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Latinx Shakespeares as Performance Methodology

Professor Carla Della Gatta shares with us her work on Latinx Shakespeares, including how the research towards her recent monograph has helped her to build a wide-ranging open-access archive and resources page at LatinxShakespeares.Org, of interest to BSA members for their researching and teaching.


The growth of Global Shakespeares over the last two decades has expanded the knowledges of theatrical traditions across the world and the cultural, political, linguistic, and economic histories that inform them. My research is an investment in what I have referred to as the diversified local, focusing on a minority population as means to both understand the work of Latinx theatre-makers and to rewrite the history of American Shakespeares so that it includes the over seventy-five years of contributions of Latinx artists and cultures to American Shakespearean performance.

Latinx Shakespeares are Shakespearean productions and adaptations that are made Latinx through dramaturgy, textual adaptation, casting practices, and/or backstage processes. Latinx Shakespeares: Staging US Intracultural Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2023, open-access),draws a theatre history, one with stops and starts and theatrical traditions with surprisingly long arcs. These works range from culturally-appropriative musical theatre with Puerto Rican characters such as West Side Story (Broadway, 1957) to engagements with Cuban religious practices—both Catholic and Indigenous African—such as Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Asolo Repertory, 2012) to immigration narratives about border crossings between Mexico and the US, such as La Comedia of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2019). The trajectory reveals no direct through line from white artists taking up Latinidad to Latinx artists taking up Shakespeare, but as more Latinx theatre-makers became involved in these productions, the range of dramaturgical practices and nuanced depictions of Latinx expanded.

Latinx Legibility Onstage and Off

There are no Latinx characters or settings in Shakespeare, as the ethnic category of Latino was coming into formation during Shakespeare’s time. According to the US government, there are four races: Black/African American, white/Caucasian, Indigenous/Native American, and Asian. Hispanic/Latino is an official ethnicity—only as of the 1980 Census—and can be of any race.[1] Latinx is the gender non-binary term for Latino, the peoples who live in the United States who are a product of, or descended from, Spanish colonization. These are homogenizing and problematic categories for identity, and my use of them in Latinx Shakespeares (and here in this blog) pushes on those limitations.[2]

One of the challenges in historicizing the role of Latinx peoples is in the recognition of Latinx. For example, in the long-running production of Othello with African American actor Paul Robeson in the titular role, Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer played Iago (Broadway, 1943). None of the reviewers of Ferrer’s performance ascribed the stereotypes or tropes that often get applied to Latinx actors today, that they are ‘fiery,’ ‘hot’, etc., as the ethnic category of Hispanic (later Latino) had not yet fully gained traction. Although audiences knew that Ferrer was Puerto Rican, the combination of his racial whiteness and a lack of a recognized official ethnic category both contributed to a lack of recognition of his identity.

More than seventy-five years later, Latinx Shakespearean productions address such issues of Latinx legibility, including colorism and anti-Blackness within Latinx communities. In Alex Alpharaoh’s 2019 O-Dogg: An Angeleno Take on ‘Othello’, the action is set during the six days of the 1992 LA uprisings that followed the acquittal of white police officers who had beaten a Black man. Alpharaoh rewrites Othello to Afro-Latinx, Iago as Indigenous Latinx, the Emilia character as white-passing Latinx, and the Desdemona character as Korean-American. The adaptation simultaneously maps the historical interracial violence throughout the city of Los Angeles and the intra-ethnic biases that play out within Latinx communities on personal level.

One of the ways that Latinx characters are made legible is often through an emphasis on the aural. Nearly all Latinx Shakespeares include some Spanish to signal Latinidad, whereas with each passing decade, Latinx theatre includes less and less Spanish.  Because Latinx are absent from Shakespeare’s canon and visually racially-diverse, theatre-makers embellish the aural through language, accents, music, and the larger soundscape. What I term a Latinx acoustemology for Shakespeare is this aural excess, or auralidad, that is invited through the openness of Shakespeare’s language and invites the nuances of identity that lead to a reformulation of Latinx as an identity category.[3]

Latinx Shakespeares as Methodology

Integral to writing a theatre history, especially one of adaptation, is the ‘both/and’ of creative/critical practice. As a scholar-practitioner, I draw on the knowledge of artists and understand and advocate for creative work as an act of criticism, and throughout Latinx Shakespeares, the output of artists that is theatre-making is on equal plane to the output of academics that is our scholarship. In so doing, this type of performance criticism takes seriously the aesthetics, processes, and creative practices of Latinx art-makers and positions itself against binarism and the divisive ‘us-them’ mentality that looks to art to explicitly engage ‘the political’.

For Shakespeare to be made Latinx, adaptations and concept productions cannot merely integrate thematic issues of the border, Latinx characters, or include Spanish. Latinx Shakespeares at their best are acts of theatrical bilanguaging, a process I describe as ‘a liberation from discrete genres of theatrical storytelling as well as Shakespearean English [that] pushes against the idea of universality to expand theater communities for a specific locality’ (p. 109). The act of theatrical bilanguaging involves an inclusion of backstage processes and performance methods and crosses dramaturgical, ethnic, and linguistic borders.[4] For example, in Chapter Four of Latinx Shakespeares, I attend to three Hamlet adaptations that take different approaches to mixing performance—ritual, ceremonial, and devised theatre practices—and theatrical practices to create space for Latinx subjectivity and interiority. Each of these productions addresses the crisis of the self that results from coloniality by crossing multiple borders, ‘linguistic and cultural, religious and ritualistic, within the play and without’ (p. 27).

Latinx Shakespeares demonstrate how early strategies of division such as the West Side Story effect—the staging of cultural difference of any kind in Shakespeare as cultural-linguistic difference—can be transposed to a bridge through theatrical bilanguaging, an act of ‘listening for commonality rather than difference’ as an ‘act of creating bridges is a look to the future for the new American theater’ (p. 174). They make the case that Shakespeare can be staged as ethnic theatre when created and staged through theatrical bilanguaging.[5]

Writing an Archive

Latinx Shakespeares examines Latinx-themed Shakespearean productions. As my research into Latinx engagement with Shakespeare began to expand backwards historically and forwards to new productions, it also expanded more widely to bilingual and semi-bilingual theatre, the Latinx artists who perform, design, and direct Shakespeare without a Latinx theme, pedagogical practices, translation practices, and Latinx ontologies for theatre-making through stories that must be adapted to embrace our cultures. As a result, I co-edited with Trevor Boffone Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), a collection of essays and interviews with twenty-five contributors that extends the breadth of possibilities of engaging Shakespeare for Latinx cultures.

I wanted to ensure that the history of the myriad intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad is readily available and accessible to make clear Latinx contributions to American Shakespeares. Along with the open-access monograph that was published in January, I launched the first online archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation in February. LatinxShakespeares.Org goes beyond Latinx Shakespeares and intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad to adaptations of other (white) canonical literatures including Greek and Roman plays, Spanish Golden Age dramas, and adaptations of Lorca, Chekhov, Ibsen, Molière, and more. With over twenty contributors at the outset, its launch included more than 150 Latinx Shakespeares, more than 30 bilingual and/or Latinx-authored (but not themed) Shakespearean adaptations, and nearly 100 Latinx-themed and/or authored adaptations of other western literatures.

The archive continues to grow, with more than twenty-five productions and adaptations added in the first six months. It is Phase I of a larger project of creating community through archiving theatre history. I have been in touch with over 250 theatre-makers—to gain permission to include their ephemera and photographs and to learn about their work—and I have heard from dozens more, each excited to be part of such a lengthy and creative theatrical legacy. For practitioners, the archive is a resource of contemporary dramaturgies for classical theatre, and for scholars, it is a database of strategies for engaging Shakespeare by and for an ethnic group. I would love to hear from scholars and artists how it is being used in their research, and from those who wish to contribute a performance review, drama analysis, or guest blog. Please contact me at carla[at]umd[dot]edu.

Carla Della Gatta

University of Maryland


[1] Latinx is a geographical term, based on a shared history and culture, whereas Hispanic is a language-based term for those from Spanish-language dominant countries.

[2] Shakespeare is pluralized as ‘Shakespeares’ to signal an interdisciplinary, Cultural Studies approach. The diversity of perspectives, methodologies, and subject matters is indicated in this pluralization, unlike older disciplines such as English, Literature, and Theatre.

[3] ‘Acoustemology’ is a portmanteau for ‘acoustic epistemology’ and was coined by Steven Feld. See Wes Folkerth, The Sound of Shakespeare, New York: Routledge, 2002. 106.

[4] I adapt for the theatre Walter Mignolo’s concept of languaging that is a ‘way of life between languages: a dialogical, ethic, aesthetic, and political process of social transformation’. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 265.

[5] I define ethnic theatre as a ‘for us, by us’ with examples such as the Yiddish theatre, Armenian theatre, and early Latinx theatre.

BSA 2023 Conference: Thank You!


The BSA’s 2023 conference on the theme of ‘Relocating Shakespeare’ took place at the University of Liverpool, 25th – 28th July.


The BSA Board of Trustees is immensely grateful to the institutional organisers and hosts of our 2023 conference, Dr Esme Miskimmin (University of Liverpool), Dr Katie Knowles (University of Liverpool), and Professor Emerita Elspeth Graham (Liverpool John Moores University), without whose tireless work the event could not have taken place. 


The BSA is very grateful for the institutional support received from the University of Liverpool, and for the invaluable support that the conference also received from Liverpool John Moores University, particularly from Dr Kathryn Walchester and Dr Rebecca Bailey. We would also like to express gratitude to Dr Rachel Willie for organising the Bluecoat event (sponsored by LJMU) and including it in the programme. LJMU generously sponsored the performance by Imaginarium at Shakespeare North Playhouse and the closing plenary by Ben Crystal, as well as providing support for the LJMU conference assistants.


The successful running of the event could not have taken place without the conference assistants, whose indispensable contributions across the four-day event are greatly appreciated. Thank you to Louise Cooper, Talyn Hushon, Rebecca Shaw and James McCay from Liverpool John Moore University and to Kate O’Leary and David Rice from the University of Liverpool’s Continuing Education department.


The BSA is delighted to have held the 2023 conference at the University of Liverpool and spent one conference afternoon at the Shakespeare North Playhouse — many thanks to the events, tech, catering, and estates teams for doing such a brilliant job of looking after us! 


If any BSA members are interested in serving as hosts for future BSA conferences, please get in touch via the ‘Contact Us’ form.

Web Deputy of the British Shakespeare Association

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint a new Web Deputy to further the Association’s aims to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his work. The Web Deputy is an important position within the BSA, working closely with the Web and Communications Officer, as well as the Board of Trustees as a whole, to support the Association’s work. The Web Deputy will be a co-opted member of the Board of Trustees in the first instance, but will be required to be formally elected a Trustee of the BSA.

The position is open to any member of the BSA who possesses the necessary technical skills (see below for the specifics). Trustees work voluntarily (with reasonable expenses reimbursed when necessary) to further the aims of the BSA across its four main constituencies of members: academic researchers, teachers, theatre practitioners, creatives, and members of the public.

The British Shakespeare Association is a registered Charity and its Trustees are also Directors, and take joint responsibility to help the Board promote the Association’s objectives which are: to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his works in a manner consistent with an educational charity limited by guarantee; and benefiting those individuals, members, charities, or institutions with an educational purpose toward the study of Shakespeare in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The British Shakespeare Association has a diverse and widespread international membership, and we warmly welcome applications from any member of the Association from any part of the world, in line with these objectives, and with its policy for diversity, inclusivity and equal opportunities. We particularly welcome applications from disabled applicants, those from BAME backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Trustee profile and duties

Trustees are required to attend three meetings of the Board of Trustees per year, which are normally held via Zoom in January, May, and September, and to attend the Association’s Annual General Meeting (normally held in November). The BSA will meet reasonable expenses for UK travel associated with attending any BSA meetings where necessary, and accepts virtual attendance via videoconferencing. In addition, some of our Trustees also sit on sub-Committees of the Board (whose business is usually conducted virtually).

The Web Deputy will:

  • Assist the Web and Communications Officer with maintaining the BSA website.
  • Assist with commissioning, receiving, copy-editing, and uploading content to the website (training will be provided), particularly the BSA’s blog and news sections.
  • Report to the BSA Board alongside the Web and Communications Officer on issues relating to the BSA’s web content and technical running of the website.
  • Offer comments and advice from a web and communications perspective on other items and events discussed on the agenda at Board meetings.
  • Occasionally assist with the organisation of virtual conferences and events, and act as a member of the BSA’s Conference Team, which works closely with institutional hosts of BSA Conferences.

The BSA is a charitable company limited by guarantee and all Trustees share a responsibility as Directors to ensure that the BSA is managed well.

What are the benefits of joining the BSA Board?

You will gain:

  • opportunities for networking, mentoring and collaboration with scholars, practitioners and education professionals in Shakespeare studies
  • professional development through contributing to a non-profit charitable organisation
  • a wider perspective on Shakespeare and advance knowledge of Shakespeare-related events and research
  • the opportunity to steer the organisation to better meet the needs of practitioners in theatre, radio, TV, film, education, and academia, and to engage members of the public with the work of Shakespeare.

Application process:

If you wish apply for this post, please submit a CV and a 300-word (max.) statement that outlines your interest in the role and any relevant experience. Please submit this by email to José A. Pérez Díez and Maria Shmygol, Joint Deputy Chairs of the BSA, at the BSA’s email address by Monday 26th June 2023.

The Web Deputy plays an important role on the BSA Board; appointment to this role therefore requires a short interview by a small panel of current BSA Board members. The interview will be conducted online via Zoom or Teams. The new Trustee will be expected to take up their role from July 2023, following the BSA Conference in Liverpool.

Please contact the current holder of the post, Kat Hipkiss, should you require any further information about this role.

Membership Officer of the British Shakespeare Association

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint a new Membership Officer to further the Association’s aims to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his work. The Membership Officer is one of the senior positions in the leadership of the BSA, working closely with the Chair and Deputy Chair, the Web and Communications Officer and Deputy Officer, and the Treasurer, as well as the Board of Trustees as a whole, to support the Association’s work. The Membership Officer is also automatically a Trustee of the BSA. Unlike elected trustees, however, the Membership Officer’s period of service is not time-limited, although notionally three-year terms are encouraged.

The position is open to any member of the BSA who possesses the necessary technical skills (see below for the specifics). Trustees work voluntarily (with reasonable expenses reimbursed when necessary) to further the aims of the BSA across its four main constituencies of members: academic researchers, teachers, theatre practitioners, creatives, and members of the public.

The British Shakespeare Association is a registered Charity and its Trustees are also Directors, and take joint responsibility to help the Board promote the Association’s objectives which are: to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his works in a manner consistent with an educational charity limited by guarantee; and benefiting those individuals, members, charities, or institutions with an educational purpose toward the study of Shakespeare in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The British Shakespeare Association has a diverse and widespread international membership, and we warmly welcome applications from any member of the Association from any part of the world, in line with these objectives, and with its policy for diversity, inclusivity and equal opportunities. We particularly welcome applications from disabled applicants, those from BAME backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Trustee profile and duties

Trustees are required to attend three meetings of the Board of Trustees per year, which are normally held via Zoom in January, May, and September, and to attend the Association’s Annual General Meeting (normally held in November). The BSA will meet reasonable expenses for UK travel associated with attending any BSA meetings where necessary, and accepts virtual attendance via videoconferencing. In addition, some of our Trustees also sit on sub-Committees of the Board (whose business is usually conducted virtually).

The Membership Officer will:

  • Report to the Board about the state of the membership, its numbers, and its international composition.
  • Maintain / oversee the membership database hosted within our WordPress website, liaising with the Web and Communications Officer and Deputy Officer as appropriate (training will be provided).
  • Liaise with the Web and Communications Officer to produce and circulate the BSA’s Bulletin, usually sent out by email to subscribers of our mailing list once a month through the MailChimp platform.
  • Maintain a record of Gift Aid donors for submission to the Treasurer every year.
  • Maintain a record of subscribers to Shakespeare, our academic journal, for submission to its publisher, Taylor & Francis, to facilitate the distribution of paper copies at the end of the calendar year.
  • Answer membership-related queries from members of the BSA by email.
  • Propose to the Board any initiatives to grow the membership of the BSA.
  • Liaise with the Chair of the BSA and other members of the Board.
  • Serve on the BSA’s Conference Team and liaise with the organisers of the BSA conference on all aspects related to membership (which is a necessary condition to attend or present work at the conference).
  • Be involved in the allocation of bursaries to qualifying members presenting work at the BSA conference.

The BSA is a charitable company limited by guarantee and all Trustees share a responsibility as Directors to ensure that the BSA is managed well.

What are the benefits of joining the BSA Board?

You will gain:

  • opportunities for networking, mentoring and collaboration with scholars, practitioners and education professionals in Shakespeare studies
  • professional development through contributing to a non-profit charitable organisation
  • a wider perspective on Shakespeare and advance knowledge of Shakespeare-related events and research
  • the opportunity to steer the organisation to better meet the needs of practitioners in theatre, radio, TV, film, education, and academia, and to engage members of the public with the work of Shakespeare.

Application process:

If you wish apply for this post, please submit a CV and a 300-word (max.) statement that outlines your interest in the role and any relevant experience. Please submit this by email to José A. Pérez Díez and Maria Shmygol, Joint Deputy Chairs of the BSA, at the BSA’s email address by Monday 26th June 2023.

The role of Officer is a senior role on the BSA Board; appointment to this role therefore requires a short interview by a small panel of current BSA Board members. The new Trustee will be expected to take up their role from July 2023, following the BSA Conference in Liverpool.

Please contact the current holder of the post, José A. Pérez Díez, should you require any further information about this role.

Call for contributions: “Learning from Casting” (University of Southampton, 3rd July 2023)

Call for contributions: “Learning from Casting”, a symposium at the University of Southampton 

On the 3rd of July, 2023, the University of Southampton will host a symposium for researchers, actors, and creatives interested in examining current casting practices in Shakespeare productions in the UK. The conversation, which will cover topics such as non-traditional and conceptual casting, self-tapes, online auditions, and casting challenges presented by specific plays, will take the form of roundtable discussion, a panel bringing together distinguished Shakespearean actors working in the UK, and a session with Sam Jones CDG, who is credited with casting some of the most successful films, TV shows, and stage productions over the last couple of decades, and who will join us to discuss her experience as the Head of Casting for the RSC as well as her work with Dominic Cooke on the second season of The Hollow Crown

While there is no need to submit a proposal for a research paper, you are welcome to express interest in participating in a roundtable discussion by sending a brief outline of your research interests in Shakespearean casting or your experience with the current casting practices in the industry to Jakub Boguszak by June 1, 2023.

BSA Roundtable on the First Folio

This roundtable was recorded on 21st April 2023 to coincide with a forthcoming special issue on the First Folio of the BSA’s Shakespeare journal.

Speakers:

Gabriel Egan (DeMontfort University)

Patricia Badir (University of British Columbia)

Chris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)

Eric Rasmussen (University of Nevada, Reno)

Jyotsna G. Singh (Michigan State University)

See also: Chris Laoutaris Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio (William Collins)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Book-Intertwined-Lives-Behind/dp/0008238383

Paul Edmondson, Aaron Kent, Katherine Scheil, and Chris Laoutaris, Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare (Broken Sleep Books)
https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/anne-thology

All the proceeds from the latter book go towards funding Shakespeare Birthplace Trust education projects.

BSA 2023 Conference Schedule

Dear Members of the BSA,

We hope you will all enjoy celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday today in various ways, watching, reading, performing, writing. For those who would prefer to ‘Open your ears’, Radio 3 is broadcasting a production of Henry IV Part II at 19.30pm today, 23rd April.

We are delighted to publish the ‘At a Glance’ schedule for our BSA Conference ‘Relocating Shakespeare’ to be held in Liverpool 25-28 July:

Very best wishes to you all – and to revitalising Shakespeare,

Alison Findlay

(Chair of the BSA)

CfP: The Blackfriars Conference ‘Performance, Playhouse, Practice, and Play’, 2-5 November 2023

Performance, Playhouse, Practice, and Play

The Blackfriars Conference Returns!

ATTEND THE CONFERENCE: NOVEMBER 2-5, 2023

This November, the American Shakespeare Center will welcome conference attendees back to the Blackfriars Playhouse, where we will join together each day of the conference to hear papers, celebrate attending the plays in our season, and enjoy other social events and activities. Additionally, for the first time ever, conference registration and submissions will be open to undergraduate students. Paper presentations and staging sessions will be in-person only, but we are excited to also offer remote participation for some colloquy sessions.

Read below for details about the submission process for this cycle.

Call for Papers

For the 2023 Blackfriars Conference, we are soliciting three different types of submissions:

Plenary papers – Since 2001, we have featured papers that explore the performative conditions of early modern plays, the effect of place on those performances, the practices of the players, and the texts themselves through time. These 10 minute (13 minutes for presenters employing actors to demonstrate a point) plenary presentations take place on the Blackfriars Stage. To present a plenary paper, please submit a 250-300 word abstract outlining your topic.

Colloquy leaders – Since 2009, we have convened conversations amongst interested scholars on a variety of subjects. These 60 minute colloquies are guided by a leader who determines their format and shape. Examples of past presentations include: panels of short papers, seminars in which each participant submits a paper to the group before the conference for discussion at the conference, and round-tables. To lead a colloquy session, please submit a 250-300 word proposal outlining your topic of conversation and proposed format.

Staging sessions – Since 2019, we have invited submissions for early modern, non-Shakespeare plays to include in ASC’s production year. These 20 minute staging sessions are “competitive” opportunities for proposers to make the case for why their play should be performed on the Blackfriars stage at this time (in other words, why this play here and now). Sessions will be adjudicated by ASC artistic staff and the winning submission will secure their title’s inclusion in the artistic season for the following year. To lead a staging session, please submit a 250-300 word proposal that includes the play title and an outline of your argument.

Topics for consideration in any of the above formats might include:
  • Casting practice, rehearsal practice, performance practice
  • Evidence of practice in the extant plays or documents
  • Evidence of education or experience in plays or documents
  • Connections between texts (editorial, allusions, character symmetry, etc)
  • The status of ‘performance’ in early modern culture
  • Audiences and audience response
  • Props and costumes
  • Spaces of performance

Please submit your 250-300 word proposals by May 15, 2023 via the submission link: https://americanshakespearecenter.com/education/educationhomepage/blackfriars-conference/. You may only present once, but may be considered for all three categories by submitting this form multiple times with the appropriate category selected. Proposals will be considered based on their alignment with the conference aims, their originality and scholarly interest, and their potential to contribute to a program representative of the diverse constituencies served by the ASC. Presenters will receive notification by August 1, when registration opens.

Don’t Miss: Adjoa Andoh in Richard III

Adjoa Andoh, Honorary Fellow of the BSA, directs and stars in a production of Richard III that remains true to the text but radically transforms our understandings of it.

Andoh’s exciting production runs at the Liverpool Playhouse until 22 April and the Rose Theatre Kingston from 26 April to 13 May, exploring what happens ‘when the one punched down upon punches up’.

Alison Findlay’s review of the production is available on our Blog: https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/a-remarkable-richard-iii-by-bsa-honorary-fellow-adjoa-andoh/

A Remarkable Richard III by BSA Honorary Fellow Adjoa Andoh


Adjoa Andoh, Honorary Fellow of the BSA, directs and stars in a Richard IIII that remains true to the text but radically transforms our understandings of it. Andoh’s exciting production (Liverpool Playhouse until 22 April and the Rose Theatre Kingston 26 April-13 May) explores what happens ‘when the one punched down upon punches up’. The result is far from being a loud, angry protest. Andoh’s production uses a surprisingly sunny, rural setting to take us deep in into the tragic effects of prejudice, abuse, and neglect, primarily for Richard, but also for society.

By casting and playing Richard as the only person of another race in a white English rural environment, Andoh’s interpretation is deeply personal. As a child, she ‘felt a kinship’ with Richard ‘through some of my own experience of being judged by what I looked like’ in the Cotswolds where she grew up. The setting (designed by Aemelia Jane Hankin) recreated those memories: a rural idyll, visually dominated by a huge tree trunk. It was lit (by Chris Davey) in warm gold, and haunted by folk melodies composed by Andoh’s brother Yeofi Andoh,

All is not as it seems in the Cotswold idyll. A troop of white-masked morris dancers chanting in celebration of ‘this glorious summer’ forcibly deck Andoh’s Richard with a boar’s head and bind him to the maypole with their ribbons. Carnival festivity blurs frighteningly with the violence of Klu-Klux-Klan white supremacy in this prologue which physically recreates Richard’s nightmare of being trapped in a thorny wood from Henry VI Part 3 (3.2.173-181).

‘Glorious summer’ May Morris Prologue to Richard III. Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

For Andoh’s Richard,‘Not knowing how to find the open air / But toiling desperately to find it out,’ it’s not surprising he turns to ‘hew my way out with a bloody axe.’ (3 Henry VI 3.2.181) Executions are excised from the summer stage, but their violence is played out in ominous shadow-work behind curving translucent screens at the back of the stage (sometimes resembling the Globe structure). The physical force in Cotswold Morris stick dances could have been brought out more fully in the final battle scenes. 

Andoh takes a brave risk in not milking the comedy of Richard’s villainy, an easy point of contact with the audience. Instead, she shifts brilliantly between two styles to show Richard’s complexity. One the one hand, Richard’s sense of fun and companionship in plotting has the passionate quality of child revenging the sense of ‘that’s not fair’, especially when shared with his supporters Buckingham (Joseph Kloska), Catesby (Harry Clarke) and Ratcliffe (Antonie Azor) in their hilarious pantomime of mock-piety to the bemused Mayor (Oliver Ryan). At other points, Richard’s desire to be accepted by others creates surprising, new effects. The wooing of Anne (Phoebe Shepherd), for example, is poignantly played as a moment of acceptance, a spotlit romance – of what could have been, or what could be – as they tenderly connect hands beneath the tree. Numerous physical gestures showed Richard’s sensitivity to the dehumanizing insults in the text, creating a tangible sense of injury – literally so with the addition of his mother’s disgust at touching his head when he asked the Duchess of York (Caroline Parker) for her blessing.

Richard (Adjoa Andoh) kneels for his mother’s blessing. Duchess of York (Caroline Parker), watched by Clarence’s son (Joshua Day). Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

Andoh makes lines like ‘E’re you were Queen’ (to Elizabeth) ‘I was a pack-horse in his [Edward’s] great affairs’ stand out as a bitter recognition of Richard’s lack of self-worth, as well as his jealousy of Elizabeth. Height differences between Adjoa Andoh and the taller white cast members emphasize their dominance. Sam Cox’s commanding portrayal of Stanley provided a sympathetic anchor of reason amidst the factions. Fine performances make Rivers (Robin Morrisey), Dorset (Joshua Day), and Queen Elizabeth (Rachel Sanders) more strikingly powerful stage presences than usual.

Richmond (Daniel Hawksford) and Stanley (Sam Cox) photograph by Manuel Harlan.

Fine performances make Rivers (Robin Morrisey), Dorset (Joshua Day) and Queen Elizabeth (Rachel Sanders) more strikingly powerful stage presences than usual. Queen Margaret (Liz Kettle) towers above, claiming ‘the benefit of seignory’ in grief (4.4.33); the lightning and music which accompany her curses lends her an unworldly resonance as the voice of history.

Anne (Phoebe Shepherd) and Richard (Adjoa Andoh) as Carnival King and Queen. Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

The transcience of power which she embodies is also cleverly marked in the use of the costumes (by Maybelle Laye): the crowns of bone, or woodland greenery are those of carnival kings and queens, for a day or a season, rather than forever. The brown mudcloth (the traditional home-made cloth of rural people across Africa) covering Henry VI’s corpse reappears as Clarence’s shawl and King Edward’s robe, and no one sits for long on shallow seat in the tree trunk which serves as throne. Daniel Hawksford skilfully doubles an insecure Edward IV (by turns, shakily ritualistic and savage to Richard) with a confident Richmond.

Despite the communal feel created by the rural design (including real strawberries from the Cardinal), the consequences of prejudice and fear isolate many of the characters. The suffering of each is given full weight in some excellent cameo moments. Oliver Ryan made Clarence’s nightmare of drowning spine-chillingly immediate, for example.

Clarence (Oliver Ryan) wakes from his nightmare only to be drowned in malmsey by Catesby and Ratcliffe. Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

Joshua Day’s lament as Clarence’s son – a lone figure clutching a toy horse – movingly demonstrated the victimization of children who are forced to carry political and emotional burdens in an adult world (telegraphed again through the ultra-white puppet representing the Duke of York and humped on the back of the Prince of Wales).

Although it could be argued that such ‘spotlit’ moments fragment the play, that is surely the point. Everyone, whether perpetrator or victim, suffers in a climate that promotes prejudice and fear. What brings the company together is universally excellent verse speaking using Cotswold accents. The range of voices allows Shakespeare’s language to sing out, uncluttered by elaborate sets or costumes, in this thought-provoking and inspiring production. Congratulations to Adjoa and to all the company.

Buckingham (Joseph Kloska), Richard (Adjoa Andoh) and Queen Margaret (Liz Kettle). Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

Alison Findlay

University of Lancaster

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