"The 2021 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: On Protean Acting: Race and Virtuosity"
https://www.worldshakesbib.org/entry/bbbm75/
Author:
	Thompson, Ayanna.
Type:
	Journal Article
Year:
	2022
Publication Information:
	Renaissance Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2022): 1127–1143.
DOI:
	10.1017/rqx.2022.328
Annotation:
	Detects racial assumptions in characterization of white actors as “shape-shifting” and Black actors as “charismatic” and explains what this implies about supposed craft and labor of white actors as opposed to inherited or innate skills of Black actors. Traces ways of praising contemporary actors to “birth of racialized performances,” arguing that “the waves that rippled through the early modern London theaters continue to roll through twenty-first-century American ones.” Notes early modern praise of actor Richard Burbage referred to his shape-shifting ability, particularly his ability to embody his “chiefest part,” namely role of Othello, which required “cross-racial impersonation.”
Language:
	English
Persons:
	Burbage, Richard
Keywords:
	race
Tags:
	Othello, Scholarship, Criticism, History of Criticism
WSB Update:
	Spring 2025
WSB Record Number:
	bbbm75