Output details

Wuthering Heights

Text for theatre performances and stage production, produced by and performed at Aberystwyth Arts Centre March 2012, then touring further in Wales. Text published March 2012 by Nick Hern Books (London). Having previously adapted Wuthering Heights into 15 episodes (over 4 hours) for BBC Radio 4, Gough was commissioned by Aberystwyth Arts Centre (funded by the Arts Council of Wales and the Esmee Fairburn Foundation) to undertake this stage adaptation. Research questions: How might a story told in one medium be translated to another? How might the architectural construction of each adaptation and the exposition and emotional pacing associated with the two media differ? This challenge concerned developing techniques of crossing boundaries, both formal and aesthetic, to translate an iconic text (novel) to one medium (radio), then to another (the stage). This involved reconfiguring narrative structure by reordering the time line and resetting the emotional and narrative pace of the story. This was achieved by devices including the doubling of significant characters and the interweaving of fragments of another iconic text (Romeo and Juliet), plus the use of a network of images, dialogue, and action echoing through the play to engage the theatre audience in making connections between scenes and characters. ough delivered a research paper, ‘Crossing Over’, on this project, at the Cyfrwng Conference in Swansea in July 2012, some of which appears as the essay accompanying the 15 episodes of the radio version, published in a double issue of the peer-reviewed journal Adaptation for Film and Performance.