Category: Adaptations

“Patient and Impatient Griselda”

by Candace Barrington

Though this production skips over The Clerk’s Tale, I already have my free ticket to watch this double reading of the Griselda story, first as told by Boccaccio (14th century) and then by Margaret Atwood (21st century). Tickets to the streamed, dramatic reading are free.

Date: Saturday, 30 September. Time: 5:00p-7:00p (eastern)

Here’s the blurb from Theater of War Productions:

Theater of War Productions and Margaret Atwood return to the Toronto International Festival of Authors with an exciting new collaboration exploring power and control, domestic violence, and family dynamics by way of two versions of the same story, one written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1348 during the bubonic plague and the other by Atwood in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Boccaccio’s version, a woman named Griselda remains in an abusive and controlling relationship, showing great patience and forbearance in the face of her husband’s sadism and cruelty. In Atwood’s version, Griselda takes matters in her own hands and, with the help of her sister, turns the tables on her husband. 

This free, public event will feature a live, dramatic reading of the “Patient Griselda” story from Boccaccio’s Decameron by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Fleishman is in Trouble), Maev Beaty (Beau is Afraid, Mouthpiece), and Araya Mengesha (Tiny Pretty Things, Nobody). Then, in response, Margaret Atwood will perform “Impatient Grisleda,” a story that is narrated to a group of humans in quarantine by an alien that looks like an octopus. The readings of both texts will be followed by immediate responses by community panelists and will culminate in a guided audience discussion, facilitated by Bryan Doerries (Artistic Director, Theater of War Productions).

Co-presented by Theater of War Productions and Toronto International Festival of Authors.

COMMode: Canonicity, Obscenity, and the Making of Modern Chaucer (1700-2020)

by Candace Barrington

Canterbury Ghosts: Discussing Adaptation with Shing Yin Khor

I was delighted to learn about a fairly recent project headed by Mary Flannery, Amy Brown, and Kristen Haas Curtis. Its name, COMMode, wittily points to the scatological humor many readers associate with Chaucer and his Tales. The project investigates and queries the relationship between Chaucer’s modern reception and his obscenity, a set of important questions that have fascinated me for a couple of decades. Moreover, they are reaching beyond the usual suspects. Already the site’s blog has featured descriptions of two global Chaucers: Shing Yin Khor’s oracle cards (link and images above) and Chaucer in 19th-century Australia.

Jean “Binta” Breeze

Jean “Binta” Breeze (image from The Guardian, 11 August 2021)

We sadly note the recent death of Jean “Binta” Breeze, one of Chaucer’s great performing interpreters. Her account of the Wife of Bath’s prologue–“The WIfe of Bath in Brixton Market”–appeared in her 2000 collection, The Arrival of Brighteye and Other Poems and subsequently performed by her on a fabulous video.

Obituaries appeared in The Guardian and The New York Times.

Alisoun Sings!

Caroline Bergvall continues her exciting and longstanding engagement with Chaucer’s Middle English and tales with her latest publications, Alisoun Sings.

If, like us, you’re a fan of Bergvall’s work, you’ll also want to take note of her project, “Conference of the Birds (Attar).” Though the title might ring a bell, this collaborative project is based on a poem by the medieval Persian poet, Attar of Nishapur. For more on the resonances between Chaucer’s ouevre and Attar’s Mantiq-Ut-Tayr, see Alireza Mahdipour’s article, “The Translator Writes Back,” in Chaucer’s Global Compaignye: Reading The Canterbury Tales in Translation, special issue of the Global Circulation Project at Literatuare Compass 15.6 (2018).

Updated Update: Zadie Smith’s Wife of Willesden

by Candace Barrington

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The premiere of Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden at Kiln Theatre in Kilburn London has been postponed. However, Penguin Books has announced a February 2021 publication date of the play. So far, we’ve only located announcements in Australia and New Zealand.

Brent 2020 has set 10 September 2020 for the premiere of Zadie Smith’s Wife of Willesden. Directed by Indhu Rubasingham and designed by Robert Jones, the play is scheduled to run 10 September – 31 October 2020 at London’s Kiln Theatre.

‘Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend.
She plays many roles round here. And never
Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether
Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife
Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life
Story to whoever has ears and eyes…’

For ticket information, go to https://www.brent2020.co.uk/events/wife-of-willesden/ .

Pardoner’s Tale at Oxford’s Creation Theatre

by  Candace Barrington

In late fall 2019, Creation Theatre (Oxford, UK) presented its adaptation of The Pardoner’s Tale to local audiences. Because the company sees the entire city as a

Creation Theater PardT
The Pardoner’s Tale at James Street Tavern, Oxford. Photo from Creation Theatre website.

potential stage, this production was performed in multiple venues, including the Covered Market, Blackwell’s Bookshop, and the James Street Tavern’s beer garden where “spectators, huddled together under blankets and patio heaters.”  In addition to a comic rendition of the Tale itself (as the company’s blog explained), audience members were also given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase “sacred relics.”

Did you see this production? If so, drop us a note and tell us what you thought.

 

The production was announced as a prelude to developing the entire Canterbury Tales. For more about the company and its mission to tell “classic stories in new ways,” see their website.

 

Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden

by Candace Barrington

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Zadie Smith. Photo from Brent 2020 website

The Guardian reported on 12 November 2019 that Zadie Smith (author of White Teeth among other notable novels set in contemporary London) is adapting The Wife of Bath’s Tale (but I suspect they mean her Prologue) for the borough of Brent’s 2020 program marking it as a “borough of culture.” Titled The Wife of Willesden, this first play by Smith will be a monologue performed at Kiln Theatre. The article reported that, per Smith, the piece will “raise questions about the place of women in society and aim to capture the voice of Brent.”

By adapting the Wife as a vehicle for a distinctively localized and contemporary voice, Smith is not alone. Jean “Binta” Breeze’s “The Wife of Bath in Brixton Market” and Patience Agbabi’s “The Wife of Bafa” have adapted the Wife’s monologue for voices associated with the African Diaspora.  (See Jonathan Hsy’s posting where he describes  how he incorporates their work into his classroom teaching.) In Brazil, Francisco Botelho has adapted his Brazilian-Portuguese translation of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue into a one-woman dramatic monologue.

We’ll keep an eye on updated information on Smith’s Chaucerian play. And for those wanting to see a performance, we will post dates and ticket information as soon as they appear.

The Cachoeira Tales, Marilyn Nelson, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

by Candace Barrington

On 7 May 2019, the Poetry Foundation announced that Marilyn Nelson had won the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for poetry in the United States. Marilyn-NelsonIn her verse, Nelson vividly records the lived experiences and (too often) overlooked contributions of Black people in America. Repeatedly, her poetry has made us aware of the beauties and horrors of Black lives as they struggle of make this inhospitable place their home. She captures the sense of displacement and dislocation instigated by the African diaspora in her 2005 collection, The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems. In this account of her journey to “some place sanctified by the Negro soul” (11), CachoeiraTalesNelson re-imagines the pilgrimage structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as a suitable vehicle for challenging the “imperialist grand narrative” (David Wallace, “Chaucer’s New Topographies” SAC 29) and, as Kathleen Forni argues in Chaucer’s Afterlife: Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture (2013), as “stylistic testament to the multivocal inclusivity afforded by the musical versatility of Chaucer’s verse and the conceptual versatility of his structural frame” (111). Worth reading in it’s own right, Nelson The Cachoeira Tales also fits well in a Canterbury Tales classroom as a way to interrogate “white” ownership of the Middle Ages.

Recently, as the poet laureate of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Nelson has shepherded the Maundy Thursday readings of Dante’s Inferno.

For a sampling of her verse, see the Poetry Foundation’s website.

The Miller’s Tale: Wahala Dey O!

by Candace Barrington

img_7995.jpgOn 13 and 15 July, Ufuoma Overo-Tarimo’s dramatic adaptation, The Miller’s Tale: Wahala Dey O! was finally brought to audiences in the western hemisphere. Featuring performers from Nigeria, England, Iceland, and Canada, the international troupe brought an exuberant interpretation of Chaucer’s tale, first to the Isabel Bader Theatre at Victoria College, Toronto, and then to Erindale Studio Theatre in Mississauga.  True to the spirit of Nigerian dramatic tradition, the production enhanced the comic adaptation with music and dancing from many genres.  

The first performance coincided with the New Chaucer Society Congress being held at Victoria College, so the filled house was not surprising.  It was good to learn that the second performance also played to a full house.  

The large undertaking would not have been possible without the support of the 2018 NCS Congress hosts, Alex Gillespie, Will Robins, and their exceptional University of Toronto team.

Barbara Cooney’s Chanticleer

The December 2017 issue of The Atlantic features  Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s lovely, timely essay on Barbara Cooney and her illustrated children’s books .  Cooney’s 1979 Caldecott-winning Ox-Cart Man, with its tender depictions of the countryside’s cycles of growth and loss was a favorite when our household had young ones to read to.  Perl-Rosenthal writes of Cooney’s transformation of Donald Hall’s text into a “meditation of love and loss,” which seems to me a perfect way to describe its impact and importance.

Cooney.ChanticleerHe opens his essay, though, discussing Cooney’s first picture book, Chanticleer and the Fox (1958), her first Caldecott winner and a work that stands in marked contrast to the usual late-50’s fare “of mild humor laced with bland moral guidance” targeting American children. After reminding his audience that Chanticleer is based on the “salty Middle English of The Canterbury Tales” and recounting the  narrative Cooney adapted from Chaucer’s beast fable, Perl-Rosenthal goes on to provide Cooney’s perspective on her little book:

In her acceptance speech for the award, the small blond author, gesturing with her long hands, conceded the anomaly of her book. “Much of what I put into my pictures,” she admitted,” will not be understood.” But she had chosen to write it because she thought that the “children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting.” “It does not hurt them,” Cooney insisted before her audience of senior librarians and educators, to hear about the real stuff of life, about “good and evil, love and hate, life and death.” … She vowed that she would never “talk down to–or draw down to–children.

We can see her refusal to condescend to young audiences in the book’s visual layout.  Though clearly a picture Cooney.Chanticleer2book, Chanticleer and the Fox balances the images with significant blocks of text.  This is not an oversimplified redaction of Chaucer’s text.  And neither the story nor the pictures rely on the comic silliness of talking chickens to create its appeal to children. Instead, it imagines a world of quiet duties, a place where, sometimes, the best of us make foolish mistakes.  If we’re lucky, friends and family will overlook our flaws and come to our rescue.

With its generous text from a canonical source, this picture book imagines itself as a book adults can read to pre-schoolers as well as a book that young readers can approach and engage with by themselves, finding new delights and new lessons in book designed to mature with its readers.

It was good to be reminded of this little book’s virtues by Perl-Rosenthal.