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Friday, February 04, 2022
Marin Shakespeare's new leader loves the Bard but won't gloss over his problems
Datebook: Raphael Massie, most recently an artistic associate at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is Marin Shakespeare Company’s new artistic director. He succeeds Robert Currier, 74, who retired in November from the company he founded in 1989 from the remains of the defunct Marin Shakespeare Festival.
I am SO excited to see more black creatives heading classical works!! A huge problem I had with my last company was that they claimed diversity and inclusion over everything but continued to only utilize black performers rather than broaden their scope to the creative team, production, and leadership. What is so important about having black directors, and other marginalized creatives in general, in charge of classical works, is that those classical works are some of the roots of white supremacy in the world of theatre. If all the “classics” are written by white men and considered so infallible that modern artists cannot criticize them or adapt them to change the colonialist, white supremacist ideals that are so entrenched in the text, no amount of modern playwriting and production can remove those roots. The way to fix this is to give marginalized people the space to reclaim/rebuild the classics that inform white supremacy in theatre; give Jewish people the chance to adapt Merchant of Venice, give black and other colonized peoples access to adapting The Tempest. This is the act of excising the disease of white supremacy from the deepest roots of our culture.
I’m so glad that Raphael Massie is wholeheartedly confronting the many issues with Shakespeare. As much as I love Shakespeare, his work is definitely problematic and we can’t continue to overlook these issues. I read in another article that John Douglas Thompson (an extremely talented Black actor) is playing Shylock, a Jewish money lender, in The Merchant of Venice at the Theatre for a New Audience. This is exactly the kind of work Massie is doing. I am also excited to see how Massie puts Shakespeare in conversation with new and classic female and non-binary playwrights of color. I love that Robert Currier was able to recognize that “an inordinate percentage of theaters, opera companies, ballet companies are run by old white guys”, and even though part of that demographic, decided to do something about it. It is hard to let something go that you have spent years building, but I’m positive Massie will bring the theater to a new level.
2 comments:
I am SO excited to see more black creatives heading classical works!! A huge problem I had with my last company was that they claimed diversity and inclusion over everything but continued to only utilize black performers rather than broaden their scope to the creative team, production, and leadership. What is so important about having black directors, and other marginalized creatives in general, in charge of classical works, is that those classical works are some of the roots of white supremacy in the world of theatre. If all the “classics” are written by white men and considered so infallible that modern artists cannot criticize them or adapt them to change the colonialist, white supremacist ideals that are so entrenched in the text, no amount of modern playwriting and production can remove those roots. The way to fix this is to give marginalized people the space to reclaim/rebuild the classics that inform white supremacy in theatre; give Jewish people the chance to adapt Merchant of Venice, give black and other colonized peoples access to adapting The Tempest. This is the act of excising the disease of white supremacy from the deepest roots of our culture.
I’m so glad that Raphael Massie is wholeheartedly confronting the many issues with Shakespeare. As much as I love Shakespeare, his work is definitely problematic and we can’t continue to overlook these issues. I read in another article that John Douglas Thompson (an extremely talented Black actor) is playing Shylock, a Jewish money lender, in The Merchant of Venice at the Theatre for a New Audience. This is exactly the kind of work Massie is doing. I am also excited to see how Massie puts Shakespeare in conversation with new and classic female and non-binary playwrights of color. I love that Robert Currier was able to recognize that “an inordinate percentage of theaters, opera companies, ballet companies are run by old white guys”, and even though part of that demographic, decided to do something about it. It is hard to let something go that you have spent years building, but I’m positive Massie will bring the theater to a new level.
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