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Amy Cook. Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrow on Shakespeare’s Stages Today

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Symbolism 21
This chapter is in the book Symbolism 21
Amy Cook.Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrowon Shakespeare’s Stages Today.Cambridge: Cambridge up, 2020. 84 pp.ISBN: 9781108749558, GBP 15.00https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110756456-017Amy Cook’sShakespearean Futuresargues that contemporary productions ofShakespeare“are using casting to tell the future”(2). Through the bodies of actorsthat they cast, directors not only interpret Shakespeare’s stories anew. Casting al-lows us to imagine new stories that destabilize culturally given ideas of race / eth-nicity, gender, and (dis)ability, and changes the way in which we see bodies inand outside the theater:“In the bodies–and no bodies–selected to tell our sto-ries, we can imagine a different future”(62). The premise is simple: in the theater,bodies tell stories–andwhichbodies do the telling has and will always determinehow we understand not only the stories, but our own and others’bodies and iden-tities. In insightful and differentiated analyses of innovative Shakespeare produc-tions from the past years, Cook presents and comments upon a large spectrum ofpossibilities for and effects of casting Shakespeare’splaystoday.Cook’s essayistic volume presents itself as“a record of performances from thelast three or four years with particular attention to the bodies of the actors onstage”(16). After exposing her notion of casting as a process building on andagainst expectations for characters such as Shakespeare’s, Cook explains the fun-damental precondition of casting: bodies that are present enact absent characters’stories. The distinction between character and actor(’s body) allows for a play ofsimilarity and difference that awards possibilities for reflection on the expectationsone had, as a spectator, for the body that embodies this character and lives theirstory. Cook rightly establishes that casting–and especially“counter casting”–“isalways political”(13). What political gesture it makes, however, is not so easilydetermined.In the first section ofShakespearean Futures, Cook looks at race, genderand (dis)ability in contemporary productions of diverse plays by Shakespeare,zooming in on casting choices and effects that particularly illuminate the politi-cal potential of the actor-character-ambivalence that comes into effect in perfor-mance. In the second section, the author switches to a comparative perspectiveon five productions ofKing Learwitnessed between 2017 and 2020, looking athow the bodies on stage shed light on what it means to hold power–a centralissue that structures debates and policies around inequalities outside the the-ater, too. She thereby provides a second look at the categories developed earlierwith the added complexity of comparing the way in which the casting of bodies
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston

Amy Cook.Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrowon Shakespeare’s Stages Today.Cambridge: Cambridge up, 2020. 84 pp.ISBN: 9781108749558, GBP 15.00https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110756456-017Amy Cook’sShakespearean Futuresargues that contemporary productions ofShakespeare“are using casting to tell the future”(2). Through the bodies of actorsthat they cast, directors not only interpret Shakespeare’s stories anew. Casting al-lows us to imagine new stories that destabilize culturally given ideas of race / eth-nicity, gender, and (dis)ability, and changes the way in which we see bodies inand outside the theater:“In the bodies–and no bodies–selected to tell our sto-ries, we can imagine a different future”(62). The premise is simple: in the theater,bodies tell stories–andwhichbodies do the telling has and will always determinehow we understand not only the stories, but our own and others’bodies and iden-tities. In insightful and differentiated analyses of innovative Shakespeare produc-tions from the past years, Cook presents and comments upon a large spectrum ofpossibilities for and effects of casting Shakespeare’splaystoday.Cook’s essayistic volume presents itself as“a record of performances from thelast three or four years with particular attention to the bodies of the actors onstage”(16). After exposing her notion of casting as a process building on andagainst expectations for characters such as Shakespeare’s, Cook explains the fun-damental precondition of casting: bodies that are present enact absent characters’stories. The distinction between character and actor(’s body) allows for a play ofsimilarity and difference that awards possibilities for reflection on the expectationsone had, as a spectator, for the body that embodies this character and lives theirstory. Cook rightly establishes that casting–and especially“counter casting”–“isalways political”(13). What political gesture it makes, however, is not so easilydetermined.In the first section ofShakespearean Futures, Cook looks at race, genderand (dis)ability in contemporary productions of diverse plays by Shakespeare,zooming in on casting choices and effects that particularly illuminate the politi-cal potential of the actor-character-ambivalence that comes into effect in perfor-mance. In the second section, the author switches to a comparative perspectiveon five productions ofKing Learwitnessed between 2017 and 2020, looking athow the bodies on stage shed light on what it means to hold power–a centralissue that structures debates and policies around inequalities outside the the-ater, too. She thereby provides a second look at the categories developed earlierwith the added complexity of comparing the way in which the casting of bodies
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword from the Editors V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Special Focus: Law and Literature
  5. Introduction: Symbolism, Law and Literature 1
  6. Reading the Unconscious of the Law: From Psychoanalytical Legal Theory to Early Modern Law and Literature 15
  7. Contracts, Clauses, Controversy: John Hersey, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books 35
  8. Decadent Echoes, the Language of Censorship and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness 55
  9. “Stay on Country”: The Indigenous Australian Challenge to White Property, Terra Nullius, and Native Title in Tara June Winch’s The Yield 77
  10. Legal and Poetic Figurations of Wholeness in from unincorporated territory and the Insular Cases 97
  11. ‘the real feel of hard time’: Lyrico-Carceral Temporalities in C.D. Wright’s One Big Self: An Investigation (2007) 115
  12. “I Have Shown You Milk”: Performing Legal Truths in Nina Raine’s Consent and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin 135
  13. Law on Ice: Polarizing Legal Expertise in Popular Climate Change Fiction 153
  14. The Fiction of Justice: Human Smuggling in European Law and Middle Eastern Refugee Narratives 175
  15. In Defense of Mr Micawber: Symbolic Equity in Dickens 197
  16. General Section
  17. Tolkien’s Dragons: Sources, Symbols, and Significance 219
  18. Suspending the Assemblage: Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) and the Return of the Self 235
  19. Book Reviews
  20. Stephanie Elsky. Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature 257
  21. Siobhan Somerville, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies 263
  22. Shazia Rahman. Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism: Pakistani Women’s Literary and Cinematic Fictions 269
  23. Amy Cook. Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrow on Shakespeare’s Stages Today 275
  24. Marisa Palacios Knox. Victorian Women and Wayward Reading: Crises of Identification 281
  25. List of Contributors 287
  26. Index 291
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110756456-017

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword from the Editors V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Special Focus: Law and Literature
  5. Introduction: Symbolism, Law and Literature 1
  6. Reading the Unconscious of the Law: From Psychoanalytical Legal Theory to Early Modern Law and Literature 15
  7. Contracts, Clauses, Controversy: John Hersey, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books 35
  8. Decadent Echoes, the Language of Censorship and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness 55
  9. “Stay on Country”: The Indigenous Australian Challenge to White Property, Terra Nullius, and Native Title in Tara June Winch’s The Yield 77
  10. Legal and Poetic Figurations of Wholeness in from unincorporated territory and the Insular Cases 97
  11. ‘the real feel of hard time’: Lyrico-Carceral Temporalities in C.D. Wright’s One Big Self: An Investigation (2007) 115
  12. “I Have Shown You Milk”: Performing Legal Truths in Nina Raine’s Consent and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin 135
  13. Law on Ice: Polarizing Legal Expertise in Popular Climate Change Fiction 153
  14. The Fiction of Justice: Human Smuggling in European Law and Middle Eastern Refugee Narratives 175
  15. In Defense of Mr Micawber: Symbolic Equity in Dickens 197
  16. General Section
  17. Tolkien’s Dragons: Sources, Symbols, and Significance 219
  18. Suspending the Assemblage: Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) and the Return of the Self 235
  19. Book Reviews
  20. Stephanie Elsky. Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature 257
  21. Siobhan Somerville, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies 263
  22. Shazia Rahman. Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism: Pakistani Women’s Literary and Cinematic Fictions 269
  23. Amy Cook. Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrow on Shakespeare’s Stages Today 275
  24. Marisa Palacios Knox. Victorian Women and Wayward Reading: Crises of Identification 281
  25. List of Contributors 287
  26. Index 291
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