Jun 9, 2024
Black Shakespeare, Ian Smith
The best part about reading criticism is that you hardly ever have to read the whole book. Got the most important chapters done the rest I can take nice and slow!
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Black Shakespeare, Ian Smith
The best part about reading criticism is that you hardly ever have to read the whole book. Got the most important chapters done the rest I can take nice and slow!
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Ayanna Thompson studies questions about Shakespeare and race and has written books exploring the roots of blackface and minstrelsy on the English stage in premodern times. She’s applied her expertise in working extensively with theater companies to explore issues of race in casting and the audience experience.
“My favorite play to teach is ‘Titus Andronicus,’ which is a bloody play about rape and mutilation,” she said. There are two characters who orchestrate the violence, and one time, a student asked how old they were.
“I was like, ‘Right. How old are they?’ If they’re in their 20s, that’s one thing, but if they’re 13 or 14, that’s another thing,” she said, adding that the play does not reveal their ages. “That was a question I had never asked myself, and it blows the students’ minds that one person can think they’re in their 20s and another thinks they’re 12.”
“Hamlet” has a different meaning when, for example, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Black friends as opposed to white friends, she said. “They’re killed by Hamlet without a thought, and that is then part of the disposability of the Black body in that performance or in your reading of that play.”
“All of the issues that are present in the 21st century also are present in Shakespeare’s plays, including race, gender and ability.”
24.04.2021 | Yours truly won the raffle for the upcoming RaceB4Race symposium! I’m looking forward to filling the notebook with notes from the talks in May and hearing the classicists in conversation with the medievalists and early modernists for the first time at this conference series.
The problem isn’t that Shakespeare wrote outside of his lived experience. The problem is that Shakespeare did it somewhat crudely; Moten alludes to Othello’s “vacancy,” his “soullessness,” his “poverty,” his “inauthenticity.” There’s a good deal of work an actor has to do “to care for such a radically unlovable character.” For the small but growing cohort of Black actors who have assumed that burden (for centuries, including the twentieth, Othello was played by white actors in Blackface), the stakes are higher than Shakespeare knew: for the Ira Aldridges, the Paul Robesons, the Laurence Fishburnes, the James Earl Joneses, and, more recently, the Chiwetel Ejiofors, the onus was theirs to invent and convey Othello’s nobility, dignity, and humanity — qualities that Shakespeare perhaps didn't know were under question.
Certainly, Black actors could decline the part. But that would mean consenting to Othello’s being played by actors of less stature, or by actors of less grace, or by actors who are white, actors who know little of Blackness as lived (such as Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon, and Patrick Stewart, who have all assumed the title role). To refuse the mantle of Othello is to risk someone else making a mess of him. In this way, Moten says, “black folks are enjoined to take responsibility for white fantasy and solve a problem not of their own making.” The same is true for Hoke, who became the charge of Freeman, whose artistry makes it easy to forget that Hoke remains incomplete, his life beyond chauffeuring unseen and unknown.
Today, something special happened! I had the extreme privilege of watching my sister in her element as she presented her academic thoughts on decolonizing medieval studies. Her panel was engaging and interesting and I could not be more proud of my baby sister, who is clever and intelligent and well spoken! As a non-academic this was my first opportunity to see her share her work. It is one of those silver lining moments of the global pandemic - the hallowed halls had space via Zoom for me to watch today. Just a proud big sister moment over here ❤️ #bigsister #raceb4race #redreading #medievalhistory #margerykempe #symposium #williamshakespeare #antiracism #antiracist #antiracisteducation #dismantlewhitesupremacy #decolonize #educationmatters #educationispower #métis #indigenous #ericdebarros #amberdeendadabhoy #noémiendiaye #symposium #proudsister #panel (at Vancouver, British Columbia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKXczUhloEm/?igshid=v6bm5pl8lkjo
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming