Dramaturgy, Phenomenology, and Talmudic Thinking

This essay looks to methods for Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) to investigate how they can foster productive analyses for Shakespeare Studies. The essay focuses on three methods: dramaturgy, phenomenology, and rhetoric. The essay looks to the casting of John Douglas Thompson as Shylock to investigate the dramaturgy of identity when staging one of Shakespeare&s;s non-mixed-race characters as mixed-race. The essay posits that the casting of Black actors as the Jewish characters to play Black Jews did not result in the legibility of mixed identity. The essay then offers a phenomenological approach to recognizing ethnic identity in productions of The Merchant of Venice that included Latinx actors playing Portia as well as other characters. Finally, the essay offers a close reading of the rhetorical slippages between Whiteness, Jewishness, and Blackness that inform the concept of “white melancholia.” The essay exposes the limitations of current racial and ethnic formations and how they motivate interpretations of Shakespeareans and their scholarship and demonstrates how CMRS methods offer new insights for the field.