Translation, Adaptation, and Appropriation in Brook's Mahabharata

Extract

In this article So-Rim Lee closely investigates the Mahābhārata in relation to – but quite distinct from – The Mahabharata: a Play (1985) by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière. Since the ancient text of the Mahābhārata does not have a definitive author, version, or form, So-Rim Lee argues that Brook and Carrière's framing of their modern reading as an adaptation of the ancient text poses a series of questions regarding the politics of recontextualizing a South Asian text in Western terms, the methodological process involved in doing this, and the ethical stance espoused by the transcultural adapters. She then questions whether the audience actually finds Brook and Carrière's international, multi - racial production as cosmopolitan and multicultural as the authors claim it to be. If The Mahabharata: a Play is a matter of cultural appropriation rather than adaptation, what transgressions are involved in reframing the source text and how does it produce what Gayatri Spivak calls ‘epistemic violence’? Lee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. She has previously reviewed for Theatre Survey and Performance Research.