‘Shakespeare, Race and Performance’ and ‘Socially Just Shakespeare’ assert the importance of contemporary retellings of Shakespeare’s plays
On Thursday, Oct. 15, Hofstra’s Cultural Center hosted “Shakespeare, Race, and Performance,” a virtual conversation between Keith Hamilton Cobb, the actor and playwright behind the off-Broadway production American Moor, and Erika T. Lin, an associate professor of theatre and performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. Cobb and Lin agreed that retellings of Shakespeare’s plays that give voice to people of color, like American Moor, are what is needed to create lasting change in the theatre industry. A contest called “Socially Just Shakespeare” gave students the opportunity to create their own retellings of Shakespeare that promote racial and social justice.
Shakespeare was crucial in making British and American theatre what they are today. “American theatre turns to Shakespeare in order to lend legitimacy both to itself as an institution and to U.S. history, because Shakespeare is the premiere playwright of Britain. That move then implicitly positions Britain as the ancestor of the U.S. and doing that positions whiteness as somehow central to Americaness,” said Lin. This marginalizes the stories of non-white Americans and the history of slavery and genocide which is also central to U. S. history.
Shakespeare’s canon has limited representations of the lives of non-white people and there are limited opportunities for non-white actors to play roles in his plays. “If you asked me at any time ‘What are you missing in this moment?’ I would probably say I am missing playing Shakespeare’s grandest characters because I have missed so many of them in my growth,” said Cobb. While Cobb acknowledges that he may not have been cast in these roles because of the competition at the time, he remains aware of the possibility that he was passed over because of his race. “There has been and will always be unequal treatment for me in my life as a black man,” he said.
Attendees of the event received a link to view a performance of American Moor, which had an off-Broadway run last year. “The play is about a black man auditioning to play Othello for a white director. During the audition, the actor navigates the dictates of the much younger non-African American director who could not have possibly had the experience with this role or this play that he has on any level. And yet, as a person of privilege, he is in the position of authority,” said Cobb. The play dramatizes the black actor’s experience with Shakespeare and the business of theatre and the difficulty in having conversations about race in the theater industry.
“It really raised my attention to problems of injustice in theatre and familiarized me with the specific experiences of marginalized people trying to get by in that world,” said Damian Stockli, a senior creative writing and English literature major.
“One of the things we need to do in American theatre is figuring out how to tell the history of non-white Americans and our stories. I think that’s what American Moor does,” said Lin. “Using Shakespeare as a jumping off point to discuss these issues has the potential to be very fruitful and new things can be discovered.” Lin believes that simply performing Shakespeare color-blind perpetuates the issues of race in the plays.
“We’re taking plays that are flawed and saying they’re ours now. How can we give this character more agency and make them more interesting to play?” said Cobb.
Lin explained that the conversations that arise from such retellings of Shakespeare’s plays can be leveraged to produce institutional change by helping audiences to empathize with stories of people who are different from them and by bringing people together to talk about what they’ve just experienced. “I think the next step is for everyone who sees or reads this play to think creatively about how to transform their local communities and institutions,” said Lin.
“One of the more interesting aspects of the event was this discussion on how a community on stage can influence a community offstage. In other words, art has the ability to influence real life, which is pretty amazing,” said Jenna Reda, a senior double majoring in English and global studies.
A contest called “Socially Just Shakespeare,” run in conjunction with this event, invited students to revise a monologue from one of Shakespeare’s plays and explain how it moves the text towards racial and social justice now. The contest’s winners, Haley Kugler, a junior political science major, and Yashu Pericherla, a junior English major and creative writing minor, collaborated to revise a monologue from Romeo and Juliet to describe an interracial relationship.
“One thing I learned from this experience is that, although Shakespeare was definitely writing as a white person for the white people of his time, as minorities we can take liberties with these dated texts and make it fit our own narratives,” said Pericherla.
“There is a lot of room in Shakespeare to interpret and examine contemporary themes through little to no modifications to the source material. While art cannot be separated from the artist, reclaiming art can be an act of radical defiance and affirmation,” said Kugler.
