‘“It must all change now!”: Victor Hugo’s Lucretia Borgia and Adaptation Practices in Theatre’

For students of critical analysis, locating the use of the Five Creative Strategies of Adaptation can be useful in analyzing a source text and its dramatization (for the stage but also for the screen, radio, or other media): In the creation of a new work for a different medium what has disappeared or been added? What has been changed, made more of, or lessened? These are simple questions but can prove an excellent groundwork from which to embark on more profound levels of critical and theoretical analysis. When such manipulations have been located, what do they tell us about the source text and its adaptation? When we understand “what” has happened and “how” it has been implemented, can we begin to speculate “why” it has been done? For students of scriptwriting within the syllabus, assessing the same creative strategies can be invaluable to equip the creative writer with an awareness of options and skills or to permit objective self assessment. Locating the Five Creative Strategies of Adaptation can also be valuable in comprehending the large-scale projects undertaken by a drama department. To this end, this essay offers a case study: the touring production of Victor Hugo’s Lucretia Borgia mounted by the drama department at the University of Glamorgan for the 2007 International Victor Hugo Festival.