Change of Meaning and self-reference – Shakespearian Plays Adaptation in Olivier Py’s Concept

In French dramaturgy, revisiting the Shakespearean canon is a significant path along with the writers value their own culture, history and literary style. The paradoxes and transition of meaning specific to the Elizabethan playwright are exploited in such a way that a fitting effect is produced (Sanders 2006) regarding the Bard’s plays. In theatre, translation is useful to the stage dynamics, from text to stage creating code or literary genre transformations, change of meaning offering new perspectives. The aim of this study is to follow the ways in which the translator Olivier Py, who is also a famous theater director, relates to three relevant Shakespeare tragedies. The analysis focuses on Roméo et Juliette, Le Roi Lear and Hamlet à l’impératif – Py’s trilogy that is, in fact, a large essay on the Shakespeare’s theatre now being. We discover in director's work not only a translation in the benefit of the audience, but also a discourse about silence with social and political meanings. Therefore, the translation as a preliminary phase to performance, as an extensive commentary or intertextual dialogue, as a self-portrait of the writer are some of the functions that we reveal in Olivier Py’s theatre and literary approach.