Cross-Cultural Casting in Britain: The Path to Inclusion, 1972-2012

Authors

  • Jami Rogers

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.03

Keywords:

Shakespeare, Theatre, Diversity, Race, Black British, African

Abstract

This essay uses three productions to chart the progress of the integration of performers of African and Afro-Caribbean descent in professional British Shakespearean theatre. It argues that the three productions―from 1972, 1988 and 2012―each use cross-cultural casting in ways that illuminate the phases of inclusion for British performers of colour. Peter Coe’s 1972 The Black Macbeth was staged at a time when an implicit colour bar in Shakespeare was in place, but black performers were included in the production in ways that reinforced dominant racial stereotypes. Temba’s 1988 Romeo and Juliet used its Cuban setting to challenge stereotypes by presenting black actors in an environment that was meant to show them as “real human beings”. The RSC’s 2012 Julius Caesar was a black British staging of Shakespeare that allowed black actors to use their cultural heritages to claim Shakespeare, signalling the performers’ greater inclusion into British Shakespearean theatre.

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Author Biography

Jami Rogers

Jami Rogers trained at LAMDA and holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Birmingham. She spent 8 years at the Emmy-award winning PBS programmes Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! Jami created the British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database for the University of Warwick’s Multicultural Shakespeare project. She researches race and gender inequality in the British live and recorded arts. She is on the board of The Act For Change Project and The Diversity School and is currently working on a project monitoring race and gender diversity on British television for Equity. Her monograph British Black and Asian Shakespeareans, 1966-2018: Integrating Shakespeare will be published by Arden Shakespeare in 2021.

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Published

2019-06-30

How to Cite

Rogers, J. (2019). Cross-Cultural Casting in Britain: The Path to Inclusion, 1972-2012. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 19(34), 55–70. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.03