Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

by Ayanna Thompson

Notions, constructions, and performances of race continue to define the contemporary American experience, including America's relationship to Shakespeare. In Passing Strange , Ayanna Thompson explores the myriad ways U.S. culture draws on the works and the mythology of the Bard to redefine the boundaries of the color line.

Drawing on an extensive--frequently unconventional--range of examples, Thompson examines the contact zones between constructions of Shakespeare and constructions of race. Among the questions she addresses Do Shakespeare's plays need to be edited, appropriated, updated, or rewritten to affirm racial equality and retain relevance? Can discussions of Shakespeare's universalism tell us anything beneficial about race? What advantages, if any, can a knowledge of Shakespeare provide to disadvantaged people of color, including those in prison? Do the answers to these questions impact our understandings of authorship, authority, and authenticity? In investigating this under-explored territory, Passing Strange examines a wide variety of contemporary texts, including films, novels, theatrical productions, YouTube videos, performances, and arts education programs.

Scholars, teachers, and performers will find a wealth of insights into the staging and performance of familiar plays, but they will also encounter new ways of viewing Shakespeare and American racial identity, enriching their understanding of each.

Genres: Shakespeare, Nonfiction, Theatre, Race

236 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2011

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayanna Thompson is wonderful: her studies are thought-provoking and provocative and both her style and her methodology are original and brilliant. Using tangential ways to look at how Shakespeare is used to address the issue of race in twenty-first century America (and beyond), she forces us to ask the questions that need to be asked. Every chapter is superb, and asks questions that one wouldn't think of asking.

My caveat with this, however, is that I am not sure whether this is a "book", rather than a series of interlinked essays. I don't come out of this with a clear sense of what I have learnt: "Shakespeare and race is very complicated" isn't really a conclusion, though it is probably a fair statement.

This is definitely a book that anyone interested in twenty-first century Shakespeare should read (performers, teachers, scholars, students), and you will all learn something.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read from a Black Shakespeare scholar on passing, performance and race, of Shakespeare and elsewhere in popular culture. While a chapter on YouTube has not aged well (written in 2008, it reflects the earliest days of the site), the others are thought-provoking.

I particularly enjoyed her last chapter on Peter Sellars and his explorations of race through casting. I saw his production of The Merchant of Venice in 1994 and it had similar elements to the production of Othello (2009) discussed in the book. A must read for anyone teaching Shakespeare to today’s students, particularly if they want to explore its performative elements.

[Dev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book for anyone interested in theater and racism. It bursts the bounds of conventional inquiry to include work with Shakespeare's texts on stage, in prison, in schools and on the web. Challenges us to reflect honestly on what Shakespeare's texts - and "Shakespeare" mean to us.