'We will perform in measure, time and place' : synchronicity, signification and cultural mobility in Tang Shu Wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-language ‘Macbeth’

My essay assesses the significance of a Hong Kong-based global-local adaptation of 'the Scottish play' through the lens of pertinent cultural theory, particularly Raymond Williams' 'structure of feeling' and Stephen Greenblatt's 'cultural mobility' paradigms, as well as in relation to Asian intercultural Shakespeare discourses. The liminality of Hong Kong's situation, perched, somewhat pre-cariously, between the global and the local and between Western and Chinese traditions, offers a unique vantage-point for an Asian Shakespeare intervention that does not fall into the more clearly defined category of a national theatre or a heritage genre production. As Shen Lin has critically observed in his essay 'What Use Shakespeare? China and Globalization', most Chinese intercultural Shakespeares tend to "avoid the trouble issues of meaning and significance", or worse, are equated with the marketplace" by artists "liberated by capitalism. Tang Shu-wing's Hong Kong Macbeth, as I argue, has little in common with such appropriations.