Editorial Comment: Theatre and Adaptation

It is possible to argue that there is no need for a special issue on adaptation in theatre, since theatre is inherently an adaptive art form, inevitably pulling aspects of other texts and contexts into its sphere of relations. Writers since the Greeks have mined the past to adapt familiar narratives to suit new or changed circumstances. Yet, precisely because theatre is a syncretic form that reconfigures narratives and media, adaptation and the adaptive process require examination. Adaptation has, during the past few decades, become its own field of study, if the number of critical accounts are any indication: citing the fruitful example of adaptive versions of Shakespeare on film, Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan note that “[u]p until 1997, you could count on one hand the number of books devoted to the subject each year, and after that, it’s virtually impossible to keep track.”¹

One of my reasons for choosing this topic for a special issue of Theatre Journal is the furor that adaptation has caused in Australian theatre circles over the last year or so. The sheer number of adaptations that have been staged in Australia is one matter, but also at issue is the billing of some adaptations: where the adapter/director is credited first, sometimes even at the expense of the name of the author of the original text altogether. Some commentators further argue that the high number of adaptations in a small theatre market has had a major—and adverse—role in the shaping of original Australian theatre. In this sometimes acrimonious debate, many playwrights and directors have taken sides about whether or not the adaptation of classic texts has compromised the development and production of new Australian plays. These questions have been asked outside of Australia as well, if not exciting quite as much critical attention: see, for example, Michael Billington’s review in the Guardian of Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s production of 1984, the Almeida, Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse’s production of George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which Billington notes: “I worry that the theatre is rapidly becoming a place of dramatisations rather than original drama.”² Despite the fears that some associate with this trend, the generation of adaptations onstage, not to mention their analyses, appears set to persist and even elaborate in form and function.

Adaptation has been most extensively theorized through the perspective of literature and literary form. Two of the best-known commentators on adaptation, Linda Hutcheon and Julie Sanders, each argue that adaptation is always about transformation and change, and each uses the metaphor of natural selection in making her case.³ Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation provides an approach to how one goes about analyzing adaptation, while Sanders’s Adaptation and Appropriation explores more of the politics of the form, as the second term in her title suggests. Hutcheon deploys the model of the palimpsest, insisting that “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing.”⁴ Sanders, on the other hand, explores adaptation “as a form of collaboration across time and sometimes across culture or language.”⁵ She expands the effects of adaptation by isolating “how frequently adaptations and appropriations are impacted upon by movements in, and readings produced by, the theoretical and intellectual arena as much as by their so-called sources.”⁶ Hutcheon’s revised edition, meanwhile, takes the concept in a different direction, focusing on new generic ways in which adaptation is being addressed (a topic of direct relevance to the first two essays in this issue). This second edition is coauthored with Siobhan O’Flynn, who specifically addresses intermediality and the even faster and more diverse effects that multimedia have on the adaptive process. Hutcheon, O’Flynn,⁷ and Sanders seek a greater depth of response to texts and “intertexts.”⁸

A major departure from the literary approach to adaptation is Simone Murray’s treatment, which extends the discussion substantially into a sphere that incorporates many features that concern theatre scholars. She addresses industry factors, arguing that “[c]ontemporary adaptation is...