Shakespeare’s Intercultural Performativity in the After-Life: Ku Na’uka’s Othello in Noh Style

In our global moment, what might an intercultural critical approach to Shakespeare performance in Asia look like? How might we avoid replicating the colonizing Anglophone gaze of Shakespeare studies? This chapter endeavours to answer these questions by addressing the complex issue of the viewer’s positionality in relation to Asian theatre using the Japanese production by Ku Na’uka Theatre Company, Othello in Noh Style, directed by Miyagi Satoshi in 2005 as its primary case study. In this performance, the unquiet spirit of Desdemona on Cyprus is presented through Mugen-Noh, a type of retrospective play where the principal character is encountered in the real world and re-enacts her story. The interactions between the structure, conventions and aesthetic principles of Noh and the tradition of realist Shakespeare imported in translation into Japan bring Desdemona’s and Shakespeare’s histories into view. The editors and annotators of the video of Miyagi’s Othello have worked collaboratively as part of the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (A/S/I/A) project to develop a critical practice which engages with the cultural autonomy of the production even as it intersects with a diversity of perspectives.