Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard

201 Pages·2017·1.187 MB·English

by  Delia Jarrett-Macauley (ed.)

Shakespeare, Race and Performance
What does it mean to study Shakespeare within a multicultural society?
Who has the power to transform Shakespeare?
Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard explores how
Shakespeare has been adapted by artists born on the margins of the Empire,
and how actors of Asian and African-Caribbean origin are being cast by
white mainstream directors. It examines how notions of ‘race’ defi ne the con-
temporary British experience, including the demands of traditional theatre,
and it looks at both the playtexts themselves and contemporary productions.
Editor Delia Jarrett-Macauley assembles a stunning collection of classic
texts and new scholarship by leading critics and practitioners, to provide the
fi rst comprehensive critical and practical analysis of this fi eld.
Delia Jarrett-Macauley is the author of T he Life of Una Marson 1905–1965,
and of the Orwell Prize-winning novel M oses, Citizen and Me.
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Shakespeare, Race and
Performance
The Diverse Bard

Delia Jarrett-Macauley
First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Delia Jarrett-Macauley
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editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: [978-1-138-91381-3] (hbk)
ISBN: [978-1-138-91382-0] (pbk)
ISBN: [978-1-315-69121-3] (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK
Contents
List of fi gures vii
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
PART I
Shaping the debate 21
1 The Bard abroad in Africa 23
ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES
2 Classical Binglish in the twenty-fi rst century 30
JATINDER VERMA
3 Diversity: challenge and gain 43
NASEEM KHAN
4 Ayanna Thompson in conversation with Dawn Monique
Williams, 2 July, 2015 49
PART II
The diverse Bard on stage 63
5 ‘Why then the world’s mine oyster/Which I with sword
will open’: Africa, diaspora, Shakespeare: cross-cultural
encounters on the global stage 65
MICHAEL PEARCE
6 Will we ever have a black Desdemona? Casting Josette
Simon at the Royal Shakespeare Company 80
LYNETTE GODDARD
vi Contents
7 Much Ado About Knotting: arranged marriages in British-Asian
Shakespeare productions 96
VARSHA PANJWANI
8 David Thacker and Bill Alexander: mainstream directors and the
development of multicultural Shakespeare 110
JAMI ROGERS
9 The black body and Shakespeare: conversations with
black actors 122
MICHAEL MCMILLAN
PART III
The creative professionals 135
10 1960s Birmingham to 2012 Stratford-upon-Avon 137
IQBAL KHAN
11 Dancing since strapped to their mothers’ backs: movement
directing on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s
African Julius Caesar 146
DIANE ALISON-MITCHELL
12 Tropical Shakespeare 154
PAT CUMPER
PART IV
Changing spaces, changing minds 161
13 Souks, saris and Shakespeare: engaging young, diverse audiences
at Shakespeare’s Globe and the National Theatre 163
SITA THOMAS
14 Brave new Bard: Shakespeare and intersectional feminism in the
British classroom 175
TERRI POWER
Index 184
Figures
2.1 Keith Thorne (Caliban) from Tara Arts’ The Tempest, 2008 31
2.2 Deven Modha, Ralph Birtwell and John Afzal (the Three
Witches, dancing) from Tara Arts’ Macbeth, 2015 32
2.3 Z ehra Naqvi and Elena Pavli (kneeling together) from
Tara Arts’ The Merchant of Venice, 2005 33
2.4 Chris Jack and Jessica Manley (Ferdinand and Miranda) from
Tara Arts’ The Tempest, 2008 34
2.5 Jessica Manley (Miranda) on the ropes from Tara
Arts’ The Tempest, 2008 35
4.1 Christiana Clark (Beatrice) from Oregon Shakespeare
Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing, 2015 52
4.2 Wayne T. Carr (Pericles) from Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s
Pericles, 2015 58
6.1 Josette Simon and Sean Baker (Isabella and Angelo) from
the RSC’s Measure for Measure , 1987 89
Contributors
Delia Jarrett-Macauley is the author of The Life of Una Marson 1905–1965
and of the Orwell Prize-winning novel M oses, Citizen and Me .
Eldred Durosimi Jones , a Sierra Leonean critic, is best known for his
groundbreaking work Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English
Renaissance Drama (1965) and T he Elizabethan Image of Africa (1971).
Formerly principal of Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, he
continues to write and broadcast on African literature and Renaissance
drama. His most recent publication is the memoir T he Freetown Bond,
A Life Under Two Flags .
Jatinder Verma, writer at and Artistic Director of Tara Arts, became the fi rst
director from an Asian or black heritage to direct a play at the National
Theatre, in 1990.
Naseem Khan OBE is a freelance writer and cultural-policy consultant with
a long track record in the area of diversity. She was, till 2006, head of
diversity at Arts Council England. Before that she wrote the seminal T he
Arts Britain Ignores (1975), headed the diversity agency MAAS, served
on EU and UNESCO panels and undertook numerous independent studies
around diversity in the cultural sector.
Dawn Monique Williams is a freelance director, theatre educator and the
Artistic Associate at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She lectures fre-
quently on Shakespeare and black theatre in the US. Her writing focus is
contemporary and multicultural Shakespeare performance and adapta-
tion. She holds an MFA in Directing and an MA in Dramatic Literature.
Ayanna Thompson is Professor of English at George Washington University,
specialising in Renaissance drama and issues of race in/as performance.
She is the author of Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-
Centred Approach (2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Con-
temporary America (2011) and Performing Race and Torture on the Early
Modern Stage (2008). She wrote the new introduction for the Arden 3
Contributors ix
Othello and is the editor of W eyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and
Performance (2010) and C olorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on
Race and Performance (2006). Professor Thompson has served as a
trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and a member of the
board of directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars.
Michael Pearce is Lecturer in Socially Engaged Theatre at Exeter University.
His research focuses on black British theatre from a transnational per-
spective. Recently, Michael has published chapters on contemporary
black British dramatists as well as provided research and commentary for
a series about the history of black British performance on stage and
screen for BBC Radio 4. Prior to that he worked with the National Theatre
on their ‘Black Plays Archive’ project, for which he conducted fi lmed
interviews with theatre practitioners as part of the project’s catalogue of
oral testimonies for their website. Michael is also a practitioner and
works between the UK and his native Zimbabwe.
Lynette Goddard is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre
at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on con-
temporary black British theatre, looking particularly at new writing by
black playwrights and black productions of Shakespeare and other
canonical writers. Her publications include the monographs S taging Black
Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance (2007) and C ontemporary
Black British Playwrights: Margins to Mainstream (2015); she was also
responsible for selecting and introducing the plays for T he Methuen
Drama Book of Plays by Black British Writers (2011) and co-edited
Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama (2014).
Varsha Panjwani held a lectureship at the department of Theatre, Film, and
Television at the University of York from 2009–13. She currently lectures
at Boston University (London) and is an honorary Research Associate at
the University of York. Varsha’s research interests in early modern drama
range from manuscripts to latest adaptations, especially the way in which
Shakespeare in particular is deployed in the service of diversity theatre
and fi lm. As well as publishing widely in leading international journals
such as S hakespeare Survey and in forthcoming collections such as S hake-
speare and Indian Cinema, she has won prestigious research grants from
the Society of Theatre Research and Folger Shakespeare Library. In addi-
tion to her individual research, she ran the multi-grant-winning project
Renaissance Reincarnations (2012–13) and is on the steering committee
of the Indian Shakespeares on Screen festival (2016).
Jami Rogers is Honorary Fellow in Multicultural Shakespeare at the University
of Warwick. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic
Art (LAMDA) and holds an MA and a PhD from the Shakespeare Institute,