Ayanna Thompson, Arizona University – On Protean Acting in Shakespeare: Race & Virtuosity

From the early modern period, actors have been praised for being “protean” when they perform cross-racial impersonations. This talk will think through that legacy and how virtuosity in acting is implicitly and explicitly racialized.

Speaker Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State University)

Biography Ayanna Thompson is director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello and is currently working on a collection of essays for Cambridge University Press on Shakespeare and race, while collaborating with Curtis Perry for a new edition of Titus Andronicus. please book here http://cts.dmu.ac.uk/events/ERS-2020-2021/