This morning, I was both annoyed and bemused to learn that Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, two esteemed British actors, had just been given airtime by National Public Radio, to advance the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare’s true identity. This minority opinion about the authorship of the canon of works credited to Shakespeare holds that a commoner like Shakespeare couldn’t have possibly written the plays, and typically credits a British nobleman with having written them secretly. There’s a strong whiff of classism in the position, positing that genius can’t come from humble beginnings. But Rylance and Jacobi’s conspiracy theories on this subject are nothing new, and while I have to wonder at NPR’s decision to advance the theory without presenting any countervailing positions, at least they had the courtesy to wait until this weekend’s Shakespeare 400 anniversary and celebrations had passed.

As it turns out, this morning in England, The Telegraph gave another major British actor the opportunity to hold forth on another subject steeped in history. Simon Callow, who I have interviewed (and chatted with casually once, unexpectedly, on the tube), has announced that he doesn’t see what’s wrong with “blacking up,” an old theatre tradition. You say you don’t know the term? Well in America, it’s called blackface, and is widely held to be offensive, insensitive and wholly out of step with modern practice.

Starting with his opposition to the idea that transgender actors should have precedence in the casting of transgender roles, Callow moves on takes the standard argument against culturally specific casting, pursuing it to ridiculous ends. Quoting him, from The Telegraph:

“This is madness. The whole idea of acting has gone out of the window, if you follow the logic of that,” he says.

“To say it is offensive to transgendered people for non-trans people to play them is nonsense. Because you have to have been a murderer to play Macbeth, you have to be Jewish to play Shylock. It’s nonsense.

“The great point of acting is that it is an act of empathy about someone you don’t know or understand. I continue to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance as Othello.”

Later in the article, the following appears:

I ask if he’d ever consider playing Othello, even though blacking up is widely considered offensive. “Is it so offensive? I don’t know. People say it’s offensive because it reminds you of the Black & White Minstrel show. But, it’s a different thing altogether.”

He adds: “It would depend on the circumstances, absolutely. But, there is actually ban on it in my union. You can not do it. You can not black up,” he says this in a way that suggests he does not wholly approve.

Equity, the actors’ union, in fact has no veto. A spokesman says, “we don’t have the power to ban”, but does make clear that “we are absolutely opposed to blacking up” except in “very exceptional circumstances”.

Callow does contradict himself on the subject:

“I totally accept it was the right thing to do to put a moratorium on white actors playing Othello, to allow black actors to fill those giant boots.” However, he then adds: “I can not say that the principle is a correct one.”

It is impossible to know whether Callow’s opinion lurks in the psyches of other British actors of his generation, or whether he’s an outlier (the author of the article does conclude by slyly cautioning Callow away from playing Othello). His comparison of blackface to Robert de Niro gaining weight for Raging Bull borders on the absurd. But the fact remains that he is respected not only as an actor but as a historian (his multi-volume biography of Orson Welles, with three completed and one to go is an impressive work of scholarship).

Consequently, when Callow speaks, he generates headlines, and his position, while acknowledging the prevailing sentiment, advocates for and gives credence to sustaining a practice that is decried by artists of color and their allies, be it blacking up or being “yellowed-up,” as The Telegraph refers to Jonathan Pryce’s performance in Miss Saigon. That Callow, one of the first British actors to come out as gay, finds prioritizing transgender actors for transgender roles to be so much “nonsense” works against the efforts of the transgender creative community, though surely it offers Eddie Redmayne some comfort.

Is this “an English thing,” a difference between American and British racial, gender and cultural sensibilities? Certainly the outcry over the yellowface The Orphan of Zhao at the Royal Shakespeare Company several years ago would suggest that the two nations are fairly close on their evolution towards cultural sensitivity, with both missteps and voices ready to speak against them. I write that as someone who still sees reports of yellowface and brownface with some regularity in the U.S., as well as redface (looking at you, Wooster Group). How the performing arts welcome transgender actors in transgender roles is still evolving, but rapidly, and in the direction of authenticity in casting.

What I don’t see in the U.S. is a famous actor in a major media outlet yearning for a return to the time when Caucasians played black, Latino, Asian, Native American and other characters of color with impunity; I don’t see actors denying the legitimacy of the positions of their trans* colleagues. The voices supporting such positions in the U.S. tend to turn up in social media feeds and comments sections, often with fictitious names. I trust the UK advocacy organization Act For Change will be responding to Callow very soon.

“Is blacking up offensive survey,” as of April 25, 7 pm

In the meantime, Callow’s statements are a reminder that the idea and ideal of cultural diversity in the arts is still fighting an uphill battle, as evidenced by The Telegraph’s own online survey, embedded in the Callow story, which determined that 77% of their readers do not find blacking up to be offensive. Remarks like these must be challenged by diversity advocates, strongly, wherever they appear. If I happen to run into Callow again, I’ll be tempted to quote myself on this subject, though I need to expand my full statement, which spoke first and foremost to race, to embrace transgender actors as well:

The whole point of diversifying our theatre is not to give white artists yet more opportunities, but to try to address the systemic imbalance, and indeed exclusion, that artists of color, artists with disabilities and even non-male artists have experienced. Of course, when it comes to roles specifically written for POC, those roles should be played by actors of that race or ethnicity – and again, not reducing it to the level of only Italians should play Italians and only Jews should plays Jews, but that no one should be painting their faces to pretend to an ethnicity which is obviously not theirs, while denying that opportunity to people of that race.

In the meantime, perhaps Callow will get off the casting soapbox and throw in his lot with the Oxfordians, if he desires to publicly take on unpopular positions. I’m sure the late 17^th Earl of Oxford will be delighted with the effort.

Howard Sherman is interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

Joe Bannister & Leon Annor in As You Like It at the National Theatre (Photo: Johan Persson)

Four words. Why do four words bother me so much?

After all, they appear in one review of an As You Like It production at the National Theatre in London that I’m highly unlikely to ever see. So why are these four words – which appear in a parenthetical clause, by the way – still on my mind a week after the review, by Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, was published? Well, I guess we should start with the four words in question.

“Man mountain black actor.”

Have I taken these words out of context, in order to emphasize them? I have certainly extracted them from a much longer sentence, but that’s because they are so fleeting in the overall review as to pass by unnoticed many readers. Here’s the full sentence:

“A match is set up for Orlando against the wrestler Charles (man-mountain black actor Leon Annor in shiny gold cape) – this test of mettle is conducted on crash-mats with lots of flashing lights, pounding rock-music and moronic chanting by the spectators.”

My first question is, simply, does the actor’s race matter? None of the other actors are identified by their race in the review, although there are other actors of color (or to cite the UK term, “BAME actors,” referring to Black, Asian and minority ethnic) in the production. Is there any legitimate reason for calling out this one actor’s race, since it is not being discussed as germane to any interpretation of the production or the particular scene. It is, so far as I can tell, casual and irrelevant. Which makes it stand out to me all the more.

Combined with “black,” does “man mountain” mean to imply that the character is in some way more dangerous or threatening? It could certainly be read that way. Would that have been mentioned if Annor was white? Of the more than a dozen reviews I read, many of which don’t mention Annor at all, his size is only mentioned by Matt Trueman for Whatsonstage.com, who simply notes that the actor is “large,” without any racial identification. Another critic, Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, made note of a “plump shepherdess” in the production, which could prompt its own questions about whether size mattered at all in referring to an actress, but he didn’t see any need to point out that she is white. So I think it’s fair to say that Cavendish is alone in choosing to call Annor the equivalent of “a giant black man,” a construct which I would hope would set off alarms of caution to any writer or editor on either side of the Atlantic. Though in this case, it obviously didn’t.

Set on the path of investigation by these four words, I did find one other review that touched upon the race of the actors in this production. On Londonist.com, Franco Milazzo wrote, “The colourblind casting of Wringer is a masterstroke, his austere tone providing just the right level of gravity.” His reference is to Leo Wringer, a BAME actor, as Duke Frederick, and it’s fairly puzzling as well, even though it’s laudatory. After all, if Milazzo acknowledges the casting as colorblind, why bring it up at all, and why bring it up specifically when referring to a black actor, rather than a white one? Is it possible that when Milazzo speaks of “austere tone” he is referring to skin tone? That certainly seems to be part of the construct. But I hope it’s an accident.

In the examples I’ve cited, “austere tone” and “man mountain” might not be worth mentioning on their own, but when combined with the only references to race, both implied and explicit, they seem to me wholly gratuitous, even if they were done without any deep thought as to their implications. But it is the likelihood that they were casual statements by white critics about actors of color that I find so worrisome, since nowhere along the path from writer to editor to copy editor to publication did anyone apparently suggest that these mentions or constructions might be offensive, reinforcing racial division.

I think it’s important for me to note that I was questioned about my use of the phrase “female directors” just a week ago, when writing about the casual disregard of Pam MacKinnon in the headline of a story in which she was the main subject. It was raised because I made mention of MacKinnon as “one of New York’s most recognized female directors,” which wasn’t casual, yet even in the context of an essay about equality could give the impression of setting women apart from men in a subordinate way. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t a necessity that I address gender at that point, and it may well have undermined the main point I was discussing. I did not remove the reference because, even with a note about such an edit after the fact, I felt it would have been dishonest. But I acknowledge that my own intent may not have come across clearly, and therefore failed.

My exploration of racial references in reviews of As You Like It in the UK are in no way meant to be attacks on the British arts press or to suggest we don’t face the same problems in the US media. Cavendish’s review simply happened to say what in my opinion was the wrong thing at the right time. That is to say, I saw it at a moment when I am on ever more heightened alert to what some define as micro-aggressions by the members of the arts press, who are hardly alone in needing to grapple with their language choices surrounding the subjects of race, gender, and disability, to name but three. There are times, especially given the limited amount of space afforded to arts coverage, when mentioning race can be at best superfluous and at worst insidious.

I find myself reverting to a sentiment that I’ve expressed before about the arts, which is that we have the opportunity, and in my opinion the mandate, to model a better world on stage, on screen and behind the scenes. To achieve that, we also need those who cover the arts to be our partners in those efforts, so that there is consistent messaging not only within the work itself but in discussions, considerations and reporting on the work, writing which reflects equality and eradicates bias, be it subtle or overt, at every turn.

Howard Sherman is the interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts School of Drama.

Benedict Cumberbatch in rehearsal for Hamlet

Four years ago, I pondered whether, in this age of social media and vastly accelerated information distribution online, “Will The Embargo Hold?” I was referring to the long-accepted practice by which theatrical productions designated a preview period, during which the production would be refined and altered, in view of the public, but with the critical press waiting until the defined opening night to render their verdicts.

The Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet, now in previews at The Barbican in London, has been perhaps the highest profile test of the arts embargo, with several outlets sending critics and reporters to the very first performance. Some wrote out and out reviews, some claimed they were simply reporting on it, but nonetheless, the production was described with specificity and opinions were rendered. A wave of commentary on the breach of the embargo ensued.

A report in The Daily Beast on Monday, elaborated upon in The Telegraph yesterday, added a new twist to the conversation. According to the Beast, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, which had been relocated to the very start of the play in early previews, was now back in its original place in Shakespeare’s script.

There’s no question that the director’s early vision regarding one of the most famous speeches in theatrical history was a surprise, and you may have your own views about whether such a change is advisable. But Hamlet is in the public domain, as are all Shakespeare’s works, which means they can be manipulated, reworked, transformed and pillaged as artists see fit. Director Lyndsey Turner had every right to try this approach.

But because of the reporting on those very early previews, Turner’s directorial decision was subjected not only to scrutiny, but to scorn from some quarters. As a result, we don’t know whether the restoration of the speech to its original place in the script was driven by critical, academic and public outcry, or simply because Turner (and perhaps Cumberbatch) decided it wasn’t working. Deprived of the opportunity to experiment and explore a bit without critical judgment, I expect that even the reviews of the final version will still opine about the placement of the speech, even though it’s back where it began and many critics never even saw the initial, atypical version.

The press’s near-obsession with the Cumberbatch Hamlet is quite extraordinary. It seems that there are news stories almost daily, whether about the production itself, about Cumberbatch’s request that audience members don’t shoot video of it, and so on. It’s not entirely unexpected for a show which sold out its run a year in advance, but surely bigger stars have taken to the stage before; perhaps this is the first UK social media theatre blockbuster and it has forced the mainstream media to struggle to keep up.

While I was fully aware of the increasing permeability of the arts embargo, I’m still troubled by what’s happened with this Hamlet. Has the exceptionally early appearance of reviews and “reports,” which gave other outlets the right to report on that coverage even if they elected not to review the production themselves, had a fundamental effect on the production? Has Lyndsey Turner directly or indirectly been forced to alter her production, in part because the shock impact of reworking the text has been eliminated by the press, and because of criticism of the approach?

While I suspect the slow crumbling of the embargo has been accelerated by Cumbermania, it may last in general use for a while yet. Theatres will likely cling to their stated openings for as long as possible, even when media outlets make their voices heard somewhat prematurely, in the eyes of the producers and artists involved. But it’s possible that, especially for productions with major stars, this may force shows back towards more limited previews, lest the press be allowed to start playing show doctor (or dictator) at their own discretion. And if that’s the case, are artists – regardless of whether they’re working in a commercial or not-for-profit settings – losing out? And ultimately, are audiences losing out as well?