Changgeuk Lady Macbeth (창극 레이디 맥베스), National Gugak Center    

/ National Gugak Center/

This performance reconstructs the original play to centre on Lady Macbeth, who is suffering from the consciousness of guilt. The Doctor hypnotizes Lady Macbeth to face this overpowering guilt. Lady Macbeth is directed by Tae-sook Han, which has been continually performed since the 1998 premiere, was at this time recreated as a Pansori version. Pansori is a Korean traditional opera like Peking opera of China. Eun-hye Jung, a prima donna of Pansori, performed the role of Lady Macbeth. 

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Hamlet, Prism Theatre Society

/ Shri Ram Centre/

Hamlet returns to his hometown to find his father dead in a mysterious accident, and his uncle both married to his mother and the unopposed chief of everything his father once held. Before long he sees a vengeful spirit urging him to take revenge. Witness Hamlet's journey into madness, moral dilemma and chaos as he tries reclaiming what's rightfully his.

This adaptation contemporizes the plot, characters and language of Hamlet. It uses a modern Hindi prose diction interspersed with verse translations of the soliloquies and some English phrases. The effect is like Bollywood.

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Hamlet, National School of Drama

/ National School of Drama/

Director's Note: “I began my work on Hamlet with seven second year students of NSD in the last week of November. We had taken the play-within-the play in Hamlet for a series of improvisations. We tried to understand the play through this most brilliantly constructed scene by Shakespeare. It opened up many possibilities of making a performance of Hamlet with this scene at the centre. In spite of the problem of time and logistic constraints, the students gave their best. Often the actors doubled up as set, property and costume makers as well, as we did not have the students of design and direction with us. What you witness is a series of improvisations in which the students contributed much more than I did as the director of the play. The emphasis[...]was on the process per se and not the end product.”

The production is a polished, intense exploration in a small studio space of Hamlet's twin dilemmas of the duty of vengeance and the mother's remarriage. 

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Romeo and Juliet/ 로미오와 줄리엣, Asia Bridge Contents

/ Doosan Arts Centre/

This performance is a musical version of Romeo and Juliet, which is set in the devastated earth after nuclear war. The Capulets are humans surviving in the underground world, whereas the Montagues living on the ground are mutants by radiation exposure. They are fighting against each other in order to survive. However, Juliet and Romeo fall in love with each other when Juliet sneaks above ground because of her curiosity for the outer world. Finally, Juliet drinks a potion to become a mutant, and Romeo a potion to become a human. But this results in Juliet being killed by humans, and Romeo killed by mutants.

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Othello, National School of Drama, Delhi, India

/ National School of Drama/
Othello, National School of Drama, Delhi, India

A robust production in modern dress. Its adaptive energies lie in the contemporized revisioning of Shakespeare. The military milieu is emphasized, and Othello and Iago are buddies, even seen gyming together. Iago's wiliness is believable and Othello's susceptibility becomes understandable. Desdemona is spirited: she jumps out of the bed and runs to the bedroom door banging on it for help at the end. The verse in translation is handled with ease and fluency, adding to the contemporary performance of the play.

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Romeo and Juliet/ 로미오와 줄리엣, Sem Company 

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Keon-young Moon and Jung-min Park, two Korean movie and television stars, performed the title roles. Even though Director Jung-ung Yang is famous for adapting Shakespeare in his own way, this time he created a beautiful and fairy-tale-like tragic love story by following the original text comparatively closely. But there were differences: Friar Lawrence spoke the prologue and Nurse the epilogue. All of parents of two lovers were left out.

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The Comedy of Errors (실수연발), National Theater Company of Korea    

/ Myeong-dong Theater/
The Comedy of Errors (실수연발), National Theater Company of Korea    

This performance dramatized the comic elements of the original play very effectively. This production employed comical modern dresses and pictorial stage design reminiscent of Fernando Botero's paintings. Actors' and actresses' performances were swift, delightful, and sophisticated. 

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Dying to Succeed, Yuki Ellias

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Dying to Succeed is a whacky show about Shakespeare's iconic characters in today's corporate world. Iago is bitter as Othello doesn't give him the promotion he thinks he deserves; Macbeth is eyeing the CEO's office; and Portia multi-tasks and multi-roles her way around the glass ceiling. Guest appearances by Lady Macbeth, Cordelia, Romeo and Juliet...with a little help from the audience! This is a solo theatre, stand-up and audience interactive performance.

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The Tempest Reimagined, PETA and British Council

/ PETA Theater Center/

“The Tempest Reimagined is a co-production between the British Council and PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association). It is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest set on a Philippine island hit by super typhoon Haiyan, and incorporates stories of the storm’s survivors. It features award-winning artists from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), Hong Kong, and Japan.” –description from the British Council website

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Pericles/페리클레스, Yohangza Theatre Company  

/ CJ Towol Theatre/
Pericles/페리클레스, Yohangza Theatre Company  

Director Jung-ung Yang emphasized the contemporaneity of the play with modern and cosmopolitan costumes, music and dances. The imagistic stage was very impressive, too. The 30m depth stage covered with 50t sand created the image of sea and island. The gigantic statue of Diana's head, which was laid down sideway on the stage left, expressed the precarious deity. The huge images of a compass and a moon, which were alternatively projected on the back screen of the stage, gave a proper background to Pericles, who wanders from place to place. Gower, who led the whole play as a narrator, was transformed into old Pericles.

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Macbeth – This is Another Exorcism (맥베드 – 이것은 또 하나의 굿이다)

/ Daehakro Arts Theatre /

An empty stage, once looked as if only faded grey could exist, returns to life with the breath of actors, now contantly stirring and full of energy. Macbeth, an immortal story, will deeply resonate within the audience as the play transforms into a Gut (the exorcist ritual performed by Korean shamans) through voices and movements of highly trained actors, painting its scenes with sensibility of East and West and of all ages.

Macbeth - This is Another Exorcism has been selected to be performed for the 2016 Seoul Performing Arts Festival.

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The Tempest, Bedouin Shakespeare Company

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Bedouin Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest aims to make Shakespeare’s play accessible and entertaining to an audience largely composed of students. The production, characterized by spare staging, emphasized the comic and magical dimensions of The Tempest, the third Shakespeare production the company has brought to the UAE since 2012.

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Hamick (함익), Seoul Metropolitan Theater    

/ Sejong Center for the Performing Arts/

Hamik is a female Hamlet. She is the only daughter of Maha business group and a professor who majored in Shakespearean tragedy in the UK. She suspects that her mother, who took her own life 20 years ago, was in fact killed by her father and step mother. When she directs Hamlet in her school, her real world is mixed up with that of the play.

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The Original Full Text, HAMLET (완전 무삭제 공연, 햄릿), ESTC

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This is a Korean premiere of the complete Hamlet text, uncut, with a running time of 6 hours (from 4pm to 10 pm) including the intermission for an evening meal, staged by Eurasia Shakespeare Theatre Company (ESTC). ESTC, solely devoted to performing Shakespeare’s plays since 2002, aims to stage all 39 works in Korea. This Hamlet is the 17th play produced by ESTC as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. ESTC’s previous productions include 14 Korean premieres of Shakespeare’s plays.      

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Xavier Stage

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A Cebuano version of the play that was “reset in pre-Islamic Maranao times with character and locale names transposed accordingly. Presented by the Xavier Stage of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, the production gave ample play to Maranao folklore and customs as well as to traditional costumes and music.” –blurb from the Asian Shakespeare Association Newsletter

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