When you ask most contemporary producers, producing entities/institutions - professional, academic, or community, why after 400 years they continue the practice of platforming works by William Shakespeare, they’ll likely tell you it’s because they “love the plays” followed by some misguided sentiments about how Shakespeare “transcends culture” and is “Universal”.

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Universal. Mm. That’s crazy.

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I am no Shakespeare scholar nor fanatic. I do, however, house a genuine fascination with the plays and characters along with who Shakespeare was to his community during his time and how current creative trends mirror Shakespeare’s hustle and appeal. These things are of dear interest, but it’s not exactly the plays that Shakespeare wrote that are the draw for me. For me, and most people, if they're honest, the appeal lives in the fact that Shakespeares’ works live in the public domain which means they are free to perform without rights or licensing. The plays become a concourse for the imagination and creativity to run wild. I appreciate that about Shakespeare’s plays. You can take his original work and place it under any lens you’re interested in exploring the work through. With the same respect in which I admire beautiful music/song Covers and rearrangements, I’ve enjoyed the nuanced perspective, contextualization, creativity, etc. that many contemporary theatre artists are choosing to reconnaissance the worlds and text.

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Still, it doesn’t make Shakespeare’s work Universal. It definitely provides a titillating experience and invaluable exercise in text/ language analysis, character development, and performance athleticism for actors.

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Is every lens compatible with Shakespeare? Is every voice compatible with a Whitney Houston song? In theory, an easy yes. In practice, it requires much rigor, experimentation, trial/error, and adjustment.

 

The truth about the works of the Bard is that they are abounding with misogyny, sexism, classism, racism, body shaming, colorism, and tropes that have informed many detrimental societal norms. Directing this work as a Black Woman is no easy feet. I hold the responsibility of facilitating this work with deep care.

 

As a Black artist, an artist who intersects with multiple marginalized communities, I am constantly wrestling with my relationship with Shakespeare.
When I look at the play and the character of OTHELLO and think about the ramification of that depiction of Blackness my body tenses up. During the play's original time, this misrepresentation was the only representation that many people in Euro cultures had of Black people. Black Othello rapes and kills his White wife. This undoubtedly helped shape many fears, colonial perceptions of, and violence against Black bodies.
In Loves’ Labour’s Lost (google it for more context) Berowne’s peers tease him:

           

           “By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.”

           “O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
           The hue of dungeons and the suit of night.”

           “To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.”
           “And since her time are colliers [coal miners] counted bright.”

           “And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack [boast].”

           “Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.”

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The Taming of the Shrew....

The Merchant of Venice....

 

PROBLEMATIC. PROBLEMATIC. PROBLEMATIC.

Here’s what’s real; Shakespeare’s work has transcended time but not because of his capability to embody or connect humanity. Post-Shakespeare's life, They have been weaponized by patriarchy, colonialism, elitists, and gatekeepers to exclude and oppress and as an agent to empower the thriving “European cultural superiority’ aka white Supremacy.

Daily I reckon with whether or not my work with Shakespeare is reaffying his supremacy. Ayanna Thompson, a highly sought-after Black Shakespearean, frames my point of view well.

 

In an interview with The Public Theatre, she stated: “I need to be able to change the way that we teach Shakespeare, the way we perform Shakespeare, the way we experience Shakespeare, the way we talk about Shakespeare. And that that's like, one of the dials that I can turn. If this is the most performed playwright in the world, the most performed playwright in the world, you can get a whole lot of change through that.”

 

To turn the dial with Shakespeare I must be extremely intentional with my approach. The work as it is just doesn’t cut to shift the dials of social change.

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As I was investigating Much Ado for this production, I wanted to connect my concept to something that would excite, incite conversations amongst, and be comfortably accessible to the undergraduate population at Kent State along with wanting to rectify some of Shakespeare's problematic elements. The original Gossip Girl Premiered my Freshman year of Undergrad and a reboot remerged on Netflix during the earlier half of the Pandemic. Just like with the original I became enthralled in the drama and lifestyle of the affluent on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Much Ado, just like GG depicts a world in which status is fragile, arbitrary and potentially traumatic, and in which people especially Women are not so much free agents as the prisoners of their own self-images and of each other's unreliable/unjustifiable opinions. As I was reading Much Ado in 2021 preparing for this Kent State production simultaneously preparing for the premiere of the professed “darker” HBO reboot, I realized how alike the nature of the scandal, gossip, stakes, and mischief was to the plot lines in the Gossip Girl franchise. I reread the play again mindfully framing the world and characters as it might look within the high society of the Upper East Side. Also, I needed to consider how these characters would exist in modern-day society. Some of the themes and attitudes Shakespeare explored needed to be

updated to meet a contemporary audience. Especially, noting that many audience members and actors even would have a complicated history with Shakespeare.
I wanted to craft a story that felt authentic and genuine to our time.
Additionally, To make this production more relevant, I wanted to address the misogyny in the play by giving a stronger presence and validation to the characters of Hero, Beatrice, and specifically Innogen, the wife of Leonato who for years has been left out stagings. In the original Shaksepearean text, she was cast aside in the margins, barely appearing in the show at all.

 

Here’s an excerpt from an article I found during research:

 

Much Ado About Nothing: Save Innogen, and Banish the Sentimentalists’Claudio!

Par Cedric Watts

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“Hardly anyone, however, has heard of Innogen in Much Ado about Nothing. She is the wife of Leonato and mother of Hero, and she is supposed to appear in at least two scenes.Nevertheless, for centuries, editors (and they always seem to be male editors) have excised her: they’ve killed the unfortunate woman! You will not find her in such standard editions of the Complete Works as Peter Alexander’s, or the Riverside, or the Norton, or the Wells and Taylor volume for Oxford. A. R. Humphreys’ Arden edition of the play excludes her, and so do the editions by David Stevenson (Signet), Sheldon P. Zitner (Oxford), and John F. Cox (Cambridge). And the list could be extended for many lines. It looks like the perfect crime: no body can be found.

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I wanted to restore Innogen and allow her to have a more prominent role. I have developed her character into someone who takes charge when things go south, empowering her and the other female characters to have agency, problem solve and lead. By being intentional around not allowing the show to culminate in a happy ending but with a transformed Hero who not only denounces her father, Claudio, and Pedro but is left with a choice as o to whether she wants to continue being a fixture in the outdated norms of her environment.

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You see if you’re conscience at all about what's unfolding in our society in terms of reckoning with our Country’s violent and problematic history against marginalized communities, you’ll understand to the loaded responsibility of adapting/reimagining/re-framing/decolonizing his work and the entire field of Shakespeare practice.

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Shakespeare’s work is not universal - his work was intended only to service the white imagination. He was not writing with people who look like me in mind. He couldn’t. When I look at a play like Othello, I know even in all of Shakespeare’s genius he didn’t have the imagination to see nor write about the complexities of polytheism of Blackness or the Black psyche.