Juliet should be a dream role. For a black actor tackling Shakespeare, it can be a nightmare
It’s a young actor’s worst nightmare: to land the role of a lifetime and then find yourself thrown into a media frenzy of vitriol. Over the past two weeks, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has been the target of an intense and hateful backlash after she was cast in an upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland’s Romeo. The critical comments made about her casting are unquestionably racist, colourist and misogynistic, and they have highlighted how difficult it can be to be a dark-skinned black woman in the public eye.
This past summer I played Rosalind in a production of As You Like It, a dream role. It came with huge responsibility, and I can’t imagine also being faced with what Francesca has had to go through recently. Nor have I, as a mixed race, light-skinned woman, suffered these same experiences. Casting has become a political act in film, theatre and TV, and the online discussions that follow casting announcements can become seedbeds of hate that primarily benefit social media companies, driving comments and clicks. Actors become the faces of these online controversies, and while they suffer the consequences, social media companies are never held responsible for the abhorrent comments fuelled by their sites.
Casting is increasingly taking centre stage in public conversations about theatre. We no longer talk about where a play is set, but about who will be playing the leads. Decisions about casting have become the central device in the staging of contemporary productions of classic plays, and are even more important than the director’s concept. This applies to the starry celebrity casting that has become standard in the West End, and to the casting of fresh talents who challenge the perceived identities of canonical characters. When we focus on the latter, it can leave actors from marginalised backgrounds exposed. Without a high-profile CV, their casting becomes reduced exclusively to their identities. This adds fuel to accusations of tokenism and “woke-washing”. Welcome to the culture wars.
There is another important player in these controversies, who often gets left out of the discussions. His name is William Shakespeare, and he has been cast in the role of England. How we populate Shakespeare plays seems to be a heuristic for how we consider “Englishness” in the national psyche. Shakespeare productions hold a mirror up to the times. All-male Elizabethan companies gave way to women taking the stage; black-face Othellos were replaced with actors of colour. Now, we expect racially blind casting, and casting that is conscious of the racial identities of characters. The vitriol that Amewudah-Rivers has suffered is a prime example of how the question of who plays who in a Shakespeare production can become a cipher for the deconstruction or salvation of England’s
traditions.
I encountered this tension when myself and my friend and writing partner Philip Arditti were cast in a racially blind production of Henry V at Shakespeare’s Globe. Henry V is perhaps the most straightforward of Shakespeare’s histories –plays that deal with the ups and downs of the British crown. Set during the hundred years war with France, it follows King Henry, a former party boy who writes himself into history on the battlefield at Agincourt and returns home victorious despite his relatively small army. Phil and I, both outsiders to Britishness in different ways, found ourselves on stage every night portraying soldiers fighting for an England we couldn’t define. Was this progress? This question gnawed at us throughout the run, highlighting our broader experiences of living and working in England today. We talked about rehearsal room microaggressions, undergoing the citizenship process, and whether to stick with our native accents or convert to received pronunciation.
The result of these conversations was a history play of our own: English Kings Killing Foreigners. It is a dark comedy about casting controversy and English cultural identity. We hope that, by sharing our experiences, we can contribute to the discourse surrounding Shakespeare and England in a way that takes the focus off the actors on the stage and places it back where it belongs: the wounds that still fester on the battlefield that is Shakespeare.
Hundreds of actors have signed an open letter calling on the Jamie Lloyd Company that is staging this new production of Romeo and Juliet to ensure Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is properly supported, and the production company has said its cast will be protected “at all costs”. This must go beyond lip service. It is vital that people with experience of being marginalised are protected and supported in their places of work. Surely that is something that ought to be a part of what “Britishness” involves.
Nina Bowers is an actor and theatremaker. English Kings Killing Foreigners runs from 23 April to 11 May at Camden People’s theatre.
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