Last month, I read an article from the British daily newspaper〈The Guardian〉. The article was about Mawa Theatre Company. Recently founded by black women, the Company focuses on presenting Shakespeare’s plays. Meaning “tomorrow” in a Malawian local language, Mawa Theatre Company has four actresses: Gabrielle Brooks, Maisey Bawden, Danielle Kassaraté and Jade Samuels. They are planning to review Shakespeare’s works from the perspective of black women and to make them easier for young people. To be more specific, they are greatly interested in exploring how classical texts describe black women or women of the African diaspora.
Brooks explains why Mawa Theatre Company chose Shakespeare. That is because when you are willing to talk about diversity and inclusiveness through your performances in a society dominated by white people, the wisest way to do so is to choose Shakespeare, whose plays are still staged abundantly around the world and regarded as the core of the British theater. This year, they first meet their audience with a work they produced in collaboration with Talawa Theatre Company. Both companies were inspired by Shakespeare to make a video series which will be unveiled in August. Mawa Theatre Company is willing to show universality in Shakespeare’s world through other works as well. In particular, they focus on descent, classes, women’s friendship and colonization among others. 
Brooks said, “If a British black woman can include herself in the history of classics, she can make a real change.” The Company would like to show that black women can also be in the highest position in business, which is filled by white women at about 92 percent. The following photo shows the Company’s four members who are taking a meaningful step.

Photo: Mawa Theatre Company (from the left to the right, Gabrielle Brooks, Maisey Bawden, Danielle Kassaraté and Jade Samuels)

The encounter of Mawa Theatre Company and Shakespeare may be something that transcends an encounter of black and white. That is, Shakespeare’s Renaissance period and the 21st century mix with each other. Britain, whose natives were white people, is now home to descendants of those born in Africa, which was once colonized by the country. In this context, space and time are mixed up. It isn’t certain but looking at the photo, one of the actresses seems to be of Asian descent and another one, of South American descent. The audience who look at the stage from this perspective would probably experience space and time that are entangled even more, through their performance. In 2019, London’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse only cast people of color for〈Richard III〉. About the performance, theater critic Michael Billington said that “all chracters were unique” and “pioneering.” Mawa Theatre Company may lead their audience to have a similar experience.

Among the performances I saw recently, I thought about which of them had been pioneering and unique to me. What came to my mind was the second workshop performance by Handspeak, a theater company of actors with hearing impairment. The performance was presented at HEYGROUND in Seongsu-dong, Seoul on June 12 and 13, for a small audience. To pick up my ticket, I went to the information booth. Then persons with hearing impairment talked to me. What they were using was actually the sign language. I don’t understand the sign language so I managed to pick up my ticket and was seated. Most of the audience were hearing-impaired or they understood the sign language. So a few of them without hearing impairment (including me) received the script by email the day before the performance to read it in advance. Although I had read the script, I lost track of the story several times. To follow the story, I concentrated on the movements I was seeing and in my head, I tried to remember the script I had read the day before. The language I used during the performance would have been a “third language” which was neither that of a person with hearing impairment nor that of a person without such impairment. This would also be in the context of what Michael Billington called “pioneering.

Participants of Handspeak workshop (https://www.facebook.com/handspeak.korea)

What is the space called a “theater”? To answer this question, you need to think about what bodies have been on stage. In the era of Shakespeare, women were almost never on stage in all countries including Korea. In theaters, which were public spaces, the norm of heterosexuality was stricter. Think about male actors who played the roles of women. These actors’ female movements were the very movements that society required for all women. As such performances lead to a fixed custom, it isn’t easy to expect anything pioneering. What should we do to drive out a custom that has become power on stage? How is theaters’ power made? Let us have a look at the following excerpt from〈Geographies of Sexualities〉by Kath Browne, Gavin Brown and Jason Lim who study queer geographies.

“Power can be understood as an entanglement of resistance and domination which constitute each other. Power doesn't work toward us unilaterally. We are always involved in the complicated relationship between resistance and domination. Power is rather closer to a dense net in which we are caught all the time. Power works in the way we interact and in the process of regulating other people’s behavior and ultimately making the space we live in. Power isn’t a force that influences us from afar. We are all in the magnetic field of power. Power is productive and it also has different looks.” (p. 20)

Another recent article elaborates on how theaters’ custom, which could be regarded as their power, was transformed into a different type of power through interaction among members of the so-called “theater scene.” A couple of months ago, the Trans Casting Statement was made public in Britain. In March 2020,〈Breakfast on Pluto〉was staged in the West End. This performance has a transgender character called Patrick "Pussy" Braden. But an incident happened because the performer cast as this character was unrelated to such sexual orientation. The Donmar Warehouse, which had produced the performance, was bombarded with phone calls of complaints and had to promise that they would do their best to actively improve diversity and inclusiveness in all aspects. Consequently, major theaters had no choice but to join the statement that require them to cast performers of corresponding sexual orientation as “transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming characters.”

Photo 2: Royal Exchange Theatre, one of the theaters supporting the Trans Casting Statement

Kate McGrath, a member of board of directors at Fuel Theatre, which supports the Trans Casting Statement, said, “It is a good thing if anybody can be cast for a certain role.” But she added that it was necessary to join the statement because non-binary and gender nonconforming people suffer from greater inequality in theaters and public spaces. What she said would be a good answer to those who ask why it is problematic for a performer unrelated to a character’s sexual orientation to play the role.

In this way, the Trans Casting Statement was made public and those at theaters accepted it. I believe that this whole process constitutes a moment of seeing the birth of a new type of power, which broke through the firmly established relationship between resistance and domination. Such moments should accumulate to result in the production and appreciation of pioneering performances. I look forward to seeing such performances more often.

References

Lanre Bakare, ‘UK’s first all-black, all-female Shakespeare company aim to shine new light on Bard‘
(10 Jun 2021, The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jun/10/uks-first-all-black-all-female-shakespeare-company-aim-to-shine-new-light-on-bard

Lanre Bakare, ‘UK theatres promise to only cast trans actors in trans roles’ (26 May 2021, The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/may/26/uk-theatres-promise-to-only-cast-trans-actors-in-trans-roles