Weyward Macbeth Intersections of Race and Performance

by Newstok, Scott L.; Thompson, Ayanna

• ISBN13: 9780230616332
• ISBN10: 023061633X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume of entirely new essays provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare's Macbethhas been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions. Comprehensive in its scope, this collection addresses the long and complicated history ofMacbethin the United States, from its appearance as the first Shakespearean play brought to the American colonies in 1699 (by a plantation owner) to the proposed Hollywood film version with a black diasporic cast. Contributors include a lead actor from the film, literary scholars, film theorists, musicologists, historians, directors, and artistsall of whom explore the intersections of race and performance through the lens ofMacbeth.

Author Biography

Scott L. Newstok is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College, and organized the 2008 symposium on Macbeth and African-American culture. In addition to publishing essays on Shakespeare and film, he has edited a volume of Kenneth Burke’s Shakespeare criticism, Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare (Parlor Press, 2007), and has written a study of the rhetoric of English epitaphs, Quoting Death in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2009).

Ayanna Thompson is Associate Professor of English and Women & Gender Studies at Arizona State University, and specializes in depictions of race in the Renaissance. She is editor of a collection of essays, Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006), and author of Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008).

Table of Contents

PART I: Beginnings * What is a “Weyward” Macbeth?--Ayanna Thompson * Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton’s The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth--Celia R. Daileader * PART II: Early American Intersections * “Blood will have blood”: Violence, Slavery, and Macbeth in the Antebellum American Imagination--Heather S. Nathans * The Exorcism of Macbeth: Frederick Douglass’s Appropriation of Shakespeare--John C. Briggs * Ira Aldridge as Macbeth--Bernth Lindfors * Minstrel Show Macbeth--Joyce Green MacDonald * Reading Macbeth in Texts by and about African Americans, 1903–1944: Race and the Problematics of Allusive Identification--Nick Moschovakis * PART III: Federal Theatre Project(s) * Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production--Lisa N. Simmons * Black Cast Conjures White Genius: Unraveling the Mystique of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo” Macbeth--Marguerite Rippy * After Welles: Re-do Voodoo Macbeths--Scott L. Newstok * The Vo-Du Macbeth!: Travels and Travails of a Choreo-Drama Inspired by the FTP Production--Lenwood Sloan * PART IV: Further Stages * A Black Actor’s Guide to the Scottish Play, Or, Why Macbeth Matters--Harry J. Lennix * Asian American Theatre Re-imagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York--Alexander C. Y. Huang * The Tlingit Play: Macbeth and Native Americanism--Anita Maynard-Losh * A Post-Apocalyptic Macbeth: Teatro LA TEA’s Macbeth 2029--José A. Esquea * Multi-cultural, Multi-lingual Macbeth--William C. Carroll * PART V: Music * Reflections on Verdi, Macbeth, and Non-Traditional Casting in Opera--Wallace McClain Cheatham * Ellington’s Dark Lady--Douglas Lanier * Hip-Hop Macbeths, “Digitized Blackness,” and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom--Todd Landon Barnes * PART VI: Screen * Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty: Roman Polanski’s Macbeth--Francesca Royster * Semper Die: Marines Incarnadine in Nina Menkes’s The Bloody Child: An Interior of Violence--Courtney Lehmann * Shades of Shakespeare: Colorblind Casting and Interracial Couples in Macbeth in Manhattan, Grey’s Anatomy, and Prison Macbeth--Amy Scott-Douglass * PART VII: Shakespearean (A)Versions * Three Weyward Sisters: African-American Female Poets Conjure with Macbeth--Charita Gainey-O’Toole and Elizabeth Alexander * “Black up again”: Combating Macbeth in Contemporary African-American Plays--Philip C. Kolin * Black Characters in Search of an Author: Black Plays on Black Performers of Shakespeare--Peter Erickson * Epilogue: ObaMacbeth: National Transition as National Traumission--Richard Burt * Appendix: Selected Productions of Macbeth Featuring Non-Traditional Casting--Brent Butgereit and Scott L. Newstok