Friday, July 08, 2016
This Shakespeare Reconstruction Sets 'Merchant' In Post-Civil War D.C.
NPR: Imagine William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice set in post-Civil War Washington, D.C.; and now make half of the characters former slaves. Suddenly, it's a completely new play; but it still looks at some of the same themes, including how your actions reflect your beliefs. That new play is Aaron Posner's District Merchants, currently on stage at Washington's Folger Theatre.
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This article introduces us to an interesting new adaptation to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and the director sets the play not in 16th-century Venice, but in D.C. after Civil War, and shifts the focus to the lives of Blacks and Jews, and the morality of in modern society. Being different from other adaptations, District Merchants uses only the characters in The Merchant of Venice, but proposes tons of "what if"s. It's more acute and specific to American society at the time, where people, where although after hundreds of years, still don't understand each other, and struggle between truth, morality and power. It's a play of really complicated, under-previledged, difficult and flawed people, the same in Shakespeare's play. It can be a very complexed, challenging and tricky production, to express the contemporary issue through the story of a theatrical classic work, to make it not seem foreign to modern audience, and at the same time not to spoil the Shakespearian beauty of The Merchant of Venice. Anyway, I'm really interested in this play and looking forward for watching it.
I really admire what the person who's trying to adapt The Merchant of Venice is doing. I agree with his last statement that you should be allowed to change Shakespeare's words because it wouldn't work very well to try to exactly relate to the experience of living 400 years ago. The reason Shakespeare has lasted so long is there's a fundamental universality in his works; therefore, they can be applied to the experience of the 21st century. And they definitely should. It would be so powerful to adapt a Shakespeare play to reflect current issues because audience members can realize "Oh. This issue was relevant in Shakespeare's time, 400 years ago, and we still haven't fixed it." Another interesting thing I think the adapter/playwright is doing here is adding a dual minority aspect to his play. He said he thought it would be interesting to touch on both the Jewish experience and the African American experience in the Reconstruction era, and at first I thought including both would detract from each other, but as I kept reading the article, I started to disagree. To demonstrate how one minority can be affected by the stereotypes and negative associations of another minority is a strong move; it shows just how insidious and complicated prejudice can be.
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