11. Global Shakespeares with Professor Jyotsna Singh

Professor Jyotsna Singh from Michigan State University talks to Anjna about growing up in India, Shakespeare and Indian cinema, and decolonising Shakespeare in global interpretations and scholarship. 

Transcript

Anjna Chouhan:

Welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Hello, and welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast that hosts conversations with people who work, or engage with Shakespeare from all around the world. My name is Anjna and in this episode, I'm speaking to Professor Jyotsna Singh who teaches early modern literature and culture at Michigan State University.

And, her interest in Shakespeare pertains to post-colonial appropriations, adaptations, and engagements with the plays. She has published widely on Renaissance literature and culture, her most recent book being Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory;  and she has a forthcoming collection in the 2nd edition of The Global Renaissance. In 2019, Jyotsna received a visiting Fellowship at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Now, Jyotsna grew up and studied in India, and she's written widely on Shakespeare in Indian cinema, and the so-called decolonisation of Shakespeare and the many cross-cultural global Shakespeares that exist today. So, a very hearty welcome to you, Jyotsna, and thank you very much for being with us on Shakespeare Alive.

Jyotsna Singh:

Well, thank you very much. Hello. And, I'm delighted to speak to you, because especially since you're in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is one of my favorite places.

Anjna Chouhan:

Well, thank you for joining us Jyotsna. I'd like to start our conversation by talking about your route to Shakespeare. You grew up in India. So, can you tell us a little bit about how Shakespeare came into your life?

Jyotsna Singh:

Well, I think anybody who's grown up in India, Shakespeare is not as foreign as you will think. In India, we are still living in a colonial legacy where large numbers of people speak English. And, English literature had been a part of my curriculum, so I was familiar with Shakespeare when I came to the U.S. as a graduate student. But, I was not initially planning to work on Shakespeare. I was planning to work on something more modern, American literature. And then, I took some courses in the early modern period, and I just loved the literature. So, it's a very culturally rich period. And, I just did this work, I was from India, I grew up, I did my undergraduate there, I speak Urdu, and Hindi and Punjabi. And so I understand, and I live in that. And, I think that is the world that Shakespeare lived in. Shakespeare lived in London, in a very cosmopolitan London.

Jyotsna Singh:

He was very attuned to foreigners, whether the foreigners were Italians or whether they were Spaniards, or whether they were Talibans, or whether they were North African Moors, or Venetian Jews. He was very attuned to that. And, the issue that started is once I was a advanced graduate student, I was working on very historical perspectives on Shakespeare's plays on Antony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida. I was looking at these two plays as self-reflexive. But, I was also looking at them historically through the lens of new historicism. And, I think my problem came or issue came is people in America, not always, but often, somehow were asking me the same question that you're asking me today is, "Why are you doing Shakespeare?" "Like, you're from India."

Jyotsna Singh:

And, there was also a lot of pressure on me when I first were looking for jobs, is people would want to hire me and expect me to not teach Shakespeare anymore. They expected me to teach post-colonial and Indian literature, because I asked myself that question, "Why am I studying Shakespeare?" "Why am I doing this?" And, my answer to the Americans was that Shakespeare was in India in the 19th century, and the British took Shakespeare, especially in Bengal, they produced the place, they wanted to quote, unquote, civilize the Indians. But Shakespeare was produced, directed and absorbed by Indians in the Indian curriculum. And, the one of the first articles I ever published was called Shakespeare in India.

Anjna:

So, that Shakespeare in the past, as it were, how he came to be in India and in your life. What about Shakespeare in India today, since that time, what's happened?

Jyotsna Singh:

Since that time, there has been a very rich tradition of indigenous adaptations, translations, productions of Shakespeare in India. People like Utpal Dutt in Bengal in the 1950s and 60s, and now we have these great films by Vishal Bhardwaj, the Omkara, Maqbool, and Haider. We have a great Malayali filmmaker called Jayaraj, who made a brilliant production of Macbeth called Veeram. So, I think while Shakespeare went to India in a colonial context, Indians have appropriated him and indigenized him, and in a way kind of speak through him through these native voices.

Anjna Chouhan:

So, I'm quite curious on the back of your discussion about post-colonialism, and your interest in that subject. When we talk about former colonies that often Shakespeare is characterized as something belonging to an oppressive culture, why is it that India has escaped that, as it were?

Jyotsna Singh:

I think I will kind of qualify myself a little bit to say that you're right. First of all, a resistance to Shakespeare was a part of decolonization movements all over the world. For instance, Aime Cesaire, in the Negritude movement wrote a play called A Tempest, which was a kind of radical resistance to the Tempest. So even in India, I would like to state that there was resistance. There was a kind of push to decolonize Shakespeare, but not to reject him completely. I think that is important. So, there was a push to interrogate Shakespeare, to absorb him into Indian languages. But, I don't want to idealize that somehow people in India in the post-colonial world would worship Shakespeare. But, I want to come back to exactly how was Shakespeare appropriated in India. And, I think there were different phases. There was a phase when the British were there in the 19th century, Indians, they were kind of colonial subjects. And, they wanted to impress the English, and then gradually... And, a lot of this happened in Bengal.

Jyotsna Singh:

And I would like to stress, I'm not a Bengali, always much to my regret. I admire Bengalis greatly. And, I think they did amazing work. And then, there was also a Parsi theatre in Bombay, so it was.... But Bengal was because they were the... Calcutta was the center of British rule. But, I think somebody like Utpal Dutt who's work I've written on, though it's been some years, he was a radical left-wing Marxist. So, he believed that Shakespeare should not be inaccessible, we should make it more accessible. And I think to some extent, I share that philosophy. I think many people of color, students of color are told Shakespeare is not for you, because he is associated with white privilege. And to some extent that's true, but I feel that we as post-colonial subjects, and I'm still a post-colonial subject, we should reclaim him.

Jyotsna Singh:

And, there's a great tradition among great African-American scholars who read the new Shakespeare and cited Shakespeare. There's a tradition, I'm sure people like, whether its Tagore, or whether it's even Cesaire, while they rejected Shakespeare, they engaged with Shakespeare. So, what I'm seeing is that, in the world we live in, we don't need to be reverential to him. We don't need to say he's unavailable to us. We should say that these are great works, there's great language, there's great poetry, there's great complexity.

Jyotsna Singh:

And, we should be able to claim it, but it's not easy. As I said, I was not accepted as a Shakespearian scholar for many years. I had a hard time finding a job in Renaissance studies. People used to tell me, "Well, we'll hire you, but you don't teach the Renaissance, you teach Indian literature." I'm talking in the late 90s, it's not that far away. But, I will admit at the outset that I think I have returned to Shakespeare's plays in recent years with a greater sense of how rich his works are, and how I think they really help us to look at the world in more complex ways.

Anjna Chouhan:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So bearing in mind this approach that you have to the plays where they shouldn't be off limits, how is Shakespeare being appropriated in that way? How is he being reclaimed and decolonized in India, for example, today?

Jyotsna Singh:

Adaptations of Shakespeare in India, for instance, we can talk of Haider the film or Omkara. I think these films, these new engagements with Shakespeare are in a way absorbing Shakespeare, but also interrogating him. So, what I want to stress in the podcast is a very complex process.

Anjna Chouhan:

Sure. And, it is a complex negotiation, isn't it, between the various languages, the various cultures? We're talking very much about film here Joytsna, which is fascinating. And, a lot of the films that you're referring to, Haider, Omkara, for example, they have stars at the center of the big names in Indian cinema. Do you think that's the way of attracting mass audiences to Shakespeare in India?

Jyotsna Singh:

Okay. Well, thank you. That's a great question. I think I have done quite a lot of work on Haider, which is film on Hamlet. I've written about it in my book on post-colonial Shakespeare, and I've recently written something on how to teach Haider in U.S. classrooms, instead of pedagogy because it's very much about Kashmir. I think one thing we have to think that the Indian Shakespeare's, quote, unquote, that are coming out are really for global audiences. They are no longer Indian in that sense. So, one of the new phenomenon now is called global Shakespeares, and so often when I talk of my work as postcolonial Shakespeare, I always say, "There is a phenomenon of global Shakespeares. So, Bhardwaj, when he's writing, I mean, when he's making these films, I'm sure he has kind of larger global audiences. I mean, Indians themselves live in diasporas. Large Indians like you and me and others, they live in India or they have connections here.

Jyotsna Singh:

So, I think he is writing for those audiences. It's not the old kind of Bollywood Shakespeare's. And, he is trying to mediate. I think negotiation is a great word you use, so negotiation or mediate. So, I think what Bhardwaj is trying to do, is he's trying to mediate between Western elite affiliations associated with Hamlet. Hamlet is the most quintessential centerpiece of Shakespeare's works. It's about the humanist subject. It's the most, quote, unquote, Western of all plays, it's the jewel in the crown. So, he's trying to mediate between the elite Western intellectual affiliations, and very local non-metropolitan success of these Indian issues, and local cultures and knowledges of the Indian sub-continent. In fact, Bhardwaj himself in various interviews, doesn't come from a very anglicised background. And, he said, "I could approach Shakespeare more freely, because I wasn't in reverence of him." "I wasn't raised in that kind of Anglophile culture."

Jyotsna Singh:

And so, I think he was able to appropriate Shakespeare in more interesting ways. And, he uses stars wherever he can. He used Kareena Kapoor, he used Shahid Kapoor. He uses Tabu, who's this great actress, who is the mother of the Haider character in the film. So, he's using these great stars, he's having Bollywood appeal. But, I think this is very much how Bollywood now has a global appeal across all the South Asian diasporas. And so, he is taking this very Shakespearian play, setting it in the most contentious issue of the Indian sub-continent. There's an Indian woman who directed an amazing production of Titus Andronicus called The Hungry, it's mostly in English and a little bit in Hindi. And, it's set in modern day deli, corruption and power grabs in Delhi. It has Naseeruddin Shah who acts as Titus.

Jyotsna Singh:

So, it has a certain star appeal. And then, of course there was this film called Veeram, which is a Malayali film, which is a Macbeth, which is set in early modern Kerala among martial arts communities. There was a martial art tradition, so it's set among martial arts warriors. And the same director, I think has directed Antony and Cleopatra, and Othello. He's directed other Indian plays, so I think what I'm trying to emphasize in everything I say is that all these negotiations are very complex. They are very political. And rightly so, they interrogate Shakespeare's text. We are not reverential to them, but I feel that as post-colonial subjects, we have to reclaim Shakespeare. And, that is why I mentioned the work of Iqbal Khan, who is a director at the RSC, who has done these amazing productions of, for instance, Much Ado About Nothing, that was set in modern Delhi.

Jyotsna Singh:

And then, he did an Othello in which he has a Black African actor play Iago. And then, he did a very interesting Tartuffe, which was set in contemporary Birmingham among a Muslim community. You see, so I think what has happened, which I find exciting, which I see now as a legacy of my work, which seemed very lonely when I was doing it, that Shakespeare has become global. I think his works enable us to engage with issues of diversity, inclusion. And, I think he is calling all of us to find ways of engaging with that work.

Anjna Chouhan:

Okay. So, I'm aware that we're talking about British audiences, and American audiences, and our personal experience, our frame of reference. Is it the case that specific cultural segments can only really engage with, or access Shakespeare if it's done in a way that looks and sounds and appeals to them specifically? So for instance, is Romeo and Juliet only exciting if an Asian man is playing Romeo, for example? Is there something a little condescending about this approach?

Jyotsna Singh:

That's a very, very good question. And, I agree with you. It shouldn't be... I think that I mentioned as one production appealing to a certain community, but it shouldn't be. It can be condescending and patronizing. I would look at it in a sort of complex way. I think I remember, when I was in college and seeing... I used to find Shakespeare boring, because I think the productions were very reverential. I remember even at Stratford, they would have history plays where people would just go on and on. There was nothing kind of happening. So, I think the productions have to appeal to you in some ways. For instance, as women, you don't want to see a production that's so obviously sexist. Or you have Cleopatra depicted as some shrill shrew. You want production that are more nuanced.

Jyotsna Singh:

So in a way, everybody looks for something that appeals to them in a production. And, I think about these South Asian, it's useful to have a play like that, to bring them into the theatre and then they'll see some other place. And, I think I'm really happy that the plays in England have cross racial casting now. So, I think without being patronizing, we have to acknowledge that plays should speak to different kinds of people. So, that could be one play that appeals to some South Asian communities, but then other plays when they come to see the plays, and they see so many South Asian actors on the stage, will also be to them in any case. And, I think these are very pertinent questions that directors have to ask and theatre people have to ask.

Anjna Chouhan:

We're going to pause now for a short break.

Paul Edmondson:

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is a charity that promotes the life, work and times of William Shakespeare in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. We look after the five houses associated with Shakespeare and his family. We make freely available and internationally important library, archive and museum collection. We lead new research, and we run an award-winning education program. In light of this podcast, please consider making us a donation. You can do this by visiting shakespeare.org.uk/podcast-support. Your support and goodwill really matter to us. And, we hope you'll recommend our podcast to your friends.

Anjna Chouhan:

Hello, you're listening to Shakespeare Alive with me, Anjna. And, I'm talking to Professor Jyotsna Singh from Michigan State University about post-colonial and global Shakespeares, and at the moment Shakespeare and race.

Jyotsna Singh:

So, there's a lot of very rich work on race and Shakespeare studies being done in the U.S. There's work being done in India. There is wonderful work by Margaret Litvin on Arabic Shakespeares. She's done very, very good pioneering work on looking at Shakespeare in Arab traditions. And, her readings are very interesting and original, and she doesn't read everything through colonialism. And, I think it's really important to push back against orthodoxies, which she does. Everything is not the same. The middle East engagements with British empire was very different than India, than the Caribbean. I like to see myself today as a scholar who is interested as much in issues of racial equity of resistance to colonial powers, and resistance to domination, and equity, and inclusion, and interrogating Shakespeare. But, I also see myself belonging to a larger global community. And, I think that theatre and film are intersecting. There's this new... The book I'm have an essay... And, there's a new book on Haider, which is about teaching Haider in Western contexts. It's a collection edited by Varsha Panjwani.

Anjna Chouhan:

Can I pick up Jyotsna? You made a really interesting point about the intersection of theatre and film. And, I guess I'm interested in the idea of when we're talking about global Shakespeares, how we deal with the fact that the theatre is by definition, a kind of exclusive mechanism through which to communicate Shakespeare, whereas film has much more of a cultural capital in that it is quite literally global, it is accessible. I mean, where does that leave theatre?

Jyotsna Singh:

I have to confess at the outset. I'm not that familiar today with Shakespeare in India, as it is done on the stage. I think it is performed and they are good productions, so I'm really talking of much earlier when the National School of Drama did some adaptations, but I think I would like to talk about the RSC and the national and the globe. Because, I think that the global Shakespeare has moved there, but I think there's a very vibrant theatre in England. For instance, a very great film director, sorry, a theatre director in Britain called Tim supple. And, he did these productions of Shakespeare in India of Midsummer Night's Dream, where it was A Midsummer Night's Dream in many different Indian languages. And, I've written about that too. So, what I'm trying to say is that, what was sort of Indian Shakespeare's or South Asian Shakespeare's, a lot of those have been kind of absorbed on the stage in the UK. But, I want to come back to your larger question about film versus theatre.

Jyotsna Singh:

And, I think that question's become even really more urgent in the pandemic. I worry very much that Shakespeare on theatre in the pandemic has taken a real hit. And, I also worry that unless you see Shakespeare's plays on stage, it's not the same. And, the kind of political, and ideological and cultural work that can be done on the stage on live theatre cannot be approximated in film. I don't believe that plays should only be done in some sacrosanct spaces, and they should be only done by certain actors. I think they should be open to all, and we should have them on different sites. And, if people can make powerful films like Bhardwaj has made, good for him.

Anjna Chouhan:

If you could summarize the trajectories Jyotsna of global Shakespeares, what we've been talking about today, and it's sort of direction where it's moving. How would you do that? What would you say?

Jyotsna Singh:

I think the trajectory of global Shakespeare's was not a singular movement. It evolved gradually from multiple directions. On one hand, it came from post-colonial Shakespeares of South Asian diasporas, of African diasporas, of Caribbean diasporas, and of people who were raised on Shakespeare and brought up on Shakespeare, and then interrogated, resisted, revised, adapted. And, like me told a history of that post-colonial resistance or de-colonizing of Shakespeare. So, that then evolved into a more global movement. Second, I think in the U.S., it came from critical race studies and an engagement with Shakespeare in the context of contemporary racism in the U.S. and race politics. And, I think we shouldn't forget that actually people who we owe a big debt too, are also the feminist critics, that the cultural materialist critics in Britain, so we have inherited their politics too. And, what has become global now is first more people from non-Western or non-metropolitan locations have been exposed to Shakespeare.

Jyotsna Singh:

Second, they have been more productions and versions of Shakespeare like Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider or his other films, or the Chinese Shakespeare's or the Arab Shakespeare's. So, Shakespeare itself has become a kind of site of all these proliferating meanings. And, I think Craig Dionne, who was an editor of a really nice book called Native Shakespeares said, and I'm just paraphrasing him is, "We are capturing Shakespeare in excess of his canonical uses." So, Shakespeare is no longer used in canonical Western ends. My concern is, as we are celebrating these global Shakespeares, my concern is also we have to be careful not to be mired in new ideological agendas. I think we have to be very careful while we are still fighting for issues of equality, and racial injustice, and gender justice. We shouldn't put Shakespeare in some kind of ideological box, and we shouldn't put literature in ideological boxes. So, I think that would be my somewhat circuitous answer.

Anjna Chouhan:

One of the concerns or criticisms that people quite legitimately have about post-colonial narratives in studies today, is that they build their foundation on antagonism? Is the way forward to continue doing that, or to sort of push back against that antagonism?

Jyotsna Singh:

I think we have to tread very carefully and with complexity. First, I began my career in interrogating Shakespeare's privileged position, interrogating his representations of privilege. So, I think the task of interrogation should always continue. We should never be reverential to Shakespeare. Second, I think we should acknowledge that whether it's the Shakespearian stage, even today, whether it's the RSC, it is associate with privilege and with white privilege, with people with an Oxbridge education, with people with certain privileges of accessibility. So, we should acknowledge that and we should always interrogate that. However, I also feel that we should look in the plays and see so much complexity of language, of poetry, of vision that maybe can be harnessed to a progressive politics.

Jyotsna Singh:

While keeping that in mind that Shakespeare is originally canonical and white, how do we decolonize him? How do we appropriate him in ways that we can claim him? But on the other hand, I'm not interested now and think either reject Shakespeare and say, "He's associated with whiteness," or only read him for ideological point making, how we need to undermine him? Or how we need him to only teach us about race? How we need him only to teach us about gender, how we read him?" We should be able to read him in multiple ways.

Anjna Chouhan:

Jyotsna, I know that you've visited Stratford for many, many years. You come very regularly. Are there any of our properties that you particularly love?

Jyotsna Singh:

I would love to own Anne Hathaway's cottage. That is my favorite place. And, I have a story to tell why it's my favorite place. I've been coming to Stratford for 20 years now, so it's that sort of the span I'm talking about. And, I've been once to where he was born, that didn't impress me. I liked Hall's Croft. We have teas, the Institute has these lovely tea. So, I love Hall's Croft. And, I love New Place, and I always feel very sad what they did do it, people in the 18th century, but I love that garden. But my visit to Shottery, this was quite a few years ago. We had taken some students here for study abroad and we had a tour guide. And I can never forget, she says, "Imagine young Will Shakespeare walking here from Stratford to Shottery in the dark."

Jyotsna Singh:

When in England, everything gets dark at four o'clock in the fall. So, imagine him coming here in pitch dark, there were no lights. And, he would come in here and he would sit by the fire, and they would probably have a few candles. And then, we were trying to imagine is how Anne Hathaway got pregnant in this state. And then, she also said that, "That is why..." Because, they lived in darkness, you could imagine him thinking of Puck and the goblins, and ghosts and monsters. And, I think it captures to me the world in which he lived. That's one of my favorite places.

Anjna Chouhan:

Anne Hathaway's cottage is definitely a brilliant choice. Thank you. So, what about our collections? Is there anything in our collections that stands out to you?

Jyotsna Singh:

Recently, I went to the exhibition in New Place last time, and I thought that was kind of interesting. I think what I really like is the gardens actually, I think the way you've maintained the old Elizabethan Garden in New Place.

Anjna Chouhan:

People often forget that the properties, the houses themselves do count as our collections. So, that is a great choice. And finally Jyotsna, is there something that you think we ought to be collecting, or that you would suggest that we would collect to represent Shakespeare in the 21st century for future generations to enjoy?

Jyotsna Singh:

I think what you should do is which I collect, I think you should go all over the world and collect programs.

Anjna Chouhan:

Is that theatre program?

Jyotsna Singh:

Theatre programs. I collect those. I have them in my office. We have them at home. Yeah, I think just collect theatre program while they exist, they may not exist in some years.

Anjna Chouhan:

Yeah. And would you say Jyotsna, that you want to focus on major theatres, or you talking regional theatre?

Jyotsna Singh:

I think just go anywhere. That would be one thing. The other thing is you could do a film archive of, I think that you already have, but you could maybe expand that. Or maybe if you want to follow some particular plays, follow the reception of maybe some plays, a couple of plays and see how they sort of traveled all over the world.

Anjna Chouhan:

I think tracing your play around the world, perhaps over the course of a year, for example, might be really exciting as a sort of long-term project.

Jyotsna Singh:

And, I think following a play is something that I think that I would be interested in seeing what you do with that.

Anjna Chouhan:

Sadly Jyotsna, our time's coming to an end, but what a delightful chat we've had. Thank you ever so much.

Jyotsna Singh:

Thank you so much. This was a pleasure.

Anjna Chouhan:

Oh, the pleasure was all mine. May we wish you all the very best for your future research, Jyotsna Singh, thank you. So, what do you think about Jyotsna idea of collecting lots of theatre programs from around the world, or even tracing a play on its global performance journey. Now, if you could deposit something, what would it be? In our previous theories, our guests suggested diaries, alternative voices and artworks celebrating Shakespearian pride. But, now it's your turn. What would you like to see in our imaginary horde to celebrate Shakespeare in the 21st century? Please let us know by going to shakespeare.org.uk/future. And, while you're there, please consider completing our short survey, so that we can make more of the content that you like.

Paul Edmondson:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Shakespeare Alive with Anjna. Join me next week when I'll be talking to Dr. Islam Issa of Birmingham City University about his work with Shakespeare.