Admit it: Shakespeare is bad. You don't enjoy it. Deep in your heart, you'd rather be watching reality tv than another fucking Shakespeare adaptation set in the Wild West or with pirates or in a sci-fi horror genre, or done on a blank stage with naked actors covered in whipped cream.
It's not Shakespeare's fault that we keep fucking up his work. He was a solid writer, who cranked out about 6-7 epic plays, another 5-6 shaky but ambitious works, and then another 5-6 flawed but interesting experiments. Designers love working on THE TEMPEST but few people actually want to see it. And once King Lear goes mad, we have to sit through another 90 minutes of prattle. Shakespeare is boring, poorly acted, and barely tolerated by theatregoers who try to appreciate what the Duke of Earlbury said to Lady Chasenbottom 500 yrs ago. In fact, if it were any other art form that had a 99% SUCK rating, it would be eradicated and cursed into oblivion. If it was anything except Shakespeare we would dump it. But we love Shakespeare b/c it makes us feel smart. Now you can get a lot of theatre people to acknowledge that but the conversation usually stops there. But few people ask what kind of smart we look for when we go to Shakespeare? The Bard gives us that smart "Anglo" feel.
Americans are Anglophiles who worship British-ness for intelligence. We put them in our Ancient Rome epics, spy movies, and sci-fi. British accents. We even put them in American movies, using our accents to recreate American history. In our culture, British-ness is peak whiteness. We keep the Shakespeare train going b/c it's how we cling to this idea of white supremacy and intelligence. Case in point? How many Jean Racine plays are done around the country every year? How many Calderon adaptations do you watch every year? Pierre Corneille? Almost none of these classic writers receive any love and they are geniuses with treasure troves of plays. But we have no problem saying 'their shit is boring.' Why? Our culture doesn't worship French drama or Spanish literature. Yes, we can be known as the smart person who quotes Electra...but that sort of intelligence isn't connected to our culture. That's just book smart. There's no cultural prestige behind being book smart about Nigerian novelists or Chinese poets. The reward of book smart is limited to the individual.
But Shakespeare smart isn't book smart. It's cultural. And it's paying homage to the great myth of America. We want to see ourselves a part of destiny and a historical arc of greatness. Ancient Greeks are seen as a part of the British lineage of whiteness. Now, historically that makes ZERO sense, but mythically it fits. We think America is a direct descendant of the greatness of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the British Empire. It's why Washington DC looks like the "Spartacus" movie set with marble columns and classic statutes. Then we do Shakespeare in front of these Roman columns and feel like all is right in the world, we are carrying on the legacy of white supremacy as it passes through us.
Black actors are considered seasoned and mature when they can recite Shakespeare. They are applauded as being acceptable enough to fit into the white supremacy fantasy of excellence. Granted, they may never be 'true' but they can be 'good enough.' And their 'good enough' status is the perfect way to keep artists of color in check: if they work really hard and strive, they can be the 'stunt cast' in a Shakespeare adaptation. The 'other-ism' of their presence re-enforces the underlying thought that the best a POC can strive for is to emulate peak whiteness, while never really achieving it. It's the perfect trap, a vice grip of contradictions to carry around forever. Artists of color are trained INTO this trap, trained into inferiority complex through a million little microaggressions: from eliminating their voice in curriculums to elevating white male voices as the universal training tool (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Miller, etc). They are told that the standard of their craft makes them an outsider who will always have to strive for a goal they can circle and touch on occasionally but never master thoroughly.
Imagine being a woman majoring at women's studies and being told that all the leaders in your field are Freud, Jung, and Maslov. Now imagine everyone believing this, teaching it to young girls, and getting them to indoctrinate it into their thinking: that in order to truly known your own gender, they must look at it through white male eyes. In most drama schools, artists are color are given this mindfuck: in order to truly master your craft and gain access to your unique voice...go study the antithesis of you. You read Shakespeare and every step of the way you're having to filter his voice through a million little sifters in your mind: culture, race, history, gender, language. Even the English language is radically different and requires this contortionism. You have to make poetry of prose, and fantasy of loosely assembled history. From this worship, we get everything from our government to "Game of Thrones." It's all filtered through this tiny little, cold island that few people in America actually know but that everyone mythologizes in this convoluted way.
I'm looking forward to the day when the American landscape is littered with Oregan Racine Company and Alabama Wole Soyinka Rep, and Chicago August Wilson Rep, and other great writers who don't fit the mold of peak whiteness.
It's not Shakespeare's fault that he became the bludgeoning tool of cultural supremacy. But it's our task to dismantle it by admitting this first essential truth: most Shakespeare productions are terrible. They feel forced, phony, and not in the voice/spirit of the most dynamic artists on stage. The only joy is based in Anglo supremacy model that serves few people.
It's time we take a break from pretending we are the descendants of British kings and Roman emperors and start realizing that we are a nation of immigrants. Brown, Black, yellow immigrants. Quaker immigrants, Irish and, yes, some Englishmen. But we are not the children of Shakespeare or Caesar.
It's not Shakespeare's fault that we keep fucking up his work. He was a solid writer, who cranked out about 6-7 epic plays, another 5-6 shaky but ambitious works, and then another 5-6 flawed but interesting experiments. Designers love working on THE TEMPEST but few people actually want to see it. And once King Lear goes mad, we have to sit through another 90 minutes of prattle. Shakespeare is boring, poorly acted, and barely tolerated by theatregoers who try to appreciate what the Duke of Earlbury said to Lady Chasenbottom 500 yrs ago. In fact, if it were any other art form that had a 99% SUCK rating, it would be eradicated and cursed into oblivion. If it was anything except Shakespeare we would dump it. But we love Shakespeare b/c it makes us feel smart. Now you can get a lot of theatre people to acknowledge that but the conversation usually stops there. But few people ask what kind of smart we look for when we go to Shakespeare? The Bard gives us that smart "Anglo" feel.
Americans are Anglophiles who worship British-ness for intelligence. We put them in our Ancient Rome epics, spy movies, and sci-fi. British accents. We even put them in American movies, using our accents to recreate American history. In our culture, British-ness is peak whiteness. We keep the Shakespeare train going b/c it's how we cling to this idea of white supremacy and intelligence. Case in point? How many Jean Racine plays are done around the country every year? How many Calderon adaptations do you watch every year? Pierre Corneille? Almost none of these classic writers receive any love and they are geniuses with treasure troves of plays. But we have no problem saying 'their shit is boring.' Why? Our culture doesn't worship French drama or Spanish literature. Yes, we can be known as the smart person who quotes Electra...but that sort of intelligence isn't connected to our culture. That's just book smart. There's no cultural prestige behind being book smart about Nigerian novelists or Chinese poets. The reward of book smart is limited to the individual.
But Shakespeare smart isn't book smart. It's cultural. And it's paying homage to the great myth of America. We want to see ourselves a part of destiny and a historical arc of greatness. Ancient Greeks are seen as a part of the British lineage of whiteness. Now, historically that makes ZERO sense, but mythically it fits. We think America is a direct descendant of the greatness of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the British Empire. It's why Washington DC looks like the "Spartacus" movie set with marble columns and classic statutes. Then we do Shakespeare in front of these Roman columns and feel like all is right in the world, we are carrying on the legacy of white supremacy as it passes through us.
Black actors are considered seasoned and mature when they can recite Shakespeare. They are applauded as being acceptable enough to fit into the white supremacy fantasy of excellence. Granted, they may never be 'true' but they can be 'good enough.' And their 'good enough' status is the perfect way to keep artists of color in check: if they work really hard and strive, they can be the 'stunt cast' in a Shakespeare adaptation. The 'other-ism' of their presence re-enforces the underlying thought that the best a POC can strive for is to emulate peak whiteness, while never really achieving it. It's the perfect trap, a vice grip of contradictions to carry around forever. Artists of color are trained INTO this trap, trained into inferiority complex through a million little microaggressions: from eliminating their voice in curriculums to elevating white male voices as the universal training tool (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Miller, etc). They are told that the standard of their craft makes them an outsider who will always have to strive for a goal they can circle and touch on occasionally but never master thoroughly.
Imagine being a woman majoring at women's studies and being told that all the leaders in your field are Freud, Jung, and Maslov. Now imagine everyone believing this, teaching it to young girls, and getting them to indoctrinate it into their thinking: that in order to truly known your own gender, they must look at it through white male eyes. In most drama schools, artists are color are given this mindfuck: in order to truly master your craft and gain access to your unique voice...go study the antithesis of you. You read Shakespeare and every step of the way you're having to filter his voice through a million little sifters in your mind: culture, race, history, gender, language. Even the English language is radically different and requires this contortionism. You have to make poetry of prose, and fantasy of loosely assembled history. From this worship, we get everything from our government to "Game of Thrones." It's all filtered through this tiny little, cold island that few people in America actually know but that everyone mythologizes in this convoluted way.
I'm looking forward to the day when the American landscape is littered with Oregan Racine Company and Alabama Wole Soyinka Rep, and Chicago August Wilson Rep, and other great writers who don't fit the mold of peak whiteness.
It's not Shakespeare's fault that he became the bludgeoning tool of cultural supremacy. But it's our task to dismantle it by admitting this first essential truth: most Shakespeare productions are terrible. They feel forced, phony, and not in the voice/spirit of the most dynamic artists on stage. The only joy is based in Anglo supremacy model that serves few people.
It's time we take a break from pretending we are the descendants of British kings and Roman emperors and start realizing that we are a nation of immigrants. Brown, Black, yellow immigrants. Quaker immigrants, Irish and, yes, some Englishmen. But we are not the children of Shakespeare or Caesar.
1 comment:
Shakespeare is not terrible and plenty of people watch his work for pure enjoyment, not because it makes them feel smart. And it has nothing to do with "Anglo supremacy." What a load of bullshit.
Your post says more about you than about Shakespeare. You need to reconsider whether you want to remain in theater - why don't you send scripts to TV shows instead of you love them so much more?
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