Speaker
Description
Because of their potential to confer “prestige, gravitas, and humanist principles to emerging platforms” (Sullivan 2022, 163; see also Bührle 2018, 8), Shakespeare and his plays are prime targets for new media keen on legitimizing themselves, especially in the face of criticism. It is hardly surprising, then, that online performances of Shakespeare’s plays appeared from the early days of video games and the Internet, from a parodic live, written adaptation of Hamlet in an Internet Relay Chat channel in 1993 to the re-creation of the Globe theatre, completed with live reading through voice chat, in the 3D simulation game Second Life (Greatley-Hirsch and Best 2017, 454). As the technological affordances of cyberspaces, gaming interfaces, and online communication evolved, so did such online performance practices, which became increasingly more complex, with actors-players performing Shakespearean characters in real time through gaming avatars and voice chat features in increasingly realistic and complex 3D stages. This paper asks the question of whether and how such digital productions in video game settings, beyond their legitimizing function, can help ‘revive’ and rejuvenate classical works, infusing new life into such classics by using medium-specific mechanics and gameplay elements to help them resonate with contemporary digital cultures and Internet users. I argue that video game productions participate in contemporary Shakespearean discourses by integrating many trends of progressive performance and scholarly approaches, including feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, especially by giving a voice to non-heteronormative and non-white approaches in a ‘safe space’, where identities may be (theoretically) protected. This, I suggest, is facilitated by the participatory and global nature of web culture and of online gaming spaces, which allows for encounters beyond national and cultural boundaries. Seeing how younger people are increasingly moving away from traditional linear screen-based media (TV, cinema), this paper furthermore argues that in-games productions fulfil a central role in cultural dissemination and in rendering Shakespeare relevant for younger generations and audiences, especially seeing how such in-game performances seem to be progressively entering the ‘mainstream’ sphere of Shakespearean discourses through increased professionalization, especially following the Covid-pandemic and the forced digitalization of many theatrical performances. The paper looks at a number of case studies of online Shakespearean production to illustrate the efforts at re-vitalizing Shakespearean plays and at making them relevant in today’s culture, including (but not limited to) recent documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, which documents a production of Hamlet within the online space of Grand Theft Auto and is filmed entirely in Machinima format, i.e., in the form of recorded animations from the game.
References
Bührle, Julia. 2018. “Les ballets shakespeariens : du ballet d’action au ballet romantique:” Acta fabula, March 26. https://www.fabula.org:443/colloques/document5357.php.
Sullivan, Erin. 2022. Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice. Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05763-2.
| Principal domain of study | English literary studies |
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