Shakespeare and Africa: Students Develop Stage Play for Bayreuth and Berlin

In the course “Shakespeare’s Black Voices”, Shakespeare’s plays are analyzed and existing gaps in Shakespeare research are addressed. “So far, Shakespearean source studies have only considered written texts in languages Shakespeare could read. However, we have been able to show that African oral literature also influenced Shakespeare,” says Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt. Her students also examined Shakespeare’s stance on racism and colonialism: “Unlike most of his European contemporaries, Shakespeare took a critical view of colonialism and racism. In his sonnets, he praises the beauty of a Black woman – even though Queen Elizabeth had just issued a royal decree stating that ‘fairness‘ (the contemporary concept of beauty and grace) could only mean white beauty, that Black people should be deported from London, and that Sir John Hawkins and Sir Walter Raleigh should be sent to seize colonial land and enslave African people,” Arndt explains.

“Shakes:WIR. A Necessary Intervention” brings to life Shakespeare’s powerful Black characters – Othello, Caliban, and Cleopatra – and tells their stories of fighting for love and freedom against racist hatred. Their monologues are interwoven with Shakespeare’s sonnets, which praise Lucy – a young woman who was enslaved and brought to London. It was Lucy who introduced Shakespeare to literature from Nigeria and Ghana. The play also explores what these texts can still tell us today. In this process, it links the struggles of Shakespeare’s characters with the lives of the performers and with figures from the era of the 1989 Peaceful Revolution, such as Nina Hagen and May Ayim. The play is performed in both German and English – with continuous screen-based translation into the other language.