Call for papers (Issue 5, 2023)

                                                                                    Call for Papers

                                             Comparative Approaches to Early Modern Theatre on Screen

 

Coordinated by Víctor Huertas (Universidad de Valencia) and Alba Carmona (University of Bergen, Norway)

 

The legacy of the early modern European theatrical traditions (specifically, the Spanish, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese traditions), albeit irregularly, has been adapted in different ways to the cinema and the TV screens as well as to forms of narrative storytelling.

Artists and directors have transferred the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Gil Vicente, Racine, Molière, Corneille and other writers to these audiovisual media in their own and in languages both within and outside the European sphere.

Although the number of adaptations of these five traditions is uneven, silent films, auteur films, genre films, television theatre, television films, live broadcasts and other forms of audiovisual have contributed to disseminate this complex and rich dramatic heritage thanks to the initiative of artists and different divulgative, educational and/or ideological agenda followed by private entities, public institutions and governments.

This legacy allows us to think about the different traditions of classical European theatre beyond their respective languages and borders, through a myriad of styles, formats and audiovisual genres. Such rewritings continue to proliferate in the wake of new multimedia forms developed in the digital age and, more recently, due to the need to explore alternative adaptation strategies in the wake of the pandemic.

Examples can be cited of audiovisual adaptations that show stylistic and/or thematic similarities despite belonging to different early modern –aka Renaissance-Baroque– theatrical traditions. Spanish director Pilar Miró's celebrated The Manger’s Dog (1996) was inspired not only by the Russian version of the Lopesque play Sobaka na Sene (directed by Yan Frid in 1978), but also, in its use of historical settings, by Kenneth Branagh's successful film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993).

Over the decades, silent films, nationalist propaganda films, genre films and the more traditional formats of TV theatre have developed poetics and rhetorics of adaptation to the screen that surely present commonalities and recurring issues for all five theatrical traditions. More recently, live broadcasting (theatre transmitted live to film, television or digital screens) has led to a wider dissemination of this Renaissance-Baroque legacy through the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company Live, Shakespeare’s Globe Live, La Comédie Française-Pathé and the involvement of other theatre companies.

It can, for example, be noted that in some cases the points of intersection are in the figure of the creators, theatre directors and screen directors –sometimes, directors of photography or réalisateurs– of the adaptations, who often take the initiative to adapt works from different traditions. For example, Pedro Amalio López’s work for Televisión Española was characterised by his productions of Shakespeare and Calderón de la Barca, among others. More recently, Don Kent has been the director of the live broadcasts of La Comédie-Française's Romeo and Juliet (2019) and The Misanthrope (2019).

Similarities can also be established through corpuses of adaptations articulated through the legendary nature of some works, whose adaptations may not so much focus on their base texts as on their hypotexts, sources and successive versions, where the early modern version is often somewhat blurred (though yet somehow recognisable). This case concerns pieces such as The Dead Queen (directed by Pierre Boutron, 2009), the TV series Pedro and Inês (RTP1, 2005) and the film Pedro and Inês (directed by António Ferreira, 2018), all based on the figure of Inês de Castro, a historical and literary character whose presence has been noted in the work of Jerónimo Bermúdez, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Henry de Montherlant, Catherine Trotter, Aphra Behn and other authors from various European literary traditions. The same phenomenon can be seen in The Legend of the Major of Zalamea (directed by Mario Camus, 1973), which recasts the text by Calderón and the one attributed to Lope de Vega. Cases such as Faustus, whose Marlovian text is recast with its sources and successive versions by Goethe, Gounod, Grabbe and folk and popular variations in Faust (dir. F. W. Murnau, 1926), A Lesson in Faust (dir. Jan Svankmayer, 1994) and others, contribute to extend this logic in cinematic traditions outside the ones we are dealing with and, therefore, show that the influence of these transcends their geographical and cultural limits.

In times of pandemic, theatre directors devised ways to reach audiences using digital and multimedia communication. Thus, we have been able to enjoy audiovisual performances such as The Imaginary Invalid by the Actors' Ensemble of Brooklyn via Zoom or the complete canon of Shakespeare's plays through initiatives such as The Show Must Go On via the same medium.

Moreover, the plurality of audiovisual media that has been flourishing in recent decades has not only multiplied the number of formats for audiovisual adaptations of European Renaissance-Baroque theatre, but also the corpus of works that are transferred to the screen is greater and more diverse, since these media allow for the exhibition of works by producers and companies that strive to transfer to the audiovisual medium works that, to date, have not been taken into account on the big screen or on television.

Despite the many commonalities that can be found in these adaptations and the many comparative possibilities (of which we have only suggested a few), no studies have been carried out that take into consideration the many parallel elements that can be identified to explain the adaptation of these plays to the audiovisual medium. This kind of study would help to rethink modern European theatre on the screen as a whole, taking into account its manifestations in the European and international spheres.

In this monographic issue of Trasvases entre la Literatura y el Cine (5, 2023) we aim to study this heritage by establishing links and relationships between works from different theatrical traditions transferred to the screen. Each contribution should therefore address at least two audiovisual adaptations from at least two different theatrical traditions or theoretical approaches that can deal with a broad corpus (including two or more Renaissance-Baroque theatrical traditions) in a holistic way. It will be crucial for contributors to take into account the source text from which the chosen adaptations originate and/or their sources and successive versions.

We aim, firstly, to find out whether there are any trends in the adaptation of modern European theatre in the different audiovisual media. Secondly, we intend, on the basis of specific case studies, to construct panoramic, critical and historical visions of the reception of European theatre through the screen.

Contributions may be made (always taking into account the transposition of works from the stage and/or text and, if necessary, their sources, precedents and/or variations to the screen) from varied angles, taking into account, among other factors, the transposition of works from the stage to the screen, their ideological positioning, the emergence of new audiovisual narratives during the pandemic, the analysis of screenplays, the work of directors, performers and other members of the technical casts. Contributions may also be based on translation-based, spatial, intertextual, para-textual, reception, transnational, etc. approaches, addressing sustained comparisons between literary works (in the broadest sense) and their audiovisual adaptations. We recommend not leaving aside amateur, semi-professional or productions specifically created or reworked for YouTube, Facebook, Zoom and other multimedia languages that may allow us to expand the canon of early modern plays adapted to the screen.

Contributions will be subject to double-blind peer review. The rules of the journal (which stipulate a maximum length of 60,000 characters, spaces included) and the guidelines for authors can be consulted here:

https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/trasvases/article/view/7466/6954

Papers must be uploaded to the journal's platform by 31 March 2023: http://www.revistas.uma.es/index.php/trasvases/user/register

A copy of the article should also be sent to the coordinators of the monograph, Víctor Huertas (victor.huertas@uv.es) and Alba Carmona (alba.carmona.lazaro@gmail.com), and to the editor of the journal, Rafael Malpartida (rmal@uma.es).

The articles destined to the miscellaneous section will be expected for the same deadline.

In order to organise contents and avoid overlapping, a provisional title and a summary of the article should be sent to the same email addresses before 15 March 2022. This will allow for a more efficient organisation of the whole.

Víctor Huertas

Alba Carmona