Drew Lichtenberg, Who’s Afraid of William Shakespeare? NYTimes, Oct. 21, 2024.
How real is this Shakespeare shrinkage? American Theatre magazine, which collects data from more than 500 theaters, publishes a list of the most performed plays each season. In 2023-24, there were 40 productions of Shakespeare’s plays. There were 52 in 2022-23 and 96 in 2018-19. Over the past five years, Shakespeare’s presence on American stages has fallen a staggering 58 percent. At many formerly Shakespeare-only theaters, the production of the Bard’s plays has dropped to as low as less than 20 percent of the repertory.
Why might American theaters be running away from Shakespeare? [...]
Over the past 10 years, as American politics and culture have grown more contentious, Shakespeare has become increasingly politicized. In 2017, the Public Theater’s Delacorte production of “Julius Caesar” depicted the assassination of a Donald Trump-like Caesar. The production elicited protests from Trump supporters, and corporate sponsors pulled their funding. Shakespeare is also under assault from the progressive left. In July 2020, the theater activist collective “We See You, White American Theater” turned the industry upside down with demands for a “bare minimum of 50 percent BIPOC representation in programming and personnel,” referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color. Though Shakespeare’s name went unmentioned, his work remained the white, male, European elephant in the room. [...]
Given contemporary political divisions, when issues such as a woman’s right to control her own body, the legacy of colonialism and anti-Black racism dominate headlines, theater producers may well be repeating historical patterns. There have been notably few productions in recent years of plays such as, “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest” or “Othello.” They may well hit too close to home.
Hmmmm.... Shakespeare has long served as something of a focal point or Schelling point in the (Western) literary system, a common point of reference. Is his work being displaced from that role? Note that Lichtenberg points out, “There is a long history of theaters running from Shakespeare during times of political division or uncertainty.” Still, where does this process go? What if there is no restoration to the center? Will Shakespeare be replaced? By whom? Or is the system transforming or even dissolving?
I note that Lichtenberg's article seems to be about professional performances in America. What about performances in secondary schools, colleges and universities? What about performances in England, all of Britain, Western Europe, the world?
The news of Shakespeare’s death is greatly exaggerated. The National Endowment for the Arts program Shakespeare in American Communities has been, is, and will continue to deliver professional Shakespeare to tens of thousands of high school age students annually. The U.S. Department of Education is supporting the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’s national Shakespeare and Social Justice curriculum development initiative for teachers and students throughout the United States. The National Endowment for the Arts in collaboration with the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles also created an 18 minute inspirational documentary called ‘Why Shakespeare?’ which is on the shelves of 40,000 libraries throughout the United States and is available on YouTube. Shakespeare is not on the wane. Shakespeare leadership is in transition. But make no mistake, the plays speak and resonate as profoundly and deeply as ever.
ReplyDeleteBen Donenberg, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles
DeleteThanks for your comments.
DeleteAnother spin to give this data would be that it reflects a resurgence of contemporary American screenwriting, so that theaters don't need to resort to the standby of Shakespeare when there is nothing better to put on. Still, it is odd that in the "Great American Partisan Divorce", the liberal are getting Shakespeare, which the intellectual right has pressed as a core of Western culture.
ReplyDeleteThe left-right thing is interesting. I wonder about the readership and influence of Harold Bloom's book on Shakespeare. I have the impression that his politics were some flavor of leftist. But I can imagine that many of the readers of that book were (culturally) conservative – I also wonder how many read the whole thing (I've certainly not).
DeleteCulturally, Shakespeare is an odd fit with secular democracy. Elizabethan England was not a land of religious freedom. And the difference between aristocrats a commoners was assumed to be intrinsic and not a matter of historical and social contingency – nature/nurture received extensive discussion in "The Winter's Tale."