Who's There? Shakespeare in Production as Heterotopia in France

Abstract

By virtue of the increasing spatial networks in which it is performed, contemporary Shakespeare is globalized and cosmopolitan and seems to function as a timeless non-place. However, at the local level, cultural encounters with Shakespeare also allegedly introduce dissonant voices that destabilize dominant readings of the plays. This article analyses the Shakespearean productions of four contemporary French directors within the context of a culture of alternative ordering that aims to carve out social and cultural space as a space of difference and hybridity. It firstly suggests a reading of the version of Hamlet that Daniel Mesguich staged in 1996 based on his problematization of spatial practice and representation. The techniques of displacement the production entailed created double effects and affected translation to the extent that the play became associated with the Otherness of space and time. In another theatrical register illustrated by some of the smaller companies working outside of large theatrical institutions, the productions of directors Michel Laubu (1996-97), Jean-Luc Courcoult (2003-06), and Michel Cailleau (2003-to date) further dislocate the Shakespearean text, to recycle it with heterogeneous everyday objects and integrate it into the life of the city. In these productions the heterogeneization of Shakespeare collapses space and time together, and unsettles order and hierarchies. Shakespeare is reterritorialized into counter-sites of difference which are neither French, English, not Shakespearean spaces, asking what meanings are created when Shakespeare is produced in another culture and language. In these productions the understanding of Shakespeare may be affected by textual disruption and the undermining of interpretive certainties. Dislocation undermines the logic of meaning and gives access to a polysemic theatre which presents the shared Shakespearean memory as a problematic cultural space.