How Should You Perform and Watch Othello and Hairspray in a Country Where You Could Never Hire Black Actors? Shakespeare and Casting in Japan

This paper discusses how Japanese theatres have handled race in a country where hiring black actors to perform Shakespeare’s plays is not an option. In English-speaking regions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, it is common to hire a black actor for Othello’s title role. Blackface is increasingly unacceptable because it reminds viewers of derogatory stereotypes in minstrel shows, and it deprives black actors of employment opportunities. However, the situation is different in regions where viewers are unfamiliar with this Anglo-US trend. In Japan, a country regarded as so homogeneous that its census does not have any questions about ethnicity, it is almost impossible to hire a skilled black actor to play a title role in a Shakespearean play, and few theatre companies would consider such an idea. In this cultural context, there is an underlying question of how Japanese-speaking theatre should present plays dealing with racial or cultural differences. This paper seeks to understand the recent approaches that Japanese theatre has adopted to address race in Shakespearean plays by analysing several productions of Othello and comparing them with other major non-Shakespearean productions.

Experiments in cinematic biography: Ken Gampu’s early life in the cinema

Contemporary scholarship on South African film is yet to address the participation of Black actors in film production, exhibition and publicity. The actors’ interpretive roles in the films, their memories and experiences, and the contradictions of their participation in colonial films and beyond, form part of an unexplored and hidden archive in South African film scholarship. This article focuses on Ken Gampu’s early life in the cinema by reflecting on his participation in two films: a western The Hellions and the drama Dingaka. Gampu was a well-known South African actor and also the first Black actor from that country to succeed in Hollywood. This article proposes an experimental methodology of life-writing called ‘cinematic biography’. It shows that the cinematic lives of the marginalized and colonized actors harbour critical potential in enriching the critical perspectives on the cinema and cinematic cultures in South Africa and beyond.

The Metamorphoses of 'Orfeu da Conceição' by Vinicius de Moraes

This text is a hermeneutic exercise about one of the paradigmatic works of Vinicius de Moraes, Orfeu da Conceição. This plays opens a partnership between the poet and the composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, which was fruitful and unique for Brazilian arts. Orfeu da Conceição is also paradigmatic because it is the first work to bring black actors to the stages of the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro. Orfeu da Conceição led to one of the films that most contributed, positively or negatively, to the international image of Brazil in the second half of the 20th century, the award-winning Orpheus Negro, by Marcel Camus. The text will notice how many of the ideas and representations of the favela were already visible in the Brazilian popular repertoire prior to the composition of the play. The idea, in general, is to observe how, in addition to its poetic-musical quality, Orfeu da Conceição can also serve as a reflection on how we represent and see favelas in the urban context, both in 1956 and today.

Shuffling On

This chapter discusses the aftermath of the success of Shuffle Along; Eubie’s ten-year relationship with lead actress Lottie Gee and the strains it put on his marriage and his partnership with Sissle; and the first touring companies. It also describes how Josephine Baker joined the main company in Boston and made a success as a comic chorus girl and the troupe’s grand reception in Chicago after their successful Boston run. Furthermore, the chapter examines white critics’ discomfort with the success enjoyed by the show’s writers and their concerns about black actors breaking from stereotypical roles; Blake’s triumphant return to Baltimore and his mother’s continuing disapproval of his secular career; Sissle and Blake’s recordings for Victor Records; growing tensions with Miller and Lyles that led to a breakup of their partnership; and how Sissle and Blake’s next show, In Bamville, hit the road to mixed receptions.

Best Supporting Actors

After many years of racial derogation or absence, Casablanca and Gone with the Wind are films that offered larger and more representative roles for black actors, in line with the greater involvement African Americans experienced in American culture with the coming of World War II. While Sam (Dooley Wilson) is not the focus of Casablanca, his role in the film goes far beyond earlier roles for black people, and his friendship is essential in shaping Rick (Humphrey Bogart), the film’s hero. While he disappears in the last part of the film, Sam is a character who makes Rick’s transformation possible, and points to the coming awareness of America’s multicultural reality.

Cross-Cultural Casting in Britain: The Path to Inclusion, 1972-2012

This essay uses three productions to chart the progress of the integration of performers of African and Afro-Caribbean descent in professional British Shakespearean theatre. It argues that the three productions―from 1972, 1988 and 2012―each use cross-cultural casting in ways that illuminate the phases of inclusion for British performers of colour. Peter Coe’s 1972 The Black Macbeth was staged at a time when an implicit colour bar in Shakespeare was in place, but black performers were included in the production in ways that reinforced dominant racial stereotypes. Temba’s 1988 Romeo and Juliet used its Cuban setting to challenge stereotypes by presenting black actors in an environment that was meant to show them as “real human beings”. The RSC’s 2012 Julius Caesar was a black British staging of Shakespeare that allowed black actors to use their cultural heritages to claim Shakespeare, signalling the performers’ greater inclusion into British Shakespearean theatre.

‘Beyond Ethnicity’ or a Return to Type? Bande de filles/Girlhood and the Politics of Blackness in Contemporary French Cinema

This chapter aims to promote an analysis of black female subjectivity as a means of considering the potential difficulties and contradictions that emerge in reading Bande de filles (Sciamma, 2014) as an example of post-migratory cinema. Drawing on Anthias’ (1998) notion of diasporic identity moving ‘beyond ethnicity’ as both lived experience and mediated reality through cinematic representation, the chapter will question how ethnic origins as a marker of difference are displaced by gender and, to a lesser extent, class in Bande de filles. Finally, the chapter will explore whether the proposed move ‘beyond ethnicity’ simply masks the same problems of stereotyping and marginalization that have traditionally been found in French cinema when black actors appear on the screen. Such questions lead to a related discussion of agency for ‘post-migratory’ artists and performers on both sides of the camera and the production of French ‘national’ identity in contemporary French cinema.

Hollywood Shuffle and Bamboozled

On the heels of the expansion of comic rage into art forms beyond literature and stand-up, this chapter examines the presence of comic rage in films directed by African Americans. After the Blaxploitation Era and the surge of black films and television shows in the 1990s, these films critiqued the problematic representations of blackness that have been imbedded in two of the most popular mediums of the second half of the twentieth century. While Hollywood Shuffle castigates the limited roles African Americans are given in film, Bamboozled exposes the virtual return to blackface minstrelsy that black actors are expected to accept in an allegedly more diverse TV landscape. Both works wrestle with questions of authenticity that are imposed by mainstream society or blindly adopted by African Americans responding with simplistic “real” yet destructive counter-representations.

West Indian Interventions at the BBC

“West Indian interventions at the BBC” examines the Corporation’s sponsorship of and collaborations with Trinidadian singer Edric Connor, Trinidadian talent agent Pearl Connor, and British Guianese actor and singer Cy Grant. Edric Connor used the BBC’s mandate to educate and uplift viewer and listeners to promote Caribbean culture, history and artists. Pearl Connor channelled the Corporation’s demand for colonial talent into the business of professionalizing and directing West Indian performers in London. She created opportunities for her clients by helping expand their niche and persuading producers to cast black actors in a wider range of roles. Cy Grant had the voice, looks, and charm to secure a long-running presence on the Tonight program. Their success highlights a moment when the BBC was open to a progressive vision of the nation’s future. Ultimately, however, the cultural priorities of these artists diverged from the Corporation, a fact that was strikingly apparent by the 1960s. Only then did the disillusionment so characteristic of later generations of ‘black British’ artists become pronounced.