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In conclusion, Farber’s Mies Julie demonstrates how adaptation can do more than 
reinterpret a source text. It can generate new meaning through the combination of 
a radically different historical context and a reconfigured temporality. By  
relocating Miss Julie to post-apartheid South Africa, Farber foregrounds how the 
legacies of colonialism and apartheid persist as a lived, affective presence,  
shaping the narrative and characters’ intentions. This temporal and contextual 
shift allows the adaptation to explore social, racialised and historical dynamics 
that were absent from Strindberg’s original, producing insights that are unique to 
Farber’s work. At the same time, Mies Julie exemplifies how adaptation is  
generative rather than derivative. It does not merely reproduce the source text but 
transforms its structure, hierarchies and symbolic weight, creating a layered the-
atrical experience in which historical and textual pasts co-exist, clash and inform 
one another. These innovations, however, also introduce interpretive tensions.  
Audience members familiar with Strindberg may find the emphasis on history and 
the reworking of temporality disorientating, while newcomers may engage fully 
with the affective immediacy of apartheid’s legacy yet miss the intertextual  
dialogue with the original. Such divergence underscores the complexity of  
adaptation; it can make history and textual heritage politically present but the 
ways these meanings are experienced vary depending on prior knowledge,  
perspective and cultural background.  Ultimately, Mies Julie illustrates that the  
ethical, political and aesthetic stakes of adaptation lie in its capacity to generate 
new meaning, intervene creatively in form and context, and negotiate the  
persistence of pasts, both historical and textual, within the dramatic present. 
Elliott, Kamilla (2014). “Rethinking formal-cultural and textual-contextual 
divides in adaptation studies.” Literature/Film Quarterly, 42(4), pp.576-589.  
Farber, Yaël (2015). Farber: Plays One. London: Oberon Books.  
Farber, Yaël (2012). “Mies Julie: Playwright-Director’s Note.” Available at: 
https://www.yfarber.com/mies-julie  Accessed 27th March 2026 
Keuris, Marisa (2016). “Restitutions of Body and Soil in Mies Julie 
(2012): South African theatre audience receptions of Yaël Farber’s adaptation 
of Strindberg’s Miss Julie within a post-apartheid South African political land-
scape” South African Theatre Journal, 30(1), pp.44-55   
Llobera, Joseph R. (1995). “Halbwachs, Nora and ‘History’ versus ‘Collective 
Memory’: a research note.” Durkheimian Studies, 1, pp.35-44 .  
Strindberg, August (2006). Miss Julie. Translated by M.Meyer. London: 
Methuen Drama.

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