All entries for Tuesday 10 December 2013

Guest Blog: Jami Rogers – Part Two: The Glass Ceiling

Jami Rogers' recent piece in Shakespeare Bulletin defines and challenges a Shakespearean Class Ceiling in the casting of Black and Asian performers in UK Shakespeare:

Regardless of cast size the ratio of white to actors of other races continued to hover around 90% white throughout the remainder of the twentieth century...

…[T]he RSC had few black actors in its early years with the largest number in a season to be found during the year of The Romans (seven). As far as it is possible to detail, in the 1980s and 1990s the RSC had casts of between 21 and 26 actors with only one or two roles played by performers of black or Asian descent. For example, the 1981 Titus Andronicus had 22 actors with Hugh Quarshie as (the already black) Aaron and (in the production’s only example of colorblind casting) Joseph Marcell as a Messenger. In other words, these two actors—Quarshie and Marcell—made up 9% of the total cast. Similar figures can be found in the 1980s productions with the highest number of ethnically diverse actors appearing in Barry Kyle’s 1984 Love’s Labour’s Lost, Adrian Noble’s 1986 Macbeth and Nicholas Hytner’s Measure for Measure the following year. Each of these had a total of 3 black or Asian actors in casts of 26, 27 and 21 respectively, giving the first two an 11% proportion of ethnic minority actors. Measure for Measure (incidentally the only production of the three to cast a black actor, Josette Simon, in a leading role) attained the giddy heights of 14% of its population being of black or Asian descent (in part because the total number of actors had dropped to 21). The decline in the total number of actors in Hytner’s Measure for Measure was a sign of increased budgetary pressures as the RSC reduced its overhead with a long-term decrease in cast sizes. However, regardless of cast size the ratio of white to actors of other races continued to hover around 90% white throughout the remainder of the twentieth century.

* * * * * *

…Unlike the RSC, however, regional productions now also seem frequently devoid of a single black or Asian face within their casts.

...Out of the 74 productions included in the survey of Shakespeares performed in the 2000s outside the confines of the RSC, 17 of them made no concession to the practice of colorblind casting. These 17 productions had all-white casts including at the acclaimed Tobacco Factory, Bristol and Royal Exchange, Manchester as well as almost all of Edward Hall’s productions under the Propeller umbrella. Some high-profile London productions have also failed to hire a single ethnic minority actor, even in minor roles, including Rupert Goold’s Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart (Chichester, later transferring to the Gielgud), Josie Rourke’s West End Much Ado starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and—most recently—Jamie Lloyd’s Macbeth with James McAvoy. That the Goold and Rourke productions were recorded—Macbeth for the BBC and Much Ado for download by Digital Theatre—also means that media representation of the plays remains largely the domain of white actors, perpetuating the dominant cultural stereotype of Shakespeare largely an elitist, white beacon of Englishness.

For the full study, follow the link:

http://drjamirogers.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/the-shakespearean-glass-ceiling-author-reprint/

Most recently, Dr. Jami Rogers was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the Drama Department. She trained at LAMDA and holds an MA and a PhD from the Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham. Prior to obtaining her PhD, she spent 10 years working in public broadcasting in the US including 8 years at PBS's flagship programmes, Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery!. She regularly publishes on the contemporary performance of Shakespeare's plays, including recent articles in Shakespeare Bulletin and Shakespeare: the Journal of the British Shakespeare Association. She has taught in Birmingham, London, Preston and Bolton and performed in professional productions in Washington, D.C. and Boston. She has lectured on Shakespeare and American drama at the National Theatre in London and works regularly with David Thacker at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton.

Anthony Howard : 10 Dec 2013 09:23 |  Tags: Bbas Black Casting National Rsc Shakespeare Theatre |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem