Weyward Macbeth Intersections of Race and Performance

by Newstok, Scott L.; Thompson, Ayanna

• ISBN13: 9780230616424
• ISBN10: 0230616429
• Format: Paperback
• 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

List of Figures	p. xiii
Series Editors' Preface	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Beginnings
What Is a "Weyward" Macbeth?	p. 3
Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton's The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth	p. 11
Early American Intersections
"Blood Will Have Blood": Violence, Slavery, and Macbeth in the Antebellum American Imagination	p. 23
The Exorcism of Macbeth: Frederick Douglass's Appropriation of Shakespeare	p. 35
Ira Aldridge as Macbeth	p. 45
Minstrel Show Macbeth	p. 55
Reading Macbeth in Texts by and about African Americans, 1903-1944: Race and the Problematics of Allusive Identification	p. 65
Federal Theatre Project(s)
Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production	p. 79
Black Cast Conjures White Genius: Unraveling the Mystique of Orson Welles's "Voodoo" Macbeth	p. 83
After Welles: Re-do Voodoo Macbeths	p. 91
The Vo-Du Macbeth!: Travels and Travails of a Choreo-Drama Inspired by the FTP Production	p. 101
Further Stages
A Black Actor's Guide to the Scottish Play, or, Why Macbeth Matters	p. 113
Asian-American Theatre Reimagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York	p. 121
The Tlingit Play: Macbeth and Native Americanism	p. 127
A Post-Apocalyptic Macbeth: Teatro LA TEA's Macbeth 2029	p. 133
Multicultural, Multilingual Macbeth	p. 137
Music
Reflections on Verdi, Macbeth, and Non-Traditional Casting in Opera	p. 145
Ellington's Dark Lady	p. 151
Hip-Hop Macbeths, "Digitized Blackness," and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom	p. 161
Screen
Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty: Roman Polanski's Macbeth	p. 173
Semper Die: Marines Incarnadine in Nina Menkes's The Bloody Child: An Interior of Violence	p. 183
Shades of Shakespeare: Colorblind Casting and Interracial Couples in Macbeth in Manhattan, Grey's Anatomy, and Prison Macbeth	p. 193
Shakespearean (A)Versions
Three Weyward Sisters: African-American Female Poets Conjure with Macbeth	p. 205
"Black up again": Combating Macbeth in Contemporary African-American Plays	p. 211
Black Characters in Search of an Author: Black Plays on Black Performers of Shakespeare	p. 223
Epilogue
ObaMacbeth: National Transition as National Traumission	p. 235
Appendix
Selected Productions of Macbeth Featuring Non-Traditional Casting	p. 241
References	p. 253
Notes on the Contributors and Editors	p. 273
Index of Passages from Macbeth	p. 279
Genaral Index	p. 281
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