I don't know: I always though he was a pretty decent coach.
Posted on 08/14/2009 5:59:02 AM PDT by flowerplough
Romeo is black. And no one cares. While this might be big news in America, no one in London is making any fuss about Adetomiwa Edun in Romeo & Juliet, playing through August 23 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Here, it’s just damn good theater. No nuance, no emotional triggers playing on Edun’s ethnicity.
I admit that I was excited and skeptical about it, feeling very American in my belief that this was astonishing news and curious about how the Globe Theatre’s audiences would respond. I watched with a grin, caught the Bard’s lines flying and peeped that black man kissing a white woman on stage, out in the open for the Globe to see. And my perception of racial politics, which is a vicious mixture of pride, historical memory and fear, ebbed and flowed, but never washed up onto the stage.
Today, like in any other theater, there is always opportunity for race to play center stage. But not in this production of Romeo & Juliet. After the play, I walked out into the London night feeling like they had triumphed over me, the naïve American who wanted those winks because I was used to American entertainment playing to our perceptions of race. But I was denied that quick satisfaction and found the true essence of Shakespeare.
Precisely.
I don't know: I always though he was a pretty decent coach.
Wow. Sad story, indeed. :(
Next thing you know Ralph Kramden from the Honeymooners is going to be black.
Does anyone really care?
well, then there’s that! :)
My girl's high school drama class had a black Romeo about three years ago and the cast and audience was at least 80% white.
The only thing everybody said was stuff like “Darn good play.”
Well, I am not worked up about a black man kissing a white woman on stage. My real fear would be if they went back to the way it was in Shakespeare’s time ... all male actors. Bleagh!
Somebody tell me, who are the ones who are all wrapped up in race?
Wow, I wasn’t talking about RAPE. I was talking about people consenting to be together. There are alot of white women who pursue black men, because that is their preference. I live in a military town where there are oogobs of interracial marriages, the majority of which are white women married to black men.
Othello was never Negroid.
he was a Moor...a north African Caucasoid
Romeo was a Montague Italian in the late 1500s per Bill Shakespeare (another cracker btw) and to make Romeo black is just stupid and is of course political and historically inaccurate.
If this writer thinks Britain doesn’t have race issues then he’s one ill informed play attendee.
The need to make white characters black in historical context is because of the actual dearth of actual black historical figures in much written context period.
That is what happens when a group is cut off from the developing world for however many 10,000s of years since the Sahara went too dry. I mean my bad. I’m sorry. You guys got stuck and lagged as a group and now we are all supposed to feel bad about it and let you roll all over us and whine like little babies and we felt so bad we have now elected the Demon-In Chief to make up for it all.
How come Indigenous peoples in the Americas don’t get so much indulgence and pandered to?
They have been on basically the same fair ride.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Othello was a “moor”? I thought he was a “moop”!
Or if Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker’s Guide was black.
I was thinking about a reversed Othello the other day, Othello as a white mercenary to a black African dictator.
I think it would be interesting, but try to find a set of black actors who would be willing to take part in it.
Doubt it. Get over yourself, Jason. You're just another dork who couldn't get a real job irrelevant of skin color.
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