Authenticity

In class we have been discussing the idea of authenticity in our performance and how there are many different kinds of authenticity. When I think if adaptation I think of being true to the original meaning of the author. I tend to appreciate the original when it comes to most things, although I have realized that things are not always so simple when it comes to adaptation. Can we truly know what the original intent of the author was? And in adapting their work, do we think that we are being true to the original without considering how the audience has changed and the author might not have done it the same way for our audience? On the other hand, if we go about changing someone’s work to fit our needs how far before we hijack their work and destroy a good thing? As someone said to me recently ‘Who are we to change it?’ To that I have concluded, especially in the case of Plautus, we are artists! Plautus himself and many others made it their business to take works from others and redo them to fit their own ideas. Humanity has been reinventing its entertainment with old ideas since the beginning. It’s what we do. And as we have said in class, an important part of being authentic is being true to ourselves. Perhaps Plautus is turning in his grave with all of the things we changed in his play. But isn’t that exactly what he did with this myth in the first place? With the changes I feel like we will be even truer to Plautus’s work because we will be entertaining instead of simply staging his play.