Shakespeare for Everyone? History, Dramaturgy, and the Black Flesh as Prop in Transracial Shakespeare

Abstract

In this autoethnographic essay, the author reflects upon and interrogates racialised trends in American theatre stemming from participation as the silent role of ‘Othello’s man’ in a college production of Othello. Using black flesh as an object to be exploited for cultural capital by white theatregoers and theatremakers, the author adopts an Afro-Pessimist methodology to consider how non-speaking black characters in early modern dramatic performance become a spectacle emptied of actual agency or ‘being’, akin to a stage property. The inclusion of black actors in mostly white Shakespeare productions often leads to mental anguish for the performers, who inevitably become enmeshed in the anti-blackness of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy.