The Latin Implosion by / Melissa Hillman

Dual controversies over Latino representation in theatre have sparked a firestorm of responses recently. The first issue arose when TheaterWorks in Hartford, CT staged a production of the Stephen Adly Guirgis play "The Motherfucker With the Hat" with two white actors in their 20s playing the two Nuyorican leads in their 30s, and didn't even audition Latino actors in Hartford (a city with an enormous Latino population) or in NYC. Guirgis attempted to address this issue privately with the theatre and the director, was stonewalled and finally went public with his disapproval. You can read about that here and here.

Simultaneously, Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC staged a "Much Ado About Nothing" set in 1930s Cuba that drew criticism from all over the country, particularly over the characters Hugh Oatcake and George Seacole, who were renamed for this production "Juan Arroz" and "Jose Frijoles." An excellent write-up of that controversy can be found here. To the company's credit, STC eventually changed the names back to Hugh Oatcake and George Seacole. In the midst of all this, however, Hannah J. Hessel, STC's audience enrichment manager, penned a defense of sorts on STC's blog that sets up a troubling false dichotomy.

She asks, are there room for stereotypes, even racial stereotypes, in theatre? My response: Not the way you guys did it, hon. Hessel's right that it makes an enormous difference if you're commenting on those stereotypes rather than reinscribing them, but it's clear from its own admission that STC wasn't doing that in the least. And what does she mean by "room for"? There's "room for" whatever you like—no one's going to stop you. But when you stage racism, people are going to call you out on it, in the same way people will call you out on anything you stage that sucks.

And here comes the false dichotomy: She goes on to wonder if preserving racial stereotypes in Shakespeare preserves the author's intent, or should we, as artists, be "better than Shakespeare" and take those stereotypes out. This is not only a false dichotomy, but also an exceptionally superficial understanding of these issues.

Yes, Shakespeare did indeed use racist stereotyping, but it's nonsense to posit that you're preserving the playwright's intent by doing so 400 years later. The cultural import of racism has changed significantly in the past 400 years. You're not preserving the intent of the playwright by preserving something that has entirely changed its cultural value over the past four centuries from something completely acceptable to something repugnant. Audiences today will read racism completely differently than they did 400 years ago, so what you're doing by "preserving" that racism is aggressively changing the narrative to something that is without question against the playwright's intent.

You have to have some measure of common sense when discussing the "intent" of historical playwrights. Shakespeare's intent was to stage each and every one of these plays with nothing but white men and boys. Are we therefore going to stage a scene between Othello and Desdemona with a white man in blackface and an underage boy in a dress?

Shakespeare's intent that the characters this director renamed "Jose Frijoles" and "Juan Arroz" be funny is much, much more important than that the humor stem from racism. Shakespeare gives us so much more to work with than that. (In fact, Shakespeare's names are regional jokes, not racial jokes, so STC's renaming becomes even more aggressive in that light.) Losing the racism, which will be read by a 2011 American audience completely differently than an English Renaissance audience, preserves the more important intent of two that are now completely at odds.

Editing out racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism in 21st century productions where the inclusion of such subverts Shakespeare's original intent does not make us "better than Shakespeare." There's no question that Shakespeare would have done the same, considering his well-documented willingness to edit his work and his desire to have his work be generally well-received. In doing so, we are genuinely preserving the author's intent, and preserving how Shakespeare wanted these plays to be received. And be clear what I mean by "where the inclusion subverts the intent." You can't edit the racism out of "Othello" or "The Merchant of Venice" because it would dismantle the meaning of the plays, but you are better preserving Shakespeare's intent by editing out Lysander insulting Hermia by calling her an "Ethiop," or all of the many times "Jew" is used as a random insult, if you plan to stage these plays for a 21st century American audience. Shakespeare's intent, or the intent of any playwright, isn't just what the playwright means to say, but how the playwright means the audience to hear it. When the playwright and the audience are 400 years apart, you must carefully consider both sides of this equation.

It's silly to treat these works as if they are uneditable Holy Writ; as if the entire culture, and thus the very meaning of many words, lines and phrases, has not changed so dramatically. Editing preserves intent. It doesn't subvert intent or make us entitled jerks trying to be "better than Shakespeare." We're not going to be better than Big Will. But we can be responsible stewards of his work, and that includes maintaining his intent as best we can within the culture as it changes.

Melissa Hillman is the artistic director of Impact Theatre in Berkeley. She also offers audition coaching; visit melissahillman.com.

The views represented in this Chatterbox Art & Opinion post are those of the individual author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Theatre Bay Area or its staff.