beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

The RSC has had a policy for a long time (15, 20 years maybe? I'm getting old) of just casting people and ignoring their race, so you can get some odd mixes such as where a brother is played by a black man and a sister by a white woman. After a bit it becomes just something you don't notice any more and it doesn't affect the story. I've seen the National Theatre do colour blind casting for Shakespeare, and I think the Globe as well, so it is probably quite standard practice for Shakespeare these days. This could be part of the 'otherness' of Shakespeare that I was talking about the other day, where it can inhabit a different mental space from 'normal' plays. And the BBC Robin Hood does it as well - just casts people at random so you will suddenly get a black woman playing a nun in medieval England without anyone commenting or noticing. Mind you, that Robin Hood is on crack, it's one of the things I find most endearing about it.

I guess whether people approve of this comes down to whether they want people to be colour blind or politically correct.

I'm not sure what the RSC do about Othello and Merchant of Venice, I don't think I've seen the RSC do either of those. Since those are actively about race it would send out different signals to have colour blind casting. Certainly the productions I have seen didn't use it.