Performance and race: teaching Shakespeare to Saudi students using current events and popular culture

ABSTRACT

This article considers the relevance of Shakespeare’s works to foreign students when taught in a non-native context, specifically, in Saudi Arabia. It argues that a student-centred approach could shed light on what is relevant to young people today, even if the texts themselves may seem anachronistic. Adopting a comparative approach that explores common factors between early modern England and contemporary Saudi Arabia, I examine the theatrical practices of both periods in relation to gender, religion, and race. I offer an historical overview of Saudi theatre, highlighting factors that played a role in delaying its development, such as women’s absence from the stage and the antitheatrical sentiments influenced by the reformist Sahwa movement. Aiming to make Shakespeare accessible through connections to current events and popular culture, I consider Saudi Arabia’s fast-changing socio-political landscape, including cultural reforms and recognition of women’s role in theatre. In particular, I focus on blackface, a theatrical trope that has traces in the early modern period and still persists in the western world. I have found that this approach has helped develop students’ ethical sensitivities to ethnic bias and religious intolerance, as well as directing them towards making appropriate choices as future playwrights, performers, and directors.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching Shakespeare
• race
• Saudi Arabia
• popular culture
• antitheatricality
• blackface

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Though my comparison of cross-racial marriage as a social ‘problem’ here is between contemporary Saudi Arabia and early modern English society, this is not to suggest that there are no other contexts in which cross-racial marriage has been perceived as ‘problematic’ to varying degrees, whether enforced by law (for example, in South Africa until 1985, and the U.S.A. until 1967), or shaped by social attitudes and behaviours.

2. In the short film Dear Mister Shakespeare (2016), Boswell seems to be generally referring to a recent world-wide ban on the use of blackface in Othello (as she cites the names of American and British actors), however, there is no direct mention of where/when the ban was affective. Ayanna Thompson mentions in her recent book Blackface (2021) ‘Today, white actors are dissuaded from playing Othello in black makeup, but white actors are drummed out of town if they perform blackface minstrel shows’ (Thompson 2021, 34).