Product Description: Notions, constructions, and performances of race continue to define the contemporary American experience, including our conceptions, performances, and employments of Shakespeare. Passing Strange examines the contact zones between American constructions of Shakespeare and American constructions of race by asking: How is Shakespeare's universalism constructed within explicit discussions and debates about racial identity? Of what benefit is the promotion of Shakespeare and Shakespearean programs to incarcerated and/or at-risk persons of color? Are they aesthetic, moral, or linguistic? Do Shakespeare's plays need to be edited, appropriated, revised, updated, or rewritten to affirm racial equality and relevance? Do the answers to these questions impact our understanding of authorship, authority, and authenticity? A book that does not shy away from controversial topics or unconventional approaches, Passing Strange examines a wide range of contemporary texts and performances, including contemporary films, novels, theatrical productions, YouTube videos, and arts education programs...read more

Product Description: Weyward Macbeth, a volume of entirely new essays, provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'  has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial  constructions...read more

Product Description: Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage provides the first sustained reading of Restoration plays through a performance theory lens. This approach shows that an analysis of the conjoined performances of torture and race not only reveals the early modern interest in the nature of racial identity, but also how race was initially coded in a paradoxical fashion as both essentially fixed and socially constructed...read more

Product Description: The systematic practice of non-traditional or "colorblind" casting began with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in the 1950s. Although colorblind casting has been practiced for half a century now, it still inspires vehement controversy and debate...read more