Rewriting the ‘Duchess of Malfi’: Adapting Webster’s tragedy for an ESL drama production

This article addresses issues of text adaptation in full-scale ESL drama production. After choosing to present Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, participants in the English Drama Workshop at Padua University set about the task of adapting the play in order to make it more suitable for a group of non-native speakers of English acting in front of an audience made up predominantly of non-native speakers. Substantial changes were made during the adaptation process: as well as cutting and simplifying the text, certain characters were eliminated while others were doubled (or rather tripled) and one scene was totally rewritten. When implementing these changes, the group had to take account of both the student-actors’ linguistic competence and the size and composition of the cast, most of the members of which were female. It is argued that text adaptation in ESL drama is not only a way of creating a more appropriate product, but also greatly enriches the process leading up to the performance. The students gained deeper insights into the text and were also able to achieve a strong sense of ownership of the final production.