New Approaches To Contemporary Adaptation

Scholars of cultural, gender, film, literary, and adaptation studies will find this collection innovative and thought-provoking.

This collection of essays offers a sustained, theoretically rigorous rethinking of various issues at work in film and other media adaptations. The essays in the volume as a whole explore the reciprocal, intertextual quality of adaptations that borrow, rework, and adapt each other in complex ways; in addition, the authors explore the specific forces

This book examines contemporary approaches to adaptation in theatre through seventeen international case studies. It explores company and directorial approaches to adaptation through analysis of the work of Kneehigh, Mabou Mines, Robert Le Page and Katie Mitchell. It then moves on to look at the transformation of the novel onto the stage in the work of Mitchell, and in The Red Badge of Courage, The Kite Runner, Anne Frank, and Fanny Hill. Next, it examines contemporary radical adaptations of Trojan Women and The Iliad. Finally, it looks at five different approaches to postmodern metatheatrical adaptation in early modern texts of Hamlet, The Changeling, and Faustus, as well as the work of the Neo-Futurists, and the mash-up Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. Overall, this comprehensive study offers insights into key productions, ideas about approaches to adaptation, and current debates on fidelity, postmodernism and remediation.

In the age of globalization, digitization, and media convergence, traditional hierarchies between media are breaking down. This book offers new approaches to understanding the politics and their underlying ideologies that are reshaping our global media landscape, including questions of audience participation and transmedia storytelling.

This collection of forty new essays, written by the leading scholars in adaptation studies and distinguished contributors from outside the field, is the most comprehensive volume on adaptation ever published. Written to appeal alike to specialists in adaptation, scholars in allied fields, and general readers, it hearkens back to the foundations of adaptation studies a century and more ago, surveys its ferment of activity over the past twenty years, and looks forward to the future. It considers the very different problems in adapting the classics, from the Bible to Frankenstein to Philip Roth, and the commons, from online mashups and remixes to adult movies. It surveys a dizzying range of adaptations around the world, from Latin American telenovelas to Czech cinema, from Hong Kong comics to Classics Illustrated, from Bollywood to zombies, and explores the ways media as different as radio, opera, popular song, and videogames have handled adaptation. Going still further, it examines the relations between adaptation and such intertextual practices as translation, illustration, prequels, sequels, remakes, intermediality, and transmediality. The volume's contributors consider the similarities and differences between adaptation and history, adaptation and performance, adaptation and revision, and textual and biological adaptation, casting an appreciative but critical eye on the theory and practice of adaptation scholars--and, occasionally, each other. The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies offers specific suggestions for how to read, teach, create, and write about adaptations in order to prepare for a world in which adaptation, already ubiquitous, is likely to become ever more important.

Adaptation Before Cinema highlights a range of pre-cinematic media forms, including theater, novelization, painting and illustration, transmedia art, children’s media, and other literary and visual culture. The book expands the primary scholarly audience of adaptation studies from film and media scholars to literary scholars and cultural critics working across a range of historical periods, genres, forms, and media. In doing so, it underscores the creative diversity of cultural adaptation practiced before cinema came to dominate the critical conversation on adaptation. Collectively, the chapters construct critical bridges between literary history and contemporary media studies, foregrounding diverse practices of adaptation and providing a platform for innovative critical approaches to adaptation, appropriation, or transmedia storytelling popular from the Middle Ages through the invention of cinema. At the same time, they illustrate how these forms of adaptation not only influenced the cinematic adaptation industry of the twentieth century but also continue to inform adaptation practices in the twenty-first century transmedia landscape. Written by scholars with expertise in historical, literary, and cultural scholarship ranging from the medieval period through the nineteenth century, the chapters use discourses developed in contemporary adaptation studies to shed new lights on their respective historical fields, authors, and art forms.

The Routledge Companion to Adaptation offers a broad range of scholarship from this growing, interdisciplinary field. With a basis in source-oriented studies, such as novel-to-stage and stage-to-film adaptations, this volume also seeks to highlight the new and innovative aspects of adaptation studies, ranging from theatre and dance to radio, television and new media. It is divided into five sections: Mapping, which presents a variety of perspectives on the scope and development of adaptation studies; Historiography, which investigates the ways in which adaptation engages with – and disrupts – history; Identity, which considers texts and practices in adaptation as sites of multiple and fluid identity formations; Reception, which examines the role played by an audience, considering the unpredictable relationships between adaptations and those who experience them; Technology, which focuses on the effects of ongoing technological advances and shifts on specific adaptations, and on the wider field of adaptation. An emphasis on adaptation-as-practice establishes methods of investigation that move beyond a purely comparative case study model. The Routledge Companion to Adaptation celebrates the complexity and diversity of adaptation studies, mapping the field across genres and disciplines.

Why are so many theatre productions adaptations of one kind or another? Why do contemporary practitioners turn so frequently to non-dramatic texts for inspiration? This study explores the fascination of novels, short stories, children's books and autobiographies for theatre makers and examines what 'becomes' of literary texts when these are filtered into contemporary practice that includes physical theatre, multimedia performance, puppetry, immersive and site-specific performance and live art. In Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre, Frances Babbage offers a series of fresh critical perspectives on the theory of adaptation in theatre-making, focusing on meditations of prose literature within contemporary performance. Individual chapters explore the significance and impact of books as physical objects within productions; the relationship between the dramatic adaptation and literary edition; storytelling on the page and in performance; literary space and theatrical space; and prose fiction reframed as 'found text' in contemporary theatre and live art. Case studies are drawn from internationally acclaimed companies including Complicite, Elevator Repair Service, Kneehigh, Forced Entertainment, Gob Squad, Teatro Kismet and Stan's Cafe. Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre is a compelling and provocative resource for anyone interested in the potential and the challenges of using prose literature as material for new theatrical performance.

A Theory of Adaptation explores the continuous development of creative adaptation, and argues that the practice of adapting is central to the story-telling imagination. Linda Hutcheon develops a theory of adaptation through a range of media, from film and opera, to video games, pop music and theme parks, analysing the breadth, scope and creative possibilities within each. This new edition is supplemented by a new preface from the author, discussing both new adaptive forms/platforms and recent critical developments in the study of adaptation. It also features an illuminating new epilogue from Siobhan O’Flynn, focusing on adaptation in the context of digital media. She considers the impact of transmedia practices and properties on the form and practice of adaptation, as well as studying the extension of game narrative across media platforms, fan-based adaptation (from Twitter and Facebook to home movies), and the adaptation of books to digital formats. A Theory of Adaptation is the ideal guide to this ever evolving field of study and is essential reading for anyone interested in adaptation in the context of literary and media studies.

Teaching Adaptations addresses the challenges and appeal of teaching popular fiction and culture, video games and new media content, which serve to enrich the curriculum, as well as exploit the changing methods by which English students read and consume literary and screen texts.