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It wouldn't make the musical unproblematic, but I like the idea of making one of the gangsters in Kiss Me Kate a squeaky-voiced gun moll. (Imagine the sexy play in Brush Up Your Shakespeare!)

#musicals #kiss me kate #shaksepeare #sort of

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.

#shaksepeare #william shakespeare #othello #driving miss daisy #shakerace #playwright's horizons #raceb4race #bush theatre #theatre #ashley chang #looking back

Prince of Denmark: Chaotic Stupid

“The play doesn’t specify how old Hamlet is but he’s definitely younger than finished frontal cortex development.” - my Shakespeare nerd friend

#hamlet #shaksepeare #hamlet is chaotic stupid change my mind

Probably the greatest set up for a joke I've seen was this guy playing Caesar in "Julius Caesar" saying all of his lines in perfect Latin, before finally saying "And you, Brutus?" in the clearest North American English accent.

#shaksepeare #julius caesar #et tu brute