Honolulu Theatre for Youth's Rap Othello

Abstract

This review of Honolulu Theatre for Youth's rap Othello considers the production in the broader cultural effort to integrate high and popular culture. It studies in particular how rap offers a new, inverted version of "blackface" by reworking the racial, and racist, dynamic of earlier minstrel Shakespeare parodies. More specifically with regard to the production, the review considers how the adaptation tapped into the outsiderliness associated with the alternative discourse of urban youth, not only to reconfigure Shakespeare in a fresh way but also to reassert the cultural power of rap.