Asian-American Theatre Reimagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York

Abstract

Macbeth has a long and varied history of Asian-style enactments in the United States. Among the best known performances are Akira Kurosawa’s film Throne of Blood (1957), Yukio Ninagawa’s kabuki-style Macbeth (1985), Wu Hsing-kuo’s Peking opera The Kingdom of Desire (1987), Tadashi Suzuki’s all-male The Chronicle of Macbeth (1988; English and Japanese versions), Shozo Sato’s Kabuki Macbeth (1997), Sato and Karen Sunde’s Kabuki Lady Macbeth (2005), and Charles Fee’s kabuki-inflected Macbeth (2008) (these last three in English), all screened or staged multiple times in North America. These works either map the English imaginary of Scottish incivility onto what is perceived to be equivalent Asian contexts (as Kurosawa’s film does), or create a new performance idiom from amalgamated elements from various traditional Asian theatre styles (as Sato’s production does). It is not uncommon for artists to combine unfamiliar styles of presentation with English and even Shakespeare’s lines, of which the American audience tend to assume ownership.