Shakespeare and Race Festival: Changing the conversation

In 2018, Shakespeare's Globe offered the first Shakespeare and Race Festival. Conceived and curated by Professor Farah Karim-Cooper, the festival sought to emphasise the important of race to the study and teaching of Shakespeare and to champion scholars, educators, actors, writers and theatre-makers of colour. Now in its fourth year, the Shakespeare and Race Festival includes poetry readings, workshops, roundtables, an academic symposium and the launch of a new collaboration between Shakespeare's Globe and King's College London: the Shakespeare Centre London.

The theme of this year's festival was ‘Spoken Word(s)’, inviting us to interrogate the performance of Shakespeare and its relationship to both early modern and 21st-century ideas of race. Shakespeare is often revered as the epitome of white culture, and this has promoted a form of gatekeeping which excludes people of colour. As a result, there are certain questions we need to ask ourselves about our continued engagement with Shakespeare, and particularly in the context of race. How do we empower actors, directors and theatre-makers of colour to work with Shakespeare? How should we approach the racist content of Shakespeare's plays in performance? How is whiteness still dictating the performance and reception of Shakespeare today?