Tadashi Japanese theatre artist went beyond theatrical conventions for a Greek classic (McConachie et al. 3). The Japanese director experimented with Shakespearean texts such as Tale of Lear, focusing on auteur production and giving new meaning to such texts.
2) Knowing what you know about interculturalism in theatre, how is this play an example of interculturalism? (Make sure to cite at least two specific stories and mention some specific characters from the play in your response. Also, use the terms "source culture" and "target culture" in your response.)
Interculturalism in theatre promotes the exchange of cultural values ​​between two or more cultures and implies cultural interaction. Zimmerman adapts and updates The Arabian Nights, which has been staged in various theatres. The characters of Shahryar and Scheherazade reflect interculturalism where love can humanize characters like in Western fairy-tale traditions, Scheherazade narrates about her life to an angry king Shahryar, which makes him gentler and empathetic as he listens to her stories and believes that he has power over her. In Act I, there is the story of The Madman’s Tale and Shahryar listens to the tale and is angry at women and mistreats them as his wife cheated. The source culture is the Middle East as the stories are mostly set in Baghdad, and the target culture is western audiences used to theatre and are exposed to new fables. In Act II Dunyazade: who is the younger sister of Queen Scheherazade works more closely with her sister to tell the compelling, and captivating stories to prevent the king from killing them.
3) Looking back at how Peter Brook was criticized for The Mahabharata, what could be a criticism of Mary Zimmerman's play?
The adaptation of non-Arabic tales in Zimmerman, the Arabian Nights: A Play, focuses too much on the exotic is orientalist and ignores the cultural context and concepts. Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata was culturally appropriative and Zimmerman is an adaptation of a translated work. Zimmerman mostly focused on the tale of Shahryar and Scheherazade, but did not address other famous works such as Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp. Act humanizes Shahryar’s character and erotic stories are embedded in the tale, but the content is oversi...