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Theatre

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Submitted By aballa
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After watching Shakespeare’s screenplay of Twelfth Night and She’s the Man, I’ve envisioned how She’s the Man can an adaptation and what makes it an appropriation to the original Shakespeare plot. Some of the plays script transfers the work into a modern setting and yet retains all the dialogue, character interactions and all similar details. While productions such as the modern screenplay Much Ado about Nothing for example, claims to being an adaptation when all they do is follow the basic plot points and names while only being somewhat vaguely related to the work in my opinion. However, I feel I have a better grasp on what the terms mean to me, and I will take one last look at two versions of the work as I analyzed Twelfth Night and She’s the Man. An adaptation of a work is merely an actual plot of the original play script. It doesn’t matter if certain scenes or a character in the screenplay is missing in action, as long as the plot is proportionate to what the playwright actually wrote. The words must be the same in terms of structure and display. In that respect the 1996 version is a real adaptation for me. It’s true that the screenplay was transported to a Victorian era setting; however it seemingly does not change how the overall story occurs. In the Twelfth Night, the era of the Victorian age displays the characters in an unaltered manner, in both roles and names following what was written by the playwright. In that respect to that, I feel it is safe to say that it can be a faithful adaptation. The same cannot be said for She’s the Man which is an appropriation in almost every sense of the work. When watching this film I was reminded of the TV version of Much Ado about Nothing and how it handled the material. The characters were named after their counterparts, and the story did have some of the major elements of the work. However, it played far looser with the material for my taste such as using none of the dialogue and while for some of the plays script a modern setting doesn’t ruin the play scrip, I feel that a play script such as that one was meant to be seen in the original pastoral setting. The same thing applies here. The characters do take the names from the play there’s no denying that. However, for some characters their motivations and roles are not only lessened but for some they’re altered entirely. Take Antonio for example. In the play he’s a pirate captain who aids Sebastian after he is shipwrecked and helps him in the overall plot. In the movie he is Viola’s friend and is more of a casual acquaintance of her brother. If anything his role is more to help Viola’s scheme than anything.

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