Posted on 11/05/2016 6:05:26 PM PDT by Loyalist
A Queen’s University student theatre company has cancelled a production of Shakespeare’s Othello set to open this month following an outcry over the decision to cast a white woman in the title role of a black man.
“For the safety and mental health of our entire team we unfortunately feel the need to suspend our production of Othello,” the artistic directors wrote on Facebook Wednesday. They subsequently apologized to the Kingston, Ont., university’s black community for what they called an “oppressive” artistic decision.
After September auditions, Queen’s Vagabond Theatre made what its directors acknowledged was a risky decision: Lauren Broadhurst, a white woman, was chosen to play the title character. Since Paul Robeson played him on Broadway in 1943, Othello has typically been performed by a black actor.
Maggie Purdon, the play’s director, said she researched the play extensively before the casting and interpreted the text as being about the struggles of an outsider rather than about race.
.... Queen’s students began taking to social media to denounce the Othello casting, and Purdon said the criticism “started to blow up” this week.
“I was feeling super anxious. I wasn’t getting any sleep. It was making me feel sick to my stomach because people were upset, and nobody was really being informed,” she said.
....
In an apology posted on Facebook Thursday, Purdon and Rossiter said they never intended “to have people of colour feel as though their identities were being invalidated. … Theatre is a form of art, but it becomes unacceptable when artistic decisions are oppressive.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Better not tell the snowflakes that the performer cast as Peter Pan often lacks an actual peter.
Oppressive? No.
Ludicrous? Yup.
Only blacks can play Othello.
That would come as news to Shakespeare.
Talk about cultural appropriation.
Where is it written Othello must be a black male?
Male is a must, in my mind. But a lesbian Othello.....well it is the 21st century.
I’m sick and tired of PC.
Liberals aren’t really in favor of breaking new ground.
When a victim group is offended. Enough already.
I didn’t know artistic decisions are subject to the bully veto.
Too bad Queen’s apologized instead of holding their ground and telling the critics to stuff it.
So much for presenting Othello in a new light.
Funny, I don’t see them getting tweaked when Black men are chosen to play traditional White roles.
He would not be cast today in the role because he was a white man.
We can’t have white people culturally oppressing blacks.
Lost in the uproar over Othello is the fact the play’s author was a 16th Century Englishman.
Well I’m not surprised at the casting. Othello is about a man’s obsession with a woman — but these days predatory lesbianism will probably sell tickets.
Liberals are the people for whom race and sex are more determinative of human identity than a person’s values.
And you’re not allowed to question it.
Well, there would be plenty of traditional black roles if the evil white europeans hadn’t ignored the multi milleniums worth of african literature...ohhh wait
They should have just let them run it and have everyone think it was horrible.
In this case its about a woman’s obsession with being treated as an outsider.
What we have are stupid people who can’t see the irony of their refusal to allow a new interpretation of Othello to be presented to the audience.
Cultural politics is like the Inquisition.
But on the other hand, men and boys played female roles when the plays were originally staged, and cross-dressing both ways is a common plot element.
I agree it's stupid, though.
He is described as “Black” in the play but that does not mean Negro. He is a Moor and they were more kin to the Irish than Sub Saharan Africans.
That’s pretty accurate from my perspective.
The Director couldn’t see that conflict in advance?
This is one of the few Shakeperean plays to put a black man in the title role, perhaps the only one. She should have known this would ruffle feathers. I brave director would have done the play anyway, absorbing all the anger as free advertising. As it is now, the entire cast has wasted their time rehearsing. The stage hands probably feel the same way.
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