In Germany, I saw a white woman dress as a gorilla to play Othello. Yet the best that Britain seems to do is Clybourne Park ? a play which aims for laughs rather than a serious examination of the issues
Here's an interesting bit of cultural dislocation. A couple of days ago I watched a German production of Othello in which the title character was played by a white woman who, at one point, wears a gorilla costume. It sounds shocking, doesn't it? Can you imagine what would happen if the National or the RSC tried it?
What I found fascinating, though, is that it was precisely because this is such a discomforting image that it was so powerful. It was the exact opposite of being patronising or racist. Instead, it presents a physical representation of a racist trope that dates back to the first days of colonialism and slavery. In fact, this is it only one moment in a staging that repeatedly hammers away at the way black identity is created and enforced by white society ? elsewhere, Iago performs an extended satire of black musical styles, Desdemona goes to bed wearing a band T-shirt for an album featuring the song "Nigger" and, in another scene, white characters stand around eating the sweets once popularly known as Negerkuss.
What I found most interesting is the comparison between this and the way Britain and the US seem to examine racism on stage. Consider Bruce Norris's recently re-opened Clybourne Park (basically a more upbeat, Americanised version of Marius von Mayenburg's The Stone). It has been hailed as "a scalpel-sharp satire on the contingencies of liberalism", which "nails the thorny subject of race relations". It's certainly a very well-constructed, thinking-person's comedy, and has racism as its main topic. But I would argue that its ease and familiarity of form, and the desire primarily to entertain, leave it as pretty blunt instrument for any more serious purpose.
Indeed ? with the obvious caveat that these are simply two productions ? I'm wondering what this comparison says about German, British and American culture more broadly. The first understands it has to bear responsibility for crimes on a scale which almost defy imagining; the others seem to believe they haven't really done anything wrong at all ? at least not recently. It's as if the transportation of tens of millions of human beings, whose descendants were denied basic legal rights until a generation ago and who still account for a disproportionate percentage of, say, America's poor, is something that can or should now be laughed off. That's not to say many Americans aren't also deeply concerned with the issues, but the difference in approach still feels significant.
Even so the problem remains that Clybourne Park, for all its intelligence and wit, ultimately lets the audience off the hook. The act of watching it is sold as an act of both bravery and penance. Reviews note "guilty laughter", but record that it's a very large room's worth of (let's face it, mostly white) people sharing that experience of "guilt" and "laughter" ? as if doing so might provide a cathartic absolution.
For Brits, Clybourne Park is hardly an uncomfortable experience at all. It's a cute simulation of a tense ("embarrassing", we might call it) situation within acceptable boundaries ? possibly even gifted an extra sense of removal by virtue of being American. It has nothing like the acute discomfort caused by putting a white actor in a gorilla costume to play a black person.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/feb/21/clybourne-park-racism-comedy-stage
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