A Queen’s University student theatre company has cancelled a production of Shakespeare’s Othello set to open this month following an outcry over the decision to cast a white woman in the title role of a black man.
“For the safety and mental health of our entire team we unfortunately feel the need to suspend our production of Othello,” the artistic directors wrote on Facebook Wednesday. They subsequently apologized to the Kingston, Ont., university’s black community for what they called an “oppressive” artistic decision.
After September auditions, Queen’s Vagabond Theatre made what its directors acknowledged was a risky decision: Lauren Broadhurst, a white woman, was chosen to play the title character. Since Paul Robeson played him on Broadway in 1943, Othello has typically been performed by a black actor.
Maggie Purdon, the play’s director, said she researched the play extensively before the casting and interpreted the text as being about the struggles of an outsider rather than about race.
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“The character Othello, race is what makes him an outsider, and he’s vulnerable because he’s an outsider. He’s not upset because of his race; he’s upset because he’s different,” she said in an interview.
“We wanted (the role) to be cast as a woman because then it would be more of an issue of sexuality, and the issue would be that Othello’s sexuality makes him an outsider.”
She noted that a German director cast a white woman as Othello in 2011 and encountered little opposition. But the climate on today’s North American campuses is far different from that found in German theatres.
Queen’s students began taking to social media to denounce the Othello casting, and Purdon said the criticism “started to blow up” this week.
“I was feeling super anxious. I wasn’t getting any sleep. It was making me feel sick to my stomach because people were upset, and nobody was really being informed,” she said.
On Tuesday night, she broke the news to the cast that she did not want to go forward with the production, which was in rehearsals and set to debut Nov. 30. “At first a lot of the cast was upset. It was ultimately myself and the girl playing Othello — it came down to how we both felt,” said Purdon, who is also co-artistic director of the theatre company.
Announcing the cancellation on Vagabond’s Facebook page, Purdon and fellow artistic director Jessica Rossiter said criticism of their choice had turned aggressive.
“Recently this production has become unsafe for the members involved, as many have been personally approached and have felt attacked,” they wrote.
“Maybe it would have been a good idea to actually inform yourselves of the historical and present day importance of Othello to black artists and performers,” Alexa Lepera wrote in response on Facebook. “You are very disappointed with how the community had responded? I am disappointed that you thought it was OK to erase Othello’s blackness, which is so essential to the story.”
Othello has long been a source of racial controversy. For centuries it was performed by white actors in blackface. After Robeson appeared as Othello on Broadway, one reviewer wrote, “no white man should ever dare play the part again.” Not everyone heeded the advice, including Laurence Olivier in the 1960s. In 1998, the British-Ghanaian actor Hugh Quarshie exhorted fellow black actors not to play the role because it condoned racist stereotypes.
In an apology posted on Facebook Thursday, Purdon and Rossiter said they never intended “to have people of colour feel as though their identities were being invalidated. … Theatre is a form of art, but it becomes unacceptable when artistic decisions are oppressive.”
Purdon said she hopes the Othello debate will lead to more roles for actors of colour in future Queen’s productions. “Most of the casts at Queen’s are all-white,” she said. “Moving forward, myself I’m going to take active steps.”
• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton
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