Introduction: Shakespeare, Race, and Performance

Abstract

Shakespeare, race, and performance are three seemingly simple words which individually have a host of complex meanings that only become exponentially more multifaceted when placed in conjunction. Shakespeare is the man, the plays, the assumed authorial intentions, the original practices, and the cultural capital. Race is a social construct that classifies humans based on physical, cultural, and religious differences, but these constructs are historically, nationally, and performatively informed. And performance is an event, a set of specific practices, a way of making meaning, and an historical and ephemeral moment. The essays in this special edition approach the conjunction of Shakespeare, race, and performance from various angles. This special edition begins with an historical angle with essays that focus on the meaning and the ethics of reporting past performances. If a performance is a fleeting event that can never be fully recovered, how can one ascertain the meaning of race in past performances? Exploring this fundamental question, Patricia Akhimie delves into the ethics of reporting theatre history when race is involved through an examination of the Hamlet 1607 performance aboard an English ship off the coast of Sierra Leone. Adele Seeff, however, interrogates how and when a production's meaning is established when race is explicitly performed and competing discourses are employed by the actors, directors, theatre reviewers, and theatre historians. The essays then shift angles to focus on the practical with two well-known black American actors discussing their experiences with, and relationships to, Shakespeare on the page, stage, and screen. The conversation between Harry J. Lennix and Laurence Fishburne reveals them grappling with the tensions between assumed authorial intentions, performance history/conventions, and the desire for personal integrity. This conversation is followed by Peter Erickson's exploration of the implications in modern Shakespearean productions when both racial authenticity and racial harmony are the desired outcomes. Erickson applies productive pressure to the notion of casting about in Shakespeare. The final angle employed in this special edition weds practice to theory to explore how race should be performed in future Shakespearean productions. Jenna Steigerwalt discusses how practical concerns quickly become ethical ones for self-avowed original-practices companies. She asks the seminal questions: How does the performance of race fit into original practices? And how should the performance of race fit into original practices? And finally, I discuss different ways to theorize a potential return to blackface performances in contemporary Shakespearean productions. …