Small South African Shakespeares onscreen

Speak Me A Speech is an online platform of filmed Shakespeare monologues performed in South African languages. The author introduces this project by revisiting some other South African Shakespearean screen material that may be productively framed within the terms presented by the “Shakespeare in Focus” conference Call For Papers, such as the Shakespearean fragment or the small-scale short film. Speak Me A Speech launched in 2023 with five monologues. Two are the focus here: Thomas More calling attention to “the strangers’ case” (Anelisa Phewa in isiZulu) and Portia pleading with Brutus to share his political dealings with her (Buhle Ngaba in Setswana). These “small” Shakespeares contain moments – within the “moment” of each speech, lifted out of the play in which it occurs – in which “minimal changes to words or details in the text” have the potential to reframe the ways in which viewers/listeners engage with the Shakespearean material: subtle shifts that are culturally, historically and politically significant.