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How Should You Perform and Watch Othello and Hairspray in a Country Where You Could Never Hire Black Actors? Shakespeare and Casting in Japan

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Sae K.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

2020

vol. 22

issue 37

87-101

This paper discusses how Japanese theatres have handled race in a country where hiring black actors to perform Shakespeare’s plays is not an option. In English-speaking regions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, it is common to hire a black actor for Othello’s title role. Blackface is increasingly unacceptable because it reminds viewers of derogatory stereotypes in minstrel shows, and it deprives black actors of employment opportunities. However, the situation is different in regions where viewers are unfamiliar with this Anglo-US trend. In Japan, a country regarded as so homogeneous that its census does not have any questions about ethnicity, it is almost impossible to hire a skilled black actor to play a title role in a Shakespearean play, and few theatre companies would consider such an idea. In this cultural context, there is an underlying question of how Japanese-speaking theatre should present plays dealing with racial or cultural differences. This paper seeks to understand the recent approaches that Japanese theatre has adopted to address race in Shakespearean plays by analysing several productions of Othello and comparing them with other major non-Shakespearean productions.

Brown, Never Black: Othello on the Nazi Stage

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Bassey A.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

2020

vol. 22

issue 37

51-65

This paper examines the ways in which Othello was represented on the Nazi stage. Included in the theatre analyses are Othello productions in Frankfurt in 1935, in Berlin in 1939 and 1944, and in pre-occupation Vienna in 1935. New archival material has been sourced from archives in the aforementioned locations, in order to give detailed insights into the representation of Othello on stage, with a special focus on the makeup that was used on the actors who were playing the titular role. The aim of these analyses is not only to establish what Othello looked like on the Nazi and pre-Nazi stage, but also to examine the Nazis’ relationship with Shakespeare’s Othello within the wider context of their relationship with the Black people who lived in Nazi Germany at the time. In addition, the following pages offer insights into pre-Nazi, Weimar productions of Othello in order to create a more complex and comparative understanding of Nazi Othello productions and the wider theatrical context within which they were produced. In the end, we find out, based on existing evidence, why Othello was brown, and never Black.

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2 Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

1 Bassey A.

1 Sae K.

2 2020

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How Should You Perform and Watch Othello and Hairspray in a Country Where You Could Never Hire Black Actors? Shakespeare and Casting in Japan

Brown, Never Black: Othello on the Nazi Stage