When you look for the great books in academia, you may not find them collected in the form that you remember them in. For example, you can see “innovative ideas in the current wave of breakthrough international productions of Shakespeare made available in the MIT Global Shakespeare Video and Performance Archive, a large and growing collection of theatrical videos from around the world,” Peter S. Donaldson and Alex C. Y. Huang of MIT tell us.

How innovative? Try this:

• “A Brazilian street theater version of Romeo and Juliet—on stilts:
• “A Chinese opera King Lear in which one actor plays Lear and all three of his daughters”; and
• “A Japanese Hamlet who sits motionless on stage and mechanical dolls enact his thoughts.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org