{"id":25181,"date":"2012-09-04T01:46:09","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T01:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25181"},"modified":"2012-09-04T01:46:09","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T01:46:09","slug":"passing-strange-shakespeare-race-and-contemporary-america-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25181","title":{"rendered":"Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (review)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Shakespeare Quarterly<\/a>
\nVolume 63, Number 2<\/a> (Summer 2012)
\npages 244-246
\nDOI: 10.1353\/shq.2012.0017<\/a><\/p>\n

Virginia Mason Vaughan<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nClark University, Worcester, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

If you teach Shakespeare\u2019s<\/a> plays at an American university, college, or secondary school (as I do), and if you\u2019ve ever felt a disconnect between what you do in the classroom and the real lives of your students, this book is the antidote you need. With unfailing honesty, clarity, and courage, Ayanna Thompson\u2019s<\/a> Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America<\/a><\/em> confronts the elephant in the room we so seldom admit to seeing\u2014race\u2014particularly in regard to Shakespeare\u2019s cultural authority. Thompson casts her questioning gaze on the ways Shakespeare is studied, taught, and performed in twenty-first-century America; less traditionally, she examines the plays\u2019 appropriation in film, novels, prison and reform programs, and new media such as YouTube. Her wide-ranging inquiry compels the reader to question all sorts of assumptions\u2014about Shakespeare, race, and (most often) the ways both of these are entwined in American thought and practice.<\/p>\n

Thompson explains her title\u2019s significance in her introduction. In his address to the Venetian Senate, Othello describes Desdemona\u2019s fascination with his adventures; she found his stories \u201c\u2018passing strange\u2019\u201d and listened to them \u201cwith a greedy ear.\u201d The phrase conveys the unusual wonder Desdemona felt, but Thompson connects the words to the American trope of \u201cpassing<\/a>,\u201d often used in narratives about individuals who pretend to be a member of a racial category other than their own; passing implies the creation of an alternative identity and reflects the desire to \u201crewrite a story from a different point of view\u201d (11). Finally, \u201cpassing\u201d also connotes the changes that take place through time. She stresses that Shakespeare \u201cwas \/ is always defined through the recreation of his identity, image, texts, and performances. . . . [He] needs to be rendered as contingent\u2014as in process and as passing\u2014as the creative moment in which his name, image, text, and performance are invoked\u201d (17).<\/p>\n

In the next chapter, Thompson tackles assumptions about Shakespeare\u2019s universalism as reflected in two contemporary films: the small-budget, independent Suture<\/em> (1993) and the Hollywood comedy Bringing Down the House<\/em> (2003). Although neither film is about Shakespeare, Thompson shows how the concept of Shakespeare as a universal figure can be appropriated to stand for white, Western culture. Thompson next interrogates the implications of Maya Angelou\u2019s<\/a> often-repeated claim that Shakespeare was black. She frames Farrukh Dhondy\u2019s<\/a> Black Swan<\/em>, a young adult novel whose Afro-Caribbean hero tries to seize Shakespeare\u2019s cultural capital for himself, as a kind of \u201cstrategic essentialism\u201d\u2014\u201cthe practice of promoting racial differences as inherent, fundamentally different, and therefore fixed in order to create affiliation, cohesion, and unity within a racialized group\u201d (13, 49). Even though most readers will not be familiar with these texts, they will find Thompson\u2019s detailed analysis intriguing.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4 moves to multicultural theater, a topic in which Thompson, who edited the collection Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance<\/em> (2006), has particular expertise. Here, she probes the inconsistencies in contemporary casting practices. Although most regional Shakespeare festivals profess to be multicultural, their actual practices can be divided into four categories: (1) colorblind casting, assigning actors according to ability without regard to race; (2) societal casting, assigning actors of color to roles that were originally written for white actors; (3) conceptual casting, assigning actors of color to roles that will \u201cenhance the play\u2019s social resonance\u201d (76); and cross-cultural casting, moving the play\u2019s milieu to a different location and culture. Yet, Thompson argues, theater practitioners seldom interrogate their own practices or face up to those practices\u2019 messy contradictions. Using the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as her primary example, Thompson calls for theater practitioners to recognize and discuss the semiotics of race in their productions.<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s next topic is even more nervous making: whether a role originally intended for a white actor in blackface (Othello<\/em>, for example) should ever be performed according to \u201coriginal-staging\u201d practices. As someone who has written on this controversial topic, I appreciated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (review) Shakespeare Quarterly Volume 63, Number 2 (Summer 2012) pages 244-246 DOI: 10.1353\/shq.2012.0017 Virginia Mason Vaughan, Professor of English Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts If you teach Shakespeare\u2019s plays at an American university, college, or secondary school (as I do), and if you\u2019ve ever felt a disconnect between what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,6],"tags":[11740,11742,11741],"class_list":["post-25181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-new-media","tag-ayanna-thompson","tag-shakespeare-quarterly","tag-virginia-mason-vaughan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}