Thursday, December 07, 2017
Black Bodies, White Writers
AMERICAN THEATRE: I felt my body tense up. A black man—rather, a mannequin of a black man—lay headless, forgotten, on the side of the stage. I wanted to leave the theatre, but as a critic I couldn’t. The show wasn’t over yet.
Last month Elevator Repair Service premiered its adaptation of Measure for Measure at the Public Theater. Though the production would have otherwise been an inventive but harmlessly flawed take on one of Shakespeare’s notorious “problem plays,” whatever interesting or innovative elements the show introduced were quickly overshadowed by what struck me as its racial insensitivity.
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Shakespeare is a white writer and he wrote stories mostly for white characters to play. In recent adaptions of Shakespeare plays there is frequent color blind casting. However I can not see how a this version of 'Measure for Measure' is color blind. If the only two actors that are black play characters who are shameful, it is just racially profiling on stage.
The critic in this article makes a very interesting point. Many white critics don't notice the nuances and the subtle racial cues that something as small as trying to do "color blind" casting can actually have. It takes a person with a very specific knowledge and view on the world to know what casting a black woman as a sort of "Jezebel" does. Because white people are not forced to think about race daily, it is harder for them to identify the racial cues that exist everywhere in a society where systematic racism is rampant.
I hope that more black theatre critics will be hired at newspapers and that the voices of the oppressed will actually be heard as Hollywood is trying to prove they will be right now.
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