Shakespeare in Black and White

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2015

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Our own voices with our own tongues" —CORIOLANUS (2.3.47) In one of two podcasts on Shakespeare and the African American experience, "Our Own Voices with Our Own Tongues" revisits the era when Jim Crow segregation was at its height, from a few years after the end of the Civil War to the 1940s and 1950s. Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks about black Americans and Shakespeare in that time with two scholars of the period, Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson. The discussion ranges from landmark performances—Orson Welles's Depression-era all-black MACBETH and Paul Robeson's Othello— to powerful, though less familiar, stories from the Folger's hometown of Washington, DC. It also draws in later questions about African Americans and Shakespeare, including the role of race in casting choices to this day. Marvin MacAllister is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of South Carolina. Ayanna Thompson is a professor of English at George Washington University and a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. ----------------- From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. We also had help from Dr. James Hatch, co-author with the late Errol Hill of "A History of African American Theatre"; Connie Winston; Anthony Hill and Douglas Barnett, co-authors of "The Historical Dictionary of African American Theater"; and Jobie Sprinkle and Tena Simmons at radio station WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:07.0	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.
0:10.0	The title of this podcast is Our Own Voices with Our Own Tongues.
0:15.0	It's one of two podcasts looking at the African American experience with the performance of Shakespeare.
0:29.5	In another podcast, we explored the extraordinary history of African-Americans who performed Shakespeare well before the Civil War,
0:38.3	and a wealth of interesting stories about African-American performances of and perspectives on Shakespeare in the last 60 years or so. And to be honest, that's an approach to the topic that's fairly common.
0:42.3	But you might notice it leaves out something big.
0:45.3	Close to a century, from after the Civil War through the Jim Crow era of segregation to the 1940s and 50s.
0:52.3	A lot of that territory has been explored far less often,
0:56.7	and of course that makes it all the more interesting. As we began to look into that time period,
1:02.3	we discovered some wonderfully rich material, and we brought together two of the handful of scholars
1:08.0	who have delved into it. One is Iyana Thompson, professor of English
1:12.7	at George Washington University and a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America.
1:18.8	The other is Marvin McAllister, Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University
1:24.5	of South Carolina. They are interviewed by Rebecca Shear.
1:28.3	So Marvin McAllister, I know that after the Civil War, and for a few years before the Jim Crow
1:34.3	laws came into force, there was a period when African Americans in the South not only voted,
1:38.3	but they even held political positions, including two U.S. Senators.
1:42.3	Now, we know Shakespeare was popular in America in the
1:44.9	19th century, and it made me wonder whether there were black Shakespeare troops during this period.
1:51.0	I mean, I gather the answer is murky at best for those years, no?
1:54.3	Well, I can't say definitely there weren't, but I just know that the majority of a black
	...

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