Critical Race Conversations: Shakespeare and Race in Performance

Join Tyler Fauntleroy (Actor, New York City), Rosa Joshi (Seattle University), and Farah Karim-Cooper (Shakespeare's Globe) for a discussion of Shakespeare and race in Performance.

Whether as members of audiences or readers of Shakespeare, we all have our various pathways into his works. So do actors, directors, and those with institutional commitments to anti-racist practices in the fields of Shakespeare studies and performance. In this session, Tyler Fauntleroy, Rosa Joshi, and Farah Karim-Cooper discuss the ways theatrical practice, history, and theory inform each other, even as they work with different vocabularies and starting points. From their lived experiences, they ask what we have to learn and unlearn about the effects of elitism and gatekeeping in stagecraft. How can the rehearsal space address unconscious biases that give rise to and may perpetuate color-blindness? Where might we go from here with our engagements with Shakespeare and race in performance?