Think about Elvis and the Blues and how these dirty American sounds took root from Singapore to Liverpool. Then in 1964 it all came back to the states in the form of a British Invasion that profoundly changed our culture and the way the world hears and consumes music. That’s a fairly recent bit of history but it might help to put us in a frame of mind to think about the impact of Shakespeare’s plays being performed on East India Company ships sailing the seas of a rapidly-expanding globe.
Traveling across space, through Asia, Africa, and the Arab world, and also across generations the supreme playwright‘s works have been eroded, augmented, adapted, and distilled. The Global Hamlet Symposium at Rhodes College brings a body of academics, actors, and enthusiasts to the home of the Blues to consider how the world has changed Hamlet and Hamlet has changed the world.
In addition to lectures and discussions the Hamlet Symposium will also feature performances by the Tennessee Shakespeare Company and Opera Memphis. In conjunction with the symposium Rhodes is screening Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet, Thursday, Oct 4, Rhodes. Xiaogang’s film is a Kung Fu fantasy Hamlet in the vein of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
