Kirk Davis Lecture features Shakespeare and Black Life
Department: New Swan Shakespeare Center
Post Date: May 17, 2021News Details
“Shakespeare and Black Life,” this year's Kirk Davis Public Shakespeare Lecture, featured actor Jeremie Harris in conversation with UCI alum Jehbreal Jackson on his experience as a Black actor in the Shakespeare community.
When asked what drew him to Shakespeare, Harris said that “more than anything, I was drawn to Shakespeare’s tragedies... things that focus on human emotions that we can all understand... With those old stories, even though they weren’t really written with people of color in mind... it’s those ideas that were just grand and large that made me connect to it.”
In a similar vein, Jackson added that people of color might be drawn to Shakespeare because “[a]s we’ve seen in the last few months, in the last year, the extremity of violence against people of color--Black people, Asian people . . . it takes an extreme kind of language to be able to try and capture that, and something about [Shakespeare’s] plays... even the sonnets, they really do that well.”
Between questions, viewers watched clips from Harris’s performance of Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, an all-Black production staged by The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park in 2019. Student Vivian Ta noted, “It's important to have POC represented in media and art.” Another student, Xin Xu, said, “This is a fresh experience for me and I am going to look up more plays by Shakespeare.”
Given the harrowing civil rights struggles over the past year, events like this one are “extremely timely and appropriate” according to sponsor Kirk Davis. It is important to bring attention to the difficulties faced by Black creators in our communities, as well as celebrate their accomplishments.
As Kirk Davis put it, “Shakespeare is universal in applicability to personal challenges and public issues.” Harris and Jackson have reimagined the Bard’s plays in ways that incorporate and highlight their own experiences, making the Shakespeare community a more vibrant, inclusive space in the process.
You can watch "Shakespeare and Black Life" here.
--This article is by Megan Strand, an intern for the New Swan Shakespeare Center.