Theatre and Performance 2009
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This volume of entirely new essays provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare’s Macbeth has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions. Comprehensive in its scope, this collection addresses the enduringly fraught history of Macbeth in the United States, from its appearance as the first Shakespearean play documented in the American colonies to a proposed Hollywood film version with a black diasporic cast. Over two dozen contributions explore Macbeth’s haunting presence in American drama, poetry, film, music, history, politics, acting, and directing—all through the intersections of race and performance.
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“Weyward Macbeth deserves reading—and re-reading—because, contrary to popular belief, Orson Welles’s famous “Voodoo” Macbeth (1936) was far from unique in re-casting Shakespeare in a non-traditional setting. With over 100 cross-racial productions recorded here, you are bound to ask: why have so many Americans been repeatedly drawn to this particular play in the context of racial discourses? Read this penetrating study to find out—it’s an intellectual delight.”—James V. Hatch, Professor Emeritus, The Graduate Theatre Program at the City University of New York and co-author of A History of African American Theatre
“Weyward Macbeth is an astonishingly wide-ranging volume, taking in an impressive swath of theatrical and cultural history. From Frederick Douglass to Roman Polanski, Middleton to minstrelsy, Aldridge to Ellington, Verdi to hip-hop, the Scottish-Shogun-Voodoo-Tlingit play has sustained a surprising range of only apparently ‘weyward’ efforts to occupy the intersection of race and power through performance. This is a provocative collection, certain to animate discussion of Macbeth, and much more, for some time to come.”—W. B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts, Barnard College, Columbia University
". . . this fascinating collection of essays is a valuable dialogical contribution not only to race studies in general but also in particular to the history of adaptations and reconsiderations of one of the most ubiquitous Shakespearean tragedies. The twenty-eight contributors represent a variety of approaches and critical positions; some are academic critics, others are actors and directors. This plurality of voices enriches the collection, which will be a significant foundation text for courses on Macbeth in particular or, more generally, as a model for work on adaptation, appropriation, and revision . . . In short, Weyward Macbeth is a remarkably comprehensive and wide-ranging theatrical and political history which truly does the work it claims to do, that is, examine the intersections of race and performance."—Susan H. Smith, University of Pittsburgh
Scott L. Newstok is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College, where he organized the 2008 symposium on Macbeth and African-American culture. He has edited Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare (Parlor Press, 2007), and has published a study of the rhetoric of English epitaphs, Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb (Palgrave, 2009).
Ayanna Thompson is Associate Professor of English, and an affiliate faculty in Women & Gender Studies and Film & Media Studies at Arizona State University. She is author of Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008), and the editor of Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006) and two special issues of Shakespeare Bulletin and Borrowers and Lenders. Her new book project on Shakespeare and race, Passing Strange, is forthcoming from Oxford.
PART I: Beginnings * What is a “Weyward” Macbeth?--Ayanna Thompson * Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton’s The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth--Celia R. Daileader * PART II: Early American Intersections * “Blood will have blood”: Violence, Slavery, and Macbeth in the Antebellum American Imagination--Heather S. Nathans * The Exorcism of Macbeth: Frederick Douglass’s Appropriation of Shakespeare--John C. Briggs * Ira Aldridge as Macbeth--Bernth Lindfors * Minstrel Show Macbeth--Joyce Green MacDonald * Reading Macbeth in Texts by and about African Americans, 1903–1944: Race and the Problematics of Allusive Identification--Nick Moschovakis * PART III: Federal Theatre Project(s) * Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production--Lisa N. Simmons * Black Cast Conjures White Genius: Unraveling the Mystique of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo” Macbeth--Marguerite Rippy * After Welles: Re-do Voodoo Macbeths--Scott L. Newstok * The Vo-Du Macbeth!: Travels and Travails of a Choreo-Drama Inspired by the FTP Production--Lenwood Sloan * PART IV: Further Stages * A Black Actor’s Guide to the Scottish Play, Or, Why Macbeth Matters--Harry J. Lennix * Asian American Theatre Re-imagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York--Alexander C. Y. Huang * The Tlingit Play: Macbeth and Native Americanism--Anita Maynard-Losh * A Post-Apocalyptic Macbeth: Teatro LA TEA’s Macbeth 2029--José A. Esquea * Multi-cultural, Multi-lingual Macbeth--William C. Carroll * PART V: Music * Reflections on Verdi, Macbeth, and Non-Traditional Casting in Opera--Wallace McClain Cheatham * Ellington’s Dark Lady--Douglas Lanier * Hip-Hop Macbeths, “Digitized Blackness,” and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom--Todd Landon Barnes * PART VI: Screen * Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty: Roman Polanski’s Macbeth--Francesca Royster * Semper Die: Marines Incarnadine in Nina Menkes’s The Bloody Child: An Interior of Violence--Courtney Lehmann * Shades of Shakespeare: Colorblind Casting and Interracial Couples in Macbeth in Manhattan, Grey’s Anatomy, and Prison Macbeth--Amy Scott-Douglass * PART VII: Shakespearean (A)Versions * Three Weyward Sisters: African-American Female Poets Conjure with Macbeth--Charita Gainey-O’Toole and Elizabeth Alexander * “Black up again”: Combating Macbeth in Contemporary African-American Plays--Philip C. Kolin * Black Characters in Search of an Author: Black Plays on Black Performers of Shakespeare--Peter Erickson * Epilogue: ObaMacbeth: National Transition as National Traumission--Richard Burt * Appendix: Selected Productions of Macbeth Featuring Non-Traditional Casting--Brent Butgereit and Scott L. Newstok
With over 100 racialized adaptations discussed in detail, Weyward Macbeth scrutinizes the notion of what constitutes a non-traditional production. Perhaps the most famous non-traditional American version of Macbeth was the one first staged in 1936 Harlem under the direction of Orson Welles. Welles set Shakespeare’s play in 19th-century Haiti, leading the adaptation to be known as the “Voo-doo Macbeth.” Sponsored by the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project, this Macbeth went on a national tour.
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