{"id":62302,"date":"2021-11-19T22:19:24","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T22:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62302"},"modified":"2021-11-26T02:14:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T02:14:18","slug":"what-is-the-emotional-legacy-of-a-life-lived-in-hiding-rebecca-hall-honours-her-familys-history-in-her-new-film-passing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62302","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat Is The Emotional Legacy Of A Life Lived In Hiding?\u201d Rebecca Hall Honours Her Family\u2019s History In Her New Film Passing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat Is The Emotional Legacy Of A Life Lived In Hiding?\u201d Rebecca Hall Honours Her Family\u2019s History In Her New Film <\/strong><\/a><\/em>Passing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vogue UK<\/a>
\n2021-10-29<\/p>\n

Rebecca Hall<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nMolly Cranna<\/small><\/p>\n

For her directorial debut, the British actor brings to life the novel<\/a> that helped unlock the meaning of her family\u2019s heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n

The elucidation of a family\u2019s history, like the history of a nation, is never straightforward or simple. The truth is stated baldly and then denied, hedged or partially retracted. The same stories somehow become less and less clear with each repetition. Clarity is elusive, and perhaps its pursuit is even unkind \u2013 why probe something so delicate as the past? And when it comes to questions of race, what answers could ever be satisfying?<\/p>\n

My mother, Maria Ewing<\/a>, was born in Detroit<\/a> in 1950. Her father worked as an engineer at McLouth Steel<\/a> in the city, and was also an amateur painter and musician. It was in part his love of music that propelled her to leave home at 18 and, in an improbably rapid fashion, transform herself into an international opera star. My father, Peter Hall<\/a>, was born in Suffolk<\/a>, the child of the local stationmaster<\/a>. He went on to found the Royal Shakespeare Company<\/a> and forge his way as one of the most significant British theatre directors of the late 20th century. Both products of working-class backgrounds, my parents each became part of a global cultural elite, and both of them thoroughly reinvented themselves in order to do it.<\/p>\n

Growing up with my mother \u2013 now the former Lady Hall \u2013 in the English countryside, there was always some mystery around her background. Within the opera community, she was spoken about as \u201cexotic\u201d. When I looked at my mother, I always, my whole life, thought she looked Black. But there was no factual basis for that, and it was a tricky subject. When I asked questions such as, \u201cYour father, maybe he was African American? Was he Native American? Do you know anything?\u201d she just couldn\u2019t answer with any degree of certainty. Not wouldn\u2019t \u2013 she couldn\u2019t. She simply didn\u2019t have any hard information. She knew that things were hidden, that she didn\u2019t know any of his family members, that she just didn\u2019t understand certain things. To an extent, I think she had accepted a degree of vagueness about her own identity. Maybe, for her, that vagueness, that mystery, was simply part of her lineage, something that she had no choice but to accept. And as someone who lived in circumstances that were quite distant from those she grew up in, maybe that vagueness was even useful, an infinitely pliable substance out of which to build a bridge between her old life and her new one…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat Is The Emotional Legacy Of A Life Lived In Hiding?\u201d Rebecca Hall Honours Her Family\u2019s History In Her New Film Passing Vogue UK 2021-10-29 Rebecca Hall Molly Cranna For her directorial debut, the British actor brings to life the novel that helped unlock the meaning of her family\u2019s heritage. The elucidation of a family\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,1245,8,6462,10,20],"tags":[32418,87,32419,28879,30976],"class_list":["post-62302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-uk","category-usa","tag-maria-ewing","tag-nella-larsen","tag-peter-hall","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-vogue-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62302","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=62302"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62380,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62302\/revisions\/62380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}