Race, Post-Race, Shakespeare, and South Africa

Authors

  • Adele Seeff University of Maryland

Abstract

In a newly democratic South Africa, the South African Broadcasting Company commissioned updated re-tellings of Shakespeares plays using local settings, vernacular languages, and black actors. They sought local programming that could be projected into a global entertainment market. These stories would help heal a nation's trauma and provide a broader representation of black South African scriptwriters, directors, and actors speaking African vernacular. I focus largely on two re-versionings of Macbeth (a King Lear and a Romeo and Juliet were also produced) to argue that these made-for-television appropriations are reclamation projects. Each employs different filmic and rhetorical strategies to represent a utopian post-racial world using the once imperial icon, Shakespeare, as a point of access to global audiences. Thoroughly exploiting Shakespeare's cultural capital, these programs show us that "African" indigeneity and identity are shifting and fluid, and infused with desire; that discourse(s) can be democratized but that hierarchies persist; and that strategies of identity formation remain hostage to apartheid's continuing afterlife. These Africanized re-versionings surrogate Shakespeare's text to dramatize and experiment with linguistic, national, and gender identities.

Author Biography

Adele Seeff, University of Maryland

Adele Seeff earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland in Renaissance drama and the history of Shakespeare production. From 1986 to 2011, she directed the multidisciplinary Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland, developing humanities programs for regional and international audiences, and winning awards for service and for building school-university relations. She has co-edited seven conference proceedings volumes associated with the "Attending to Early Modern Women" conference series, and co-founded and co-edited the first scholarly journal in the field, Early Modern Women. She has published on Shakespeare and performance and is currently revising a book on Shakespeare performance in South Africa. Courses include Shakespeare performance on stage, screen, and television.

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Published

2017-09-01