Introduction: Shakespeare, Blackface and Performance. A Global Perspective

Coen Heijes teaches Shakespeare, Presentism and Performance at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He wrote/edited/participated (in) books on the abolishment of slavery, multicultural society, blackface and performance, diversity and leadership, cross-cultural communication, and performing early modern drama today and published in a variety of journals, including Cahiers Élisabéthains, Human Relations, Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Sederi, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Shakespeare Quarterly and Theatre Journal. He is a member of the editorial board of Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance and of the board of directors of the British Shakespeare Association. His latest publication is Shakespeare, Blackface and Race: Different Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Ayanna Thompson is Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) and Professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of Blackface (forthcoming Bloomsbury, 2021), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A StudentCentred Approach, co-authored with Laura Turchi (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (forthcoming Cambridge University Press, 2021), Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010), and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006). She is currently collaborating with Curtis Perry on the Arden4 edition of Titus Andronicus. She was the 2018-2019 President of the Shakespeare Association of America, and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars. She was one of Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholars for 2017-2018.