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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"Certainly a worthwhile contribution ... amply demonstrates that we can learn much about both history and the play when we attend to the many wayward ways in which race and the play have intersected in history." - Shakespeare Quarterly"Timely ... as with the best works of historical scholarship, Newstok and Thompson's collection merges detailed historiography with immediate relevancy, making this a valuable book indeed." - Dan Venning, Theatre History Studies "There is something for everyone in this worthy volume." - Choice "Remarkable." - Jonathan Gil Harris, Studies in English Literature "Weyward Macbeth is an excellent companion piece for theatre educators looking to enrich classroom instruction or to further students' understanding of fully realized productions. Newstok and Thompson's diverse collection of provocative and enlightening articles serves as a valued addition to Shakespearean scholarship and as a complement to the study of Macbeth." - John Robert Moss, Theatre Topics "A welcome addition to the scholarship on theatrical history and practice ... most of the contributors do show the considerable charge that thinking differently, or highlighting and remembering race, can bring to the play ... most of the authors at some point refer parenthetically to one or more of their fellow contributors, offering a sense of cogency, a wider arc of discussion, than many such collections manage." - Eric Mallin, College Literature "In this remarkable and ground breaking book, the editors have put together essays that examine the text and spirit of Macbeth from different and, sometimes, startling perspectives." - The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies "This rich and provocative collection of essays is a compilation of historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary viewpoints on ways in which performances of Macbeth have engaged issues of race ... Newstok and Thompson's volume corroborates that vision of multiple Shakespeares and multiple Shakespeareans, both within 'the confines of the script' and beyond it." - Nicholas Jones, Shakespeare Bulletin "This collection undoubtedly demonstrates the intractable diversity of American readings of Macbeth over time ... Weyward Macbeth goes a long way in making the effort to tell that difficult history." - Robert Ormsby, Modern Drama "The book presents work that is interdisciplinary and will appeal to a variety of scholars ... a far-reaching anthology, well worth a read for scholars of Shakespeare, cinema, and music. As a theatre text, it is particularly useful. Among its benefits are its comprehensive historical accounts of post–Civil War American Macbeths, its thorough discussions of the Federal Theatre Project and Welles, and its extensive, well-researched appendix of Macbeths with nontraditional casts. Weyward Macbeth emphasizes how strongly theatre reflects and informs America's political history; the book enhances both American theatre and Shakespearean scholarship." - Victoria P. Lantz, Theatre Survey"Of equal interest to Shakespeareans, Americanists, cultural historians, teachers, and theater professionals, the collection as a whole is notable for its thorough and strikingly original readings of a largely overlooked topic." - Sonya Freeman Loftis, Borrowers and Lenders"Rarely is a collection of essays so focused and yet so broad, so comprehensive, and yet so intellectually open-ended. Any one of the essays on its own would be a respectable contribution to the study of race and Shakespeare, but it is in their collective resonance with and across each other, their symphonic ambition, that the volume's significance lays." - Shane Vogel, African American Review "Weyward Macbeth is an exceptionally rich and suggestive collection of essays, the kind of book that you know you'll return to time and again to mull over the nuggets that its wide and wise contributors have unearthed." - Journal of the Northern Renaissance "The collection brings forth new and sometimes forgotten stories ... the range of media and time periods covered is quite commendable, as is the include of both scholars' and practitioners' perspectives. Because the essays are shorter, this collection could supplement course material or provide an excellent primer for scholars interested in how race has informed American appropriations of Macbeth." - Allison Kellar Lenhardt, The Upstart Crow"A substantial collection ... essential to anyone seeking to understand the importance of Macbeth to the history of race relations in America, especially black–white relations." - Parergon "A fascinating, interdisciplinary record ... The book is far from monolithic and didactic, developing its theme from multiple standpoints and in relation to different periods ... The collection as a whole makes for rich and varied reading. Together, the chapters raise and remind us of questions and controversies pertinent to the intersections of race, performance and Shakespeare. The book is thus particularly relevant to Shakespeare studies, performance and pedagogy in southern Africa. It provides us with a fascinating archive to work with and against ... the book's rich and 'weyward' collection of Macbeths is valuable in demonstrating the complex history of race in relation to the performance of Shakespeare in the USA. It contains much of interest for literary and performance scholars, for actors and directors, for English teachers, for students (to whom the book is dedicated) and for readers interested in the signs of race. It is also useful in combatting amnesia around the well-established tradition of 'non-traditional' productions." - Denise Newfield, Shakespeare in Southern Africa"The many successful essays in Weyward Macbeth rigorously engage with the editors' project of opening up Macbeth to explore intersections of race and performance. The book will be useful to a variety of readers, including scholars of Shakespeare and of American performance and theatre history. Essays pertaining to the contemporary practice of multilingual or intercultural Shakespearean performance will also be of interest to practitioners. Supplemented by an appendix that lists over a hundred productions of Macbeth featuring nontraditional casting - an addition that participates in the collection's recovery of a "whited out" or forgotten history - Weyward Macbeth provides ample resources for future scholarship. Having challenged the supposed racial neutrality of Shakespeare's Scottish play, Weyward Macbeth productively charts intersections between the play's own representations of race and the racial discourses that have informed its performance history, and alerts us to the "weyward" within the play's contemporary productions." - Nicole Boyar, Theatre Journal "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 "Weyward Macbethoffers a fascinating account of the use and misuse of Shakespeare's tragedy by a culture trying to confront its own guilt and ghosts." - Maria Browning, Chapter 16 "This extraordinary collection of essays is essential for every student and teacher of Shakespeare. It is exceptional reading with astonishing new information for anyone wishing to keep remarkably abreast of what is happening in American culture." - Glenda E. Gill, This Rough Magic "The essays are original, insightful and of great value ... a valuable framework for invaluable discussion." - Kate Pogue, Discoveries
Scott L. Newstok is Associate 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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