Week 7 - Jacqueline Malenke - Moving On From the Bard

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with William Shakespeare. On the one hand, his works are a classic and integral part of theatre and theatre making. However, on the other, it seems that most of his plays have incredibly dated values ranging from intense sexism to blatant racism. I get that it is the sign of the times, but it is incredibly disappointing that some directors and producers try to "maintain the history" when producing a Shakespearean play.

Hamlet has a soft spot in my heart specifically. It was fall 2011, and I had just been accepted to UC Riverside for their general theatre program. I was too anxious to actually audition for one of the two productions holding auditions at the time, so I decided to sign up for a crew position. I ended up being assigned as the spotlight operator, and my life was completely changed. The lighting designer of the production was Ben Tusher (a UCI alum!), and he really was the first person to introduce me to the lighting world. Below is a photo from the production. 

My second and final Shakespearean acting experience was in a production of The Tempest also produced by UC Riverside. This production was the epitome of disappointment in that the director wanted to "honor the production as it was written". This means that she had only cast one female person in the single female role of the production, and all of the other parts were cast as men with the exception of the Boatswains. She then added "spirits" into the production to help with the magical world we were creating. This meant that for the first scene, I was a Boatswain, and the rest of the production I dawned a robe and flitted around the stage doing absolutely nothing. As you can see in the photo below, my job for this production was to watch Miranda and Ferdinand play chess. 

Shakespeare isn't all bad. I love the quote from Act 2, Scene 7 of As You Like It that says, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." I quite agree with this sentiment, that we are all playing parts (not necessarily in a negative way). However, we do have different masks or facades we put on for different groups of people. This quote also shows that life in it of itself is incredibly theatrical. 

I know that theatre will never kill off William Shakespeare and his works, but I do hope that the theatre community as a whole starts to cast and create these productions with a 2020 lens. I want to see black bodies, transgender/non-binary bodies, and female bodies in these roles created for white men! I want to see the diversity in the world be brought to life through a Shakespeare play.