14 dispossession is tied directly to the land on which the play unfolds. Their relation- ship is therefore not only sexually and socially transgressive like Strindberg’s original but also shaped by the enduring violence of racialised land ownership and generational trauma. Farber’s adaptation therefore presents the past not as something overcome, but as a felt and inescapable presence that shapes and often overwhelms the present. This aligns with Farber’s own articulation of the play, while also resonating with broader African conceptions of temporality in which the past persists within the present rather than receding from it. Such a framework stands in marked contrast to linear, deterministic temporality associated with Strindberg’s modernist work. The artistic merit of relocating modernist plays lies precisely in this capacity to stage history as co-present and embodied, thereby expanding the philosophical and political scope of the original. At the same time, such transformations raise critical tensions. The more forcefully the adaptation asserts its own temporal and cultural logic, the more it risks overwriting the epistemological and historical specificity of its source. In Mies Julie, this tension is productively unresolved. The play does not erase Miss Julie but renders it a kind of spectral presence, haunting the adaptation even as it is reinterpreted. In doing so, Farber’s work exemplifies the persistence of history as an active force within the present where past injustices remain unresolved and continue to shape lived experience. Farber’s work thereby also exemplifies how contemporary theatre can transform adaptation into a space of layered temporality, where texts, histories and performances intersect, collide and continually reshape one another. Building on the ways in which Mies Julie stages history as a persistent, embodied force, adaptation theory provides a crucial framework for understanding the radical nature of Mies Julie as more than a reinterpretation of Miss Julie. Rather than treating the adapted text as a secondary or derivative copy, contemporary criticism emphasises adaptation as a form of creative autonomy, an independent work that enters into dialogue with, rather than defers to, its source. Kamilla Elliott (2014: 584) argues that “formal and cultural, textual and contextual aspects inhere in each other complexly and inextricably”, highlighting the need for adaptation studies to integrate multiple dimensions rather than treating them separately. Her observation is particularly significant for understanding Farber’s work; Mies Julie does not simply transpose Strindberg’s class conflict into a new setting but reconceives it as a racialised struggle shaped by apartheid’s enduring legacies. This interrelation is made visible in the staging of the Karoo farmhouse, which functions as a space which embodies colonial land ownership and apart- heid-era dispossession. For example, Christine’s assertion to John that “These roots will never go away. Never. Never” (Farber 2015: 128) explicitly links the land to an enduring historical presence, suggesting that the past remains psychologically embedded within the present. Here space becomes inseparable from memory and temporality as the “roots” signify not only physical attachment to the land but the persistence of colonial and apartheid histories that continue to
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