Adaptation/Construction/Deconstruction

[Paul Malone]

On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, Shemina Keshvani (represented by the single > )
wrote in reply to Glen Nichols, (whom she quotes [shown by the double
> > ], replying to me, whom Glen Nichols quotes [and I'm the triple
> > > ]):
 
> > >  We've all seen the kind of "adaptation" that makes us ask,
> > > "Why didn't they just write their own play?"
> >
> > If what I said above is true, then the two phenomena you cite are really
> > just two points on the performance continuum. Aren't ALL productions of
> > any play really "adaptations" on some level, anyway? We just give them
> > that name when they reach a certain intensity of "adjustment".  Likewise,
> > couldn't one also suggest that any play written is also an "adaptation"
> > of everything the playwright has read and seen before?  If this is true
> > than perhaps by adapting the play, they DID write their own... if you
> > follow my logic.
>
> Your comments about adaptations are well taken but the logical conclusion
> of saying "all productions are adaptations" implies the that there is
> some absolute, final, fixed written text. I would be hesitant to suggest
> anything of the sort. More likey, the text is not complete until it is
> performed and there may be a multitude of possibilities for the
> completion of that text. Perhaps it is not that they wrote "their own"
> play but that the "writing" isn't over until the performance is "sung".
>
> Shemina Keshvani
>
 
    I would maintain that Glen Nichols has a point, though I would
change the terminology: every production is an _interpretation_ of
the original text, which, as Shemina Keshvani says, is not complete
until it is performed. Furthermore, I would agree with Glen's
assertion that there is a continuum of interpretation in performance,
and beyond a certain point interpretation becomes adaptation. In a
sense, adapters certainly do write their own play, because it seems
to me that adaptation begins at the point in the continuum when more
of the interpretation is based on reference outside of the original
text than on reference to what is already present in the text, either
explicitly or implicitly (to return to my original example, the
post-nuclear Lobster Duke in _2 Gents of Verona_ is not in my
opinion an idea implicit in the text).
    Because almost any playscript contains more information than
can possibly be explored with any depth by any one production, and
because historical and social change makes certain aspects of the
text inaccessible to us and opens others, there is a practically
infinite number of possible interpretations for any one text even if
one remains well within the border which crosses over into
adaptation (and exploring homosexual bonding between Proteus and
Valentine in _2 Gents_ could probably find some implicit or explicit
basis in the text, even if Shakespeare, or his audience, would not
have seen it, which is not easy to prove one way or the other--so
that such exploration, by itself, would not necessarily turn a
production into an adaptation).
    Thus, as Shemina suggests, there is a multiplicity of possible
interpretations, but some interpretations grow more logically and
organically out of the original text than others. This does not imply
that there is an "absolute, final, fixed written text," however,
because what grows "logically and organically" out of a text changes
with time and distance; in other words, meaning is not generated by
the text alone, but by the way in which a particular era reacts to
that text (and beyond that, in theatre, to the performance of that
text). This still leaves lots of room to do innovative and surprising
things with the text.
    Nonetheless, I would maintain, there are in all periods
interpretations which simply cannot find an organic basis in the text
and which force the director to _adapt_ the text to fit the
interpretation. This is very different from attempting to cut the
text's length while still trying to stay within the bounds of non-
adaptive interpretation (Of course, that may be a fruitless attempt,
despite the intentions!). Finally, whatever the director's aims, the
audience has to interpret the production, deciding what is meaningful
and how, and so all of this discussion can be rendered peripheral if
the audience's reception subverts the director's intention--which may
not happen often, but which is always a possibility.
    Comments?
 
    By the way, isn't _The Boys From Syracuse_ an adaptation of _The
Comedy of Errors_, which is an adaptation of Plautus's _Menaechmi_,
which was probably swiped from some Greek source anyway? I'm not sure
what _Two Gentlemen_ has to do with it . . .
 
Paul M. Malone
malone at arts.ubc.ca