Shakespeare in Activism: Podcasts, Processions and the Public’s Richard II
2023; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17450918.2023.2171709
ISSN1745-0926
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoABSTRACTHow can Shakespearean action become Shakespearean activism? How may we, as teachers, scholars and artists, bring Shakespeare's characters, language and plots to serve our commitments to social justice? Is it even possible to (re)claim Shakespeare's plays and poetry from their historical use as tools of oppression disguised as universal truths and facilitate their present and future use as tools of witnessing and advocacy? This essay joins efforts to answer these questions by attending to podcasts of Shakespeare performance. Focusing on podcasts as a sonic medium and distributed technology, it argues that Shakespeare performance podcasts can contribute to the creation of (what Sara Ahmed calls) wilful subjects who protest against systemic dispossession and for societal repair. Podcasts' unique characteristics – principally auditory, asynchronous and mobile – advance rather than interrupt podcasts' capacity to create conscientiousness and community. These same characteristics also bear similarities to early modern sound theory and processional practice that render podcasts strikingly suitable for mobilising Shakespeare to the aims of social justice. Turning to The Public Theater's 2020 audio production of Richard II, this essay proposes that podcasts make possible the construction of judicious audiences whose circumspection moves from individual, private listening to collective, public advocacy.KEYWORDS: Social justiceaudio productionCOVID-19 pandemicearly modern English theatre AcknowledgementsThe author is grateful for conversations during the development of this article with Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Katherine Gillen, Erika T. Lin, Donovan Sherman, Stephanie Shirilan, and Elizabeth Williamson, as well as the support and feedback of the special issue editors, Maria Shmygol and Eleanor Rycroft, and two anonymous reviewers. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the Premodern Performance Cultures Network conference and the Shakespeare Association of America seminar 'Early Modern Theatre Studies and Podcasting', led by Sheila Coursey and Jess Hamlet.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Among recent examples, consult the articles in Cahill and Hall, 'Shakespeare and Black America'; Brown and Young, 'Shakespeare and Social Justice'; and Adams, 'We Acknowledge Ours', in which Dadabhoy, 'Required Reading', summarizes equally vital non-print sources: 'Over the past three years, critical race studies in Shakespeare [often referred to as #ShakeRace, the popular social media hashtag created by Kim F. Hall] has become more central to scholarly conversations in the field [of early modern studies] through symposia such as The Globe Theatre's 'Shakespeare and Race Festival' (2018), the RaceB4Race bi-annual conference (2019), and increased attention directed to the topic at the Shakespeare Association of America's annual conference'. Dadabhoy's essay includes links to these initiatives at The Globe (https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/seasons/shakespeare-and-race/) and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (https://acmrs.asu.edu/RaceB4Race).2 Again, to take but one recent example, the contributors to Brown and Young, 'Shakespeare and Social Justice' consider film, television, and theatre productions to 'address this moment of crisis and of transformative possibility' (Brown and Young, '(Un)Just Acts', 529).3 Ahmed, Living, 70. Also consult Ahmed, Willful.4 Ahmed, Living, 66.5 Ibid., 82.6 Ibid., 83.7 Ibid., 87.8 Stoever, Sonic Color Line, 7.9 Pettman, Sonic Intimacy, 81.10 James, 'Attention' (original emphasis).11 Ibid. (original emphasis).12 Kimbro, Noschka, and Way, 'Lend Us Your Earbuds'.13 Working at the juncture of scholarly and embodied research, I use first-person plural pronouns ('we', 'us') when discussing the experience of listening to a podcast. Moreover, noting that listening is (also) feeling, I wish to make clear that podcasts are not inherently ableist and engage Deaf and hearing impaired audiences.14 Aebischer, Spectatorship, 10.15 Aebischer, Viral, 20 (original emphasis).16 James, 'Attention' (original emphasis).17 Olmsted, Tools.18 E.g. Demby and Meraji, Code Switch, and Terry, Karim-Cooper and Greenberg, Such Stuff.19 Low and Myhill, Imagining the Audience; Craik and Pollard, Shakespearean Senses; Smith, Shakespeare/Sense.20 Deutermann, Listening; Smith, Acoustic.21 Hutson, 'Rethinking Foucault'; Geng, Communal Justice, 5 (with reference to Smith, Acoustic) and passim.22 Bloom, Voice; Brown and Stoever, '"Blanched"'; Cortes, 'Acousmatic'; Ndiaye, 'Blackspeak'; Wilbourne and Cusick, Acoustemologies; Wood, Sounding Otherness.23 Greenberg, Metropolitan Tragedy, 108–38; also Greenberg, 'Tragedy and Knowledge'.24 Demby and Meraji, 'All That Glisters'; Espinosa, '"Nation"'.25 Turan and Papp, Free for All. For recent examples, consult Espinosa, 'Traversing'; Henderson, '"Hard Hearts"', 180–86; Lathrop, 'For Everybody'; and Santos, 'Review of Much Ado About Nothing'.26 Harris, 'Reflections', 2.27 Readers may access information about the production, including cast and crew, and additional resources at the play's website (The Public Theater, 'About').28 Stephens, 'Decolonizing'; cf. Kim, 'Review', 118–19.29 Ndiaye coins the term blackspeak to denote a 'technique [that] codifies the sounds of Afro-descendants' speech forms for stage purposes' ('Blackspeak', 138).30 Hill, Pageantry; Hanawalt, Ceremony; Finlayson and Sen, Civic Performance.31 Greenberg, 'Crossing from Stage to Scaffold'; Metropolitan Tragedy, esp. 56–66; and 'Processions and History'.32 Greenberg, 'Playing (in) the Streets'.33 In support of open-access editions, I cite Mowat and Werstine's Folger Shakespeare Library edition of Richard II that is available online free of cost; hereafter cited in text by act, scene and line(s).34 Rackin, 'Role of the Audience', 262.35 Doty, 'Shakespeare's Richard II'; Clegg, 'Reading Politics'.36 Shewring, Shakespeare in Performance, 180, qtd. Wilkinson, 'Richard II', 45.37 Marius, 'Shakespeare on the Radio?' (n.p., original emphasis). With that said, as podcast host Vinson Cunningham put it, '[I]n a summer of unprecedented social and political change, the play's themes feel especially resonant' (The Public Theater and WYNC, 'Episode 1', 00:03:37-00:03:40).38 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in NYC between March and May of 2020, 'COVID-19 incidence and related hospitalization and mortality were elevated among Black and Hispanic persons and among residents of high-poverty neighborhoods' (Thompson, 'COVID-19 Outbreak').39 My transcriptions are based on The Public's closed-captioned videos and include speakers, lines and sound effects absent from both Shakespeare's play and Ali's script. Readers may listen to the scene and/or read along at The Public Theater and WNYC, 'Episode 4', 13:42–16:35; hereafter cited in text by minute and second. Cf. Ali, 'Richard II', 67–68.40 Compare the reading of Cleopatra's maritime procession in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in Shirilan, 'Impressions of Liveness'.41 Consult Meek, '"Rue"' on elicitations of sympathy from audiences within and of the play.42 The Public Theater and WYNC, 'Episode 2', 00:51:02–00:51:12.43 Thompson, Passing Strange, 92, 73; also Thompson, 'Practicing'.44 'Your Voice'.45 Harris, 'Reflection', 9.46 Thomson, 'Window Scenes'.47 Stoever, Sonic, 11–13 and passim.48 Gonzalez, 'Why Do Rich People'.49 Meljac, 'Windows'.50 Meek, '"Rue"', 137.51 What the Folger editors render 'Rased' is spelled 'Raz'd' in all seventeenth-century folios and 'Rac't' in the 1598, 1608, and 1615 quartos of Richard II. My list of meanings of and acoustic associations with these verbs draws on OED and LEME.52 Ali, 'Richard II', 35.53 Kalas, Frame, 192; Bevington, Richard II, 3.1.24n.54 Kalas, Frame, 192.55 The Public Theater and WYNC, 'Episode 2', 00:53:15–00:56:38. Lathrop, 'For Everybody', describes how The Public's Mobile Unit's 2019 production of Measure for Measure brought attention to violence against Black women in the U.S.56 3.1.18, 19–20, 26–27; Ali, 'Richard II', 35.57 In addition to the scholarly-activist work cited above (especially fn. 1), readers will find valuable Hendricks, 'Coloring'; Brown, 'Hood'; and Coles, Hall, and Thompson, 'BlacKKKShakespearean'.58 Greenberg, 'Podcast'.
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