Wits student translations, adaptations and performances
2023 saw some exciting Shakespearean innovation at the University of the Witwatersrand! This included courses in the Wits School of Arts and the School of Literature, Language and Media that required students to translate, adapt and perform speeches from Shakespeare’s plays Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice.
Third year Theatre and Performance students, working with TCC affiliate Nina Lucy Wylde in a course on poetry and heightened text, each chose a short speech from Julius Caesar. The brief was to translate it into “the highest form of their chosen South African vernacular language” in keeping with the poetry of Shakespeare’s text. The translator-actors produced speeches by Mark Antony, Portia and Calpurnia in isiZulu, Setswana, Sepedi, Tshivenda and Afrikaans (in addition, one performance is in ‘modernised’ English and one uses the original language). They are: Anita Matwa, Asakhe Ngxonono, Bonolo Lepeng:, Wian Smit, Robyn-lee Peffer, Chantel Lerato Mokwalakwala and Phatutshedzo Mudua. Look out for these young artists on a stage or screen near you!
Shot in a uniform style, these seven videos have been added to the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa’s #lockdownshakespeare collection of monologues. The #lockdownshakespeare YouTube channel was launched in 2020, in response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on live theatre; it has since evolved into a digital repository of various Shakespearean teaching and learning resources. With the addition of these Wits student performances, however, the channel has returned to its original focus on short self-recorded screen performances - taking the number of #lockdownshakespeare videos to 55.
Unlike their peers in Performance Studies, students who sign up for a course in English Literature generally wouldn’t expect to find themselves in front of a camera delivering their own translations and adaptations of Shakespearean speeches! But the second year English students taking an elective seminar with TCC director Chris Thurman and TCC Schools Liaison Officer Linda Ritchie were very much up for the challenge.
This compilation of a selection of the students’ creative submissions includes some of the famous monologues from The Merchant of Venice rendered in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans and German, as well as reimagined speeches and scenes from the play performed in contemporary English.
Watch Kaloso Makhokolo, Lily Rathogwa, Mninawe Mayekiso, Lesedi Lekoto, Jonas Drensfeld, Ziyanda Makhaya, Olivia Theron, Buhlebethu Masango, Jamiela Suliman and Rhaushaan Webster as Shylock, Portia, Jessica and more!