This study aims to give an account of Shakespeare in the light of Asian cultural diversity that is characteristic of multiculturalism and multilingualism. The approach to the relationship between Shakespeare and diverse Asian theatre forms is focused on encounters between East Asia and Southeast Asia on Shakespearean stage. Exemplary cases for such encounters are Desdemona (2000) and Lear Dreaming (2012). Desdemona was adapted and scripted by the Japanese playwright/director Kishida Rio.¹ Lear Dreaming was composed of text fragments inspired by Kishida’s original script of Lear (1997), with additional text by the Indonesian traditional Gamelan music artist Rahayu Supanggah, the Korean traditional court music Jeongga vocal artist Kang Kwon Soon, and the Sumatran traditional Minangkabau vocal artist Piterman. Both adaptations were produced by TheatreWorks based in Singapore led by the Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen.² These two productions revisited Shakespeare’s King Lear and Othello, and relocated them into an area of Asian plurality. Shakespeare’s originals were adopted as a source of inspiration for cultural diversity. Desdemona and Lear Dreaming took an international tour so as to reach global audiences: the former was invited to stage in Adelaide, Singapore, Munich, Hamburg, and Fukuoka; the latter in Singapore and Paris. Particularly striking to the global audience was the multifaceted Asianness represented in these two productions.

From the outset much emphasis on Asian diversity was developed. Kishida and Ong shared a strategic plan to connect artists from different Asian countries and from both the traditional and contemporary fields. They set out to stimulate them to perform in their own languages and cultural styles, and enabled them to engage in the presentation of various Asian artistic forms. Their treatment of Asian cultural diversity on Shakespeare stage is in line with the concept of Asian century which lays stress on “maturing and progressive relationships among countries in the region” in the twenty-first century (“Asian Century”). Thus the two productions are designed in concert with a range of Asian cultural and linguistic elements that at once coexist and exist on their own. Diverse theatre forms are situated in relation to each other, working across or along the borders of geography and culture. Artists are invited to participate as performers, and at the same time as collaborators.

Performance language in Desdemona consists of Basa Jawa, Burmese, English, Hindi, Korean, and Malayalam. The performance is played by the Indian Kathakali performer, the Indian Koodiyattam³ performer, the Malaysian-Singaporean contemporary actress, the Korean video artist, the Singaporean video installation artist, the Korean traditional percussion musicians, the Singaporean contemporary actor, the Indonesian court dancer, the Myanmarese puppeteer, and so on. Performance language in Lear Dreaming is comprised of Bahasa Indonesia, Baso Minangkabau, Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin. The performance is played by the Chinese contemporary pipa player, the Japanese Noh performer, the Korean court music Jeongga vocal artist, the Indonesian Gamelan musicians, and the Sumatra Minangkabau vocal artist, the Japanese electronic musician, the Singaporean graphic designer, and so on.

Such an expansive nature of stage practice is characterized by artistic and cultural variation. Most distinctive is the coexistence of mutually independent visions of theatres in East Asia and Southeast Asia. The multifarious characteristics of these two productions strengthen Amanda Rogers’s idea of theatre as a creative cultural product: it “provides a way to consider transnational imaginations and practices in tandem with one another” working as “both the agent and medium for expressing and forging transnational geographies” (211). They also lend support to the notion advanced by Michael Dobson that “Shakespeare may have said comparatively little about Asia, but with major theatre and film industries now flourishing in Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia—as well as India, Japan, and China—Asia has more and more to say about Shakespeare” (“Shakespeare and Asia”). In accordance with Rogers’s words and Dobson’s this paper attempts to give an account of the ways in which ‘transnational imaginations and practices’ of East Asian and Southeast Asian artists, both traditional and modern, ‘say about Shakespeare’ in Desdemona and Lear Dreaming. Its purpose is to show that cultural diversity is a script that facilitates stage actions.

Desdemona had its world premiere at the Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000 in Australia. It was introduced, in the Booking Guide to the festival, as a work of co-practitioners from differing artistic backgrounds: “Desdemona is a collaboration between theatre and visual arts” and a “highly inventive and startlingly visual reworking” (15) of Shakespeare’s Othello. This introduction highlights the focal feature of the Flying Circus Project in which the production of Desdemona is rooted. The Project is, established by Ong in 1994, characterized as “a major programme exploring Asian expression in the 21st Century” and the “multi-disciplinary, long-termed research and development programme in theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film and ritual” (“Flying Circus Project”). Thus Desdemona was first known to the world as a multidiscipline and multimedia adaptation of Shakespeare. The multiplicity has become a frame of reference in the discussion of the effectiveness of a stage work: to apply Helena Grehan’s words, the multiplicity as a means of eloquence is derived from “an inspiring integration of technology and tradition” (117).

Such ‘an inspiring integration’ is evident in the creation of a new character called Zero, whose role is played by the seven of practitioners in traditional and contemporary art forms: the Korean video artist and costume designer Park Hwa Young, the Singaporean-Australian video installation artist Matthew Ngui, the Korean traditional percussion musicians Jang Jae Hyo and Shin Chang Yool, the Singaporean contemporary actor Low Kee Hong, the Indonesian court dancer Martinus Miroto, and the Myanmarese puppeteer U Zaw Min. Seven Zeros mainly perform their own art, and at times play the roles of Desdemona’s mother, servants, or slaves. In the production’s program notes at the Telstra Adelaide Festival, Ong gives an answer to the question as to what is zero: “Zero is the beginning, zero is the end, zero is negative Space, zero is absence, zero is shadow, zero is the echo, zero is the reflection, zero is the trace, zero is the source, zero is the process” (qtd. in Grehan 122). His definition suggests that Zero stimulates the audience’s imagination to read between the lines in an attempt to find psychological bases of, and hidden causes for, the actions of Othello and Desdemona.

This inclusive approach is relevant, because an impetus to intercultural appropriation of Shakespeare results from a sense that encounters between East Asian and Southeast Asian performance traditions offer a meeting ground which recognizes differences in them. Furthermore Ong employs the contemporary video installation art, thereby extending the scope of a meeting ground and making their encounters much more multidisciplinary. In this way a composite of the multifaceted performance and visual arts is embedded in Desdemona. This concept of the multiplicity evolved from a research trip to India, so-called “the journey of what was to become Desdemona” that Ong embarked on as part of the second Flying Circus Project in 1997. He took an interest in an “interracial marriage” which “seemed the perfect way to open up issues of culture and race that we are confronted with in any intercultural exploration,” but at the same time wanted to leave out of account “earlier interpretations of Othello, especially the obsessive stereotyping of black machismo” (“Encounters” 126).

For this purpose Shakespearean dukedom of Venice is transferred to a kingdom of Asia currently ruled by Othello. His father’s father invaded and conquered this country. The story of a black Moorish husband and a white Christian wife is transposed to that of the conqueror husband and the conquered wife. Desdemona is portrayed as a slave whose duty is to bear a son to Othello. Her role is played by the Malaysian-Singaporean contemporary actress Claire Wong. The action of the play begins with Desdemona’s entrance: she crouches on her knees between the wooden blocks with the white stripes on them, and faces the video camera in front of her. Then the visual image is projected on the screens at the back of the stage: astonishingly the white stripes on the wooden blocks are put together in the shape of a big O, by which Desdemona seems enclosed. The movements of her hands and arms look like those of a Myanmarese string puppet.

William Peterson describes Desdemona’s position as being “trapped inside the circle like a human-sized puppet” and “symbolic of her entrapment by the yet-unseen Othello” (“Consuming” 85). Similarly Grehan interprets the O image as “a large white circle signifying O/thello” (122). The image of confinement projected by Desdemona’s appearance is heightened by what she speaks. Desdemona’s first speech is composed of the words such as “My words” “My tears” “My grief” “My blood” “My shadow,” and finishes up with the sentence “I am alone inside Othello, I hate you” (Prologue).⁴ Desdemona’s choice of words generates intense emotion, and declares her implacable hatred of Othello. Her hatred is derived from her inability to have a conversation with her husband who always gives orders: “there is no one who can disobey your orders. I am not allowed to have words with you. I am a mute” (Scene 5B). The O and puppet imagery is linked up to the silence enforced on Desdemona.

The O-puppet-silence association has psychological effects on Desdemona’s relation to her mother. The more Desdemona feels frustrated with her husband, the more she indulges in reminiscences of her mother: “Mother when I remember you, I become Desdemona. When the wind whispers, my memories return. Mother, the things you taught me, return” (Scene 4B). Having the remembrance of her mother reinforces her self-identity. While Desdemona is talking about her mother, Jang and Shin play the traditional Korean music, and Zaw Min dances like a puppet rather than a puppeteer. As Zaw Min’s dancing adopts Myanmarese puppet characteristic movements, Desdemona imitates him. According to Ong, Zaw Min’s performance “suggests the presence of Desdemona’s mother” (“Encounters” 128).

Along with a puppet dance, the Korean Pansori⁵ singing is in association with Desdemona’s mother. Jang sings a Pansori type of narrative song rendering a drum. He acts both roles of Desdemona and her mother. This practice is in accordance with the convention of Pansori performance in which the singer plays alone every part of every character appeared in a work. The sorrowful sound of Pansori singing is, appropriately enough, expressive of Desdemona’s sense of foreboding that she might die. Its sadness resonates with her recollection of what her mother said to her while on her deathbed. Desdemona’s narrative and her mother’s alternate with each other, forming an emotionally bound pair. The pairing of their words begins with “Mother, you said in a quiet voice” “I am going to die soon,” and ends with “Mother, you died gently and quietly. I want to die like you” “You will die soon” (Scene 10). Pansori serves as an effective means of engraving on the memory the last conversation mother and daughter had. Its narrative tone is demonstrative of the depth of despair that Dedemona is in, as Othello will kill her with a sword thereby shattering her hopes of dying a quiet and gentle death like her mother’s.

In this production Desdemona comes back as a ghost in order to take vengeance on Othello for her own death. After Othello is killed, the ghost of Desdemona, ‘the presence of Desdemona’s mother,’ and Othello’s slave perform a shamanistic dance to the exciting rhythms of the traditional Korean music. The shamanistic dance and music signify a ritual of securing the spirits of the dead to the peaceful state. After their dancing, a close up image of a Myanmarese puppet is projected on the screens, and shows how each wooden part of a puppet is connected by strings. This image of a puppet no longer stands for the confinement, now that the soul of Desdemona gains the comfort through the shamanistic dance. Thus multiple art forms are employed to depict the story of Desdemona.

As for Othello, the production dissociates him from being an example of offensive racial stereotyping, but instead presents him on the assumption “What if Othello was played by a woman or by a slight, slender boy?” (“Encounters” 126-27). Ong comes up with a decision that the character of Othello should be played as the two roles by two practitioners trained in Indian traditional arts such as Koodiyattam and Kathakali. The two roles of Othello are alternated between the Koodiyattam actor Madhu Margi looking like ‘a slight, slender boy,’ and the Kathakali actress Maya Krishna Rao looking like a strong power ‘woman.’ The casting of a feminine man and a masculine woman in this production, however, does neither follow the tradition of cross-gender casting in Asian theatres nor the convention of casting women in certain roles written for men in contemporary actings of Shakespeare.

Rao’s role as the female Othello is far from exploring a character regendered for the opposite sex. She enacts her part by means of voice, gestures, and movements in accordance with the distinctive art styles of Kathakali. Rao’s various facial expressions have a demonstration of how emotions shift in series from a controlled, then to an agitated, and to a trance, state. At some point, between her performances on stage, the video projection of a prerecorded interview with her is displayed on screens. Rao appears as an ordinary woman rather than an Kathakali actress, switching “from singing the jazz song ‘Buttercup’ to a Malayali folk song” (Yong, “Ong Ken Sen’s Desdemona ” 268). The screen image of her own personality provides a stark contrast to the stage image of her Othello who makes a disheveled appearance picking lice from her long unkempt hair. Rao’s enactment is mainly consisted of facial and bodily expressions of Lear’s dreamlike memories. Her depiction of Othello leads the audience to presume what if Othello survived Desdemona and reached old age. This video clip functions as theatrical intervention to break the illusion that the female Othello manifests the gender transformation and the role reversal.

Yong Li Lan comments that Rao is ”not actively cross-dressed, but rather played an old Othello androgynously” and “his unutterable memories and dreams almost wordlessly, in movements, grunts, and roars” (“Shakespeare” 202). Yong’s words ‘androgynously’ and ‘roars’ are indicative of the importance of roar in Kathakali art form. In this sense it is worth noting Arya Madhavan’s assertion that the female roar is one of the most significant innovations in the male-dominated world of Kathakali. Madhavan points out that although in the history of Kathakali no specific training practice has been handed down even to male performers, roar has been acknowledged as “a model of masculinity, a male archetype” (“Between” 93). For this reason she puts emphasis on the individual quality of female voice: “Performers roar differently and therefore the roar of a woman will be a female roar, not a male roar” and “It will have its own identity and texture” (“Between” 93).

Madhavan’s explanation lends credence to the androgynous characteristics of Rao’s role in roaring. It is closely bound up with Ong’s directorial intention regarding the doubling of genders: “Maya Rao hinted at Othello, his father, the female within him, and much more. Maya wanted a flow between male and female” (“Encounters” 127). He takes this matter further contending that “Opposed to narrow portrayals of gender that would reinforce stereotypes, she was not costumed/made-up to look like a man. Rather than play two characters, she represented the male and female aspects in Othello” (“Encounters” 127). From this viewpoint Rao’s Othello does not intersect with gender issues. She is not only the other self within Othello himself but also the other performer within the field of Kathakali.

Ong’s phrase ‘much more’ implies that the capacity of Rao’s role extends to that of Othello’s mother. In the Epilogue of the production, subtitled ‘Othello’s Mother Kissing the Sun,’ two Othellos and Desdemona are seen all happy together on stage. The male Othello is now dead, and his ghost sits side by side with the ghost of Desdemona. The female Othello who is now described as Othello’s mother crosses the stage very slowly using movement patterns of Kathakali, while two ghosts talk in chorus with a smile “Inside the world of the living our eyes were sealed. But inside the world of death our eyes were uncovered. We are waiting . . . waiting . . . ” (Epilogue). The ghost couple face in the same direction as though they are looking at Othello’s Mother kissing the sun.

Rao’s role as Othello’s mother embodies a memory trace that the male Othello and Desdemona yearn for. Her presence is a consoling reminder of their relationship with their own mother. The male Othello keeps saying “I do not have memories of my mother” (Scene 4C), whereas Desdemona cherishes memories of her mother “I will not forget you mother, as you could not forget your mother” (Scene 4B). As regards a bond between mother and child, the male Othello’s self-forgetting and Desdemona’s remembering are the core elements that make Desdemona differ from Othello. In Shakespeare’s play Othello and Desdemona do not reminisce about the emotional aspects of their mothers: Othello mentions his mother only to stress the magic power and sentimental value of the handkerchief that she gave to him; Desdemona does her mother only once to tell about the willow song, “My mother had a maid called Barbary” (4.3.25). In Desdemona, however, their mothers are associated with a recurrent image of memory. The appearance of Othello’s mother in the Epilogue serves as a link between Othello and Desdemona, thereby comforting their souls and getting them ready to make a journey to ‘the world of death.’

The male and female Othellos do not raise the issues of ethnic identities, as both Margi and Rao are Indians, and both Koodiyattam and Kathakali are practiced in the province of Kerala. They have more to do with a synthesis of attributes conventionally labeled masculine and feminine rather than the difference between regions and cultures. Two Othellos have implications of the fluidity of multiple selves. Such features emanate from the multiplicity embedded in Koodiyattam, and enhanced by the male Othello Margi’s stylized performance. To use the comment made by Madhavan as a Koodiyattam artist and scholar, this theatre form “is largely reliant on multiple transformational acting” “by which each actor (male or female) transforms into various characters (male or female) during the course of drama” (Introduction 6).

In this respect Margi’s Koodiyattam Othello is measured in relation to Rao’s Kathakali Othello. As is the case of Rao, a prerecorded interview with Margi is projected on the screens. Unlike her, however, he is not seen but heard explaining the ways he was trained and taught Koodiyattam acting by his father. The voice-over narration is in parallel with the on-screen photos of a Koodiyattam performer’s face with colorful makeup on and the process of making up his face. The audible and visual projections bring attention to Margi’s relationship with his father who had a major influence on his performing career. The actor Margi’s story of his own father in real life is juxtaposed with the male Othello Margi’s story of his father on stage. When the male Othello makes his first appearance, he speaks a soliloquy revealing his troubled mind:

I was given this key when my father was about to die. My father was given this key when my father’s father was about to die. Eventually I will give this key to my son when I die. I do not have a son yet. This is the key to my kingdom. I want a son to whom I can give this key to. I want a son, I want a son.” (Scene 2)

His first speech is characterized by his preoccupation with a male heir who will succeed to the royal line of his kingdom.

The male Othello’s obsessive words about a father and son relationship are pronounced again. He says how crucial it is for him to inherit his ancestry and carry on his family name: “I am Othello. My father was also Othello. My father’s father was also Othello. In time, my son will also be called Othello. Do I exist? I do not know” (Scene 6B). The need to stick to a male heir is to have the capacity to rule and the authority to govern. Having a son is equivalent to keeping himself in existence. Obviously Desdemona fails to give birth to a son. But her failure is not the reason why the male Othello kills her. It is because Desdemona has something that he has not: the memory of a mother. Killing his wife is meant to erase the memories of his mother, and furthermore disapprove of his wife’s strong bond with her mother. As Priscilla Netto contends, the murder of Desdemona is “fuelled by Othello’s fear as she represents all that is female” (337).

For this reason the act of retaliation done by the ghost of Desdemona is intended as a backlash against androcentrism advanced by the male Othello. In reprisal for her untimely death she urges her husband to acknowledge the significance of the female bond, and “encounter the female within him, including his mother” (“Encounters” 127). For this purpose she possesses the bodies of the male Othello and male slave, and transforms them into two women who take a shine to each other kissing passionately. The act of kissing is symbolic of death by poisoning. To apply Ong’s words, this way to get revenge is pertinent to the way of “discovering the She within the He, of discovering the other within the self, of discovering another culture within one’s culture” (qtd. in Netto 338).

In Desdemona the story centers on why the male Othello murders his wife and how the ghost of Desdemona avenges herself on her husband. Multiple art forms, both traditional and contemporary, are layered onto the production in order to convey their story. The audience is invited to figure out the multiple layers of meaning in the story. The multilayered mediums are employed to make connections between on-stage actions and on-screen visual images, between the portrayal of the fictional character and the projection of the performer’s personality. On these terms the multi-disciplinary inclusivity casts light on an eloquent way of carrying out mediated performance in Desdemona.

Lear Dreaming had its world premiere at the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2012. It condenses a storyline of Shakespeare’s original into that of six characters such as Old Man, Old Man’s Wife, Daughter, Mother, Loyal Attendant, and Chorus. King Lear’s kingdom of Britain is transposed to the Old Man’s kingdom of Asia. The characters’ names do not refer to their individualities but designate their positions in the household. Their roles become their names. Their selves are determined in relations to the others, but at the same time in the process of becoming part of them. The Old Man and Old Man’s Wife are played by the Japanese Noh actor Umewaka Naohiko, the Daughter by the Chinese pipa player Wu Man, the Mother by the Korean Jeongga vocal artist Kang Kwon Soon, the Loyal Attendant by the Sumatran Minangkabau vocal artist Piterman, and the Chorus by the Indonesian Gamelan musicians.

So as to represent characters who are associated with a family-like relationship, performers exert their capacity to effect a response through emotions. In an interview with Margherita Laera, Ong defines Lear Dreaming as a work about feelings: “Affect is one option because it is very inclusive” (242). From his point of view the performers’ specific skills are well-suited to depict the ways in which the characters become estranged from each other. Marcus Tan explains the concept of ‘affect’ in terms of the soundscape of musical interactions: “Ong’s intercultural strategy is thus one of musical affect” (150). Tan’s account is in line with Ong’s emphasis on the affective quality of music in the “Director’s Notes.” Ong states that the production aims for “the purity, the minimal, the rigour” and is designed as “a work of music that has only one actor surrounded by eight musicians” (“Director’s Notes”). The music is attributed to an immanent factor generating the sense of minimalism.

Such a minimalistic approach has a demonstration that the action is set within a music frame of reference. The scenery and props are not used for stage set. Stage lighting, graphic design, and laser beams are employed to create vividly impressive backdrops. The costume colors display the combination of black and white in view of a color trend for minimalism. Unlike Desdemona, this production is refrained from being loaded with multimedia. In the production script the characters’ speeches are minimalized, and music scores extended. A range of musical styles have the potentials to bring into view the storyline. As Lisa Porter and Samantha Watson indicate, the production adopts the “technique of minimalizing the use of words and traditional performance to allow music to do the storytelling” (89). Porter and Watson suggest that minimalism is the process of becoming the definitive characteristic of what the storytelling is about.

Minimalism in Lear Dreaming can be seen as the intersecting point on which East Asian and Southeast Asian art forms encounter. In this sense the title “Meeting, Not Merging,” coined by Pawit Mahasarinand in his review, is precise and to the point. Mahasarinand contends that each role is performed in accordance with the stylistic features of a particular art form: “Each remained strictly in their tradition throughout the performance. They met and interacted, and didn’t physically merge” (“Meeting, Not Merging”). Peterson agrees with him saying that this strategy “allows performers to influence the creative process” (“Being Affected” 166). Mahasarinand’s comment and Peterson’s shed light on the equivalence between the role and the performance form. Their idea of equivalence draws upon the notion of minimalism as a category for understanding the production.

The remarks made by Mahasarinand and Peterson endorse Ong’s treatment of performers as “individuals with their particular and strong sense of self” (“Being Affected” 173). His directorial motivation is attuned to match Shakespearean Lear story to that of Asian Old Man. In an interview with Chin Hui Wen, Ong gives a reply to the question as to “the biggest challenge melding the Eastern and Western aspects of the piece”: “With Western storytelling, there’s a beginning, middle and end. But the Asian way is done through memory. It’s abstract. Though more imaginative, it is less realistic” (“Interview: Ong Keng Sen for Lear Dreaming ”). His answer implies that the production’s storytelling rests on the Old Man’s reminiscences about his life. Its storyline is focused on what comes into his mind when he faces death. In this regard it is worthwhile to quote a commentary proposed by Tan on the relevance of the music to the Old Man’s recollection: “The rhythmic, tonal and timbral tensions . . . form the musical directive that portrays the Old Man’s universe of dreams, memory, and Asian diversity” (149). Tan observes that vocal and acoustic qualities of music make an eloquent appeal for the Old Man’s dreamlike retrospection.

Diverse Asian traditional sounds illuminate their roles in sustaining minimal narratives. Lear Dreaming opens with the Loyal Attendant who is singing and dancing in the style of Minangkabau art form, together with Gamelan musicians who are singing as the Chorus. They summarize much of what has happened so far to the Old Man: “She accepts your teaching. Good and bad she uses it. Like sowing seeds in the wind, nothing comes of it. Now the power is in her hands. She throws you away as she pleases. The blood bond is broken, that’s your destiny. Your path to hell is clear” (Prologue).⁶ Their words give a preview of the production: although the Daughter received her education from the Old Man, she misuses it to deprive him of his kingship and eventually drives him to commit suicide.

After the Prologue the Old Man enters and starts off his speech with a question “Who am I?” His question is resonant with the words told by Shakespeare’s King Lear “Does any here know me?”(1.4.208), “Who is it that can tell me who I am” (1.4.212). Lear speaks this line when Goneril denounces him for his irrational and volatile behavior. He furiously scolds her for her ingratitude, and feels a pang of remorse for what he has done to Cordelia. To adopt Elizabeth Frazer’s theory, this is when “Lear is emotional” and when he yells out “what he is feeling and what he is angry and sad about” (140). Like Lear, the Old Man expresses the anguish of not knowing who he is: “I was sleeping the sleep of the dead. Sleeping in the terror of a nightmare I cannot recall. Now the sound of music echoes in my ears. Musicians, cut the roots of my nightmare, open my eyes. Who was I long ago?” (Scene 1). Unlike Lear, the Old Man’s overwhelming feelings abide in memory.

In immediate response to the Old Man’s request for music, the Daughter plays the pipa. The sound of pipa music functions as bringing memories back to the Old Man. His mind flashes back to the most poignant moment of his life, that is, the time when he was deceived by the Daughter’s smooth talk and outraged by his younger daughter’s cool silence. The younger daughter never appears on stage, but the presence of her silence permeates throughout the production. When the Old Man discloses his wish to make a trip around his kingdom accompanied by his Loyal Attendant, the Daughter gives him “words of promise”: “You are my father, my King. I will give you everything. I will bestow the joy of freedom on you”; “Your throne will be waiting for you. Father, come back whenever you like. Enjoy your travels, Father” (Scene 2). She promises him ostensibly, and he believes her truly.

Gamelan musicians as the Chorus perform music and song, describing what happens inside the palace while the Old Man goes outside. They make comments warning that a solemn promise turns out to be an act of betrayal: “Words make fortune and misfortune” and “You are doomed and damned by betrayal” (Scene 3). The Old Man’s feeling of impending doom is bound up with the memory of his Wife. According to Ong, his remembrance of her bears testimony to “the sensitivity and vulnerability of the dreams of the father figure” (Peterson, “Being Affected” 172). This explains why the Old Man and his Wife are presented as the doubling of selves and genders. Umewaka plays both parts of man and wife. His dual role is linked up with the Noh tradition of male actors taking female characters.

The Old Man’s Wife appears as a ghost, and tells about what a deserted life she had: “Round and round went the spinning wheel. Round and round the gyrations of fate, that led me to him. Willow tassels are swept away and dance upon the water” (Scene 4). The words ‘wheel’ ‘swept away’ ‘water’ are used as a metaphor for her sorrow. She continues to say about how anxiously she pined for her long absent husband: “I wait for the full moon. I wait for him to visit me” (Scene 4). The forlornness embedded in the words by the Old Man’s Wife resonates with what the Old Man remembers about her life. He looks back on the past with regret, and feels sorry for a desperate situation that he enforced upon his Wife. This much delayed understanding of her isolation comes to him only after he is abandoned by his own Daughter. As Anril Pineda Tiatco mentions, the Old Man’s Wife is characterized as “an alter ego” of the Old Man and “both a separate being and part of himself” (534).

The appearance of the Old Man’s Wife is preceded by the Mother. According to the stage direction written in the production script, the Mother’s entrance “changes the atmosphere before the Old Man’s Wife arrives” (Scene 4). The Mother sings in the vocal style of Jeongga: “Willows become threads, a nightingale spins” (Scene 4). Her song serves as an introductory remark, implying that the Old Man’s Wife spent all those lonely nights spinning thread. After the Wife enters and acts her part, the Mother gives a brief summary of who the Wife was: “She was a thread spinner. She lived in shadow until she died. His wife who never became queen. Only the King’s blood flows in their veins” (Scene 4). The deep sound of Jeongga is effective in revealing and recalling the identity of the Wife. According to Tan’s account, Kang’s “affect-laden” vocality is perfectly suited to “create intense emotion and conjure the haunting and evocative atmosphere of the netherworld” (150).

The Mother’s voice speaks for the Old Man’s Wife, and connects her to the recollection of her family. But the Daughter is emphatically opposed to the memories, and determines to extirpate whatever is related to her past associations. She gives the order to execute her sister “Kill her, kill the memories!” (Scene 10) and send her body to her father so as to manifest enmity. In this scene the three women characters, that is, the Mother, the Old Man’s Wife, and the Daughter are all together on the stage responding to the impending death of the younger daughter. The lyrics of the Mother’s song begin and end with “Human beings departing” (Scene 10). The sound of the vibrating string of pipa grows in intensity when she gives the command to put her sister to death. Then the Old Man’s Wife enters hurriedly, and is furious at the Daughter’s harsh decision but unable to express her anger in words. On behalf of the Wife the Mother continues to sing with a lamenting tone of voice. Along with the Mother the mournful sound of live electronic music fills the stage.

The Old Man decides to end it all, as he faces the death of his younger daughter. Before taking his own life he feels a longing for his Wife: “My wife . . . where are you?” (Scene 12). The Mother answers that his Wife and his younger daughter are leaving this world for the next world: “Farewell. My darling and I are departing, I won’t ask my darling to stay. I will be happy when my darling comes back” (Scene 12). Then the Old Man gives his own sword to the Mother to hold, and runs on it. His act of suicide is a most compelling, and can be compared to what Jeremy D. Knapp means by “the spectre of freedom-in-death” (518). At the moment when the Old Man is stabbed to death, the Mother stops singing and leaves the stage. This scene highlights the image of the Mother who guides her children to cross over into the land of the dead, and find eternal rest. Her departure is symbolic of the fulfillment of her motherly role.

Regarding the death of the Old Man, Ong intends to show “a man caught at the crossroads of history” and “the tragedy of a human being” (Peterson, “Being Affected” 172). The minimal use of words or lyrics is designed to demonstrate complex human nature. Graphic design and green laser beams are employed to attain a measure of minimalism. In the scene when the Daughter usurps the throne from her father and humiliates him by calling “an old man forsaken by your daughter” (Scene 5), the graphic design featuring Chinese characters is projected on the back of the stage. Each Chinese character has a meaning such as father, murder, sleep, dream, return, king, master, life, death, and power. Their meanings are indicative of how the situation is developing and changing. In the scene when the Daughter gives order to blind the Loyal Attendant’s eyes, Chinese characters designed for graphics have such meanings as eye, record, oblivion, old age, and black. They are illustrative of the pain and suffering the Loyal Attendant undergoes.

Green laser beams have tremendous impacts on creating the most heart-rendering scene in the production: the Old Man carries a long white cloth that symbolizes the body of his younger daughter. He gently lays the cloth on the ground, then picks up and shakes it violently, then wraps it around his body, and dances angrily. The Old Man’s bodily movements are expressive of his totally shattered hope of the father and daughter reunion. He is utterly bereft so that he cannot articulate his grief in words. The greenness of laser beams draws attention to the depth of anguish to that Old Man’s remorse drives himself. Its green illumination captures his image as a forlorn man who has no sense of security and belonging. Green laser beams, together with graphic design, work as the stage device to integrate the Old Man into the emotional and moral realm of human nature.

Desdemona and Lear Dreaming have a demonstration of how the diverse range of Asian performance forms are encountered in a process of collaboration and exchange. This is a process in which a team of traditional and contemporary practitioners finds the ways to communicate interculturally. Intercultural communication is grounded in individual realizations, acting out the character’s first person narrative such as Desdemona’s “I desire a conversation” (Scene 5B), Othello’s “I do not know who I am and what I am” (Scene 6B), and the Old Man’s “Who am I?” (Scene 1). Individual realizations are led to encounter and intersect with one another, taking the form of a series of collaborations in the stage practice. They are integrated to embrace a wide circumference of others without diminishing the separate interest they intend to attach to the being they portray. The practitioners’ at once individual and holistic methods contribute to the increase in the spectators’ accessibility to Asian cultural diversity.

To achieve Asian diversity on Shakespearean stage does not mean to blend and juxtapose various performance styles. It lends themselves to affecting each other, thereby facilitating encounters between East Asian and Southeast Asian cultural spheres. Encompassing a range of theatre forms is in the nature of crossing, mediating, and transforming. In those terms Desdemona and Lear Dreaming refuse to depict Asianness as the object of audiences’ patronizing gazes. Their intertheatrical explorations are far from being the typical area of fantasies and mysteries in need of classifying. Certain critics point out that the intercultural theatricality created by these two productions tends to render intelligible difficulties. Philip Smith bears out the contention that their “high-art concepts alienate all but an elite minority (and, some might argue, only pleases a fraction of that minority)” (167).

The production of Desdemona in particular met with disapproval and dissatisfaction when it was staged abroad. The production team faced up to the fact that some curators and audiences demanded to see less of the complexity of video installations and the metatextuality of storytelling, but more of a composite of exotic costumes, traditional dance, and classic music. In response to these reactions, Ong underlines the retelling aspect of the production: “my work was about reinvention, in particular about Asians having the choice not only to reinvent ourselves but also to reinvent the worldview of others” (“Encounters” 132).

In this sense encounters between East Asian and Southeast Asian performers and artists have much to do with what they bring to Shakespeare as well as what Shakespeare means to contemporary Asians. They feature Asian despotic monarchy as a counterpart to Shakespearean patriarchal dukedom of Venice and kingdom of Britain. They draw attention to the mothers who are absent from Shakespeare’s originals, and observe that their absence is what lies behind the character’s downfall. The notion of who is missing in Othello and King Lear provides a basis for the idea of who must be present in Desdemona and Lear Dreaming. In these two Asian versions the mothers are dead before the plays begin, but make an appearance in the form of an apparition, memory, or dream. While the Machiavellian plotters like Edmund and Iago are absent, the need for the mother’s presence is stressed. Unlike Shakespearean mothers, Asian counterparts return with a vengeance, console the troubled minds of their children, and encourage them to undertake the course towards the final solution.

Desdemona and Lear Dreaming take a notice of the characters whose roles are defined as a wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, son, slave, loyal attendant, and so forth. Each character is presented in the context of the relationships, and represented by a performer who specializes in a particular mode of Asian theatre arts. Differences in performance forms become resonant with differences in the characters of the play. Thus these two adaptations function as a springboard for not only new productions that reconstruct Shakespeare’s stories on innovative terms but also a range of conversations about Asian cultural diversity in the context of difference and identity. They open us up to previously unknown cultures and new perspectives with which to consider Shakespeare’s plays and their meanings.