Flipping the Coin on Colorblind Casting?

Richard Rose on Directing The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

Cluster: Directors

This interview with Richard Rose concerns the 2007 Merchant of Venice he directed at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. With Native actor Graham Greene playing Shylock, the production held the potential to extend the work of recent Merchant stagings that have purposefully cast performers of color as a way to examine legacies of colonial oppression and racism far removed from early modern England. However, the production made little obvious connection between Shylock's Jewishness and Greene's Native identity and, as Rose relates, although the actor's own experience of racism was something he could draw on himself to inform the role, they did not discuss this experience explicitly during rehearsal. In the interview, Rose further touches on his decision to have Greene's Shylock grow more outwardly Orthodox during the play, the production's explicit use of religious symbolism to amplify the profound religious antagonism amongst the characters, and the difference between staging Merchant at Stratford and producing contemporary drama that deals with historical instances of officially sanctioned anti-Semitism.