How does Veeky Forums feel about blind casting? Pic related, the Globe Theatre's 2010 production of Romeo and Juliet

It depends on the character tbhfam.
maybe it's just me, but black actors portray emotional depth with a certain grace that's more true to life. I like seeing humorous Asian/middle Eastern characters. I like intelligent older women(just watched Lars and the Real Girl and idk her name but the doctor was excellent).
Maybe it's just because where I live I'm exposed to a very mixed racial demographic.

I'm done with white women

they expect a lot and dont give much in return

Blind people should be allowed to act on stage, provided the floor is cleared of impeding objects.

Any other type of casting is ableist.

Lel I bet you actually think hot Asian women are better.

why would you use lel instead of lol? Think about it. It doesn't mean anything, its just the modification of the actual acronym lol. You don't even know why you use it. Somewhere, sometime you saw a few people post it and hopped right on board. Too mainstream for lol right? Thats so old, its meaning makes sense but you dont feel comfortable expressing your approval of things on the internet with the common old "lol" thats been around for so long. You'll man up and use the purposely misspelled version with no discernible humor or purpose besides making you look like a complete idiot while you maintain the false concept that other people find it amusing or appropriate and using purposely misspelled words shows the world that youre not afraid of anything and are part of some grand inside joke that no one finds funny. Theres a lot going through your head, but you realize I am right. You will try though, to get the best of this exchange. What are you going to go for? Newfag? Summer? oh damn there are so many options to choose from. An implication that I'm underage perhaps? Thats always fresh. Maybe you'll just shut down. I think you should go with something about butthurt or being mad or even comment on the length of the unproportionally long comment that so swiftly brought to your attention that you are a faggot that tries oh so hard to fit in. I'm sure you could find some grammar or spelling errors as a last resort. I cant wait, Its always fun playing insult roulette

The only thing fun is how out of touch you are with the memestream.

>Maybe it's just because where I live I'm exposed to a very mixed racial demographic.
Or maybe it's because you've been taught to unconsciously hate white people and fetishize minorities

>do you whinge and whine about the costumes too? or the props?
Yes, if they're distracting and ruin the entire play

This. I want to enjoy Shakespeare without being distracted by elaborate cuck fantasies

>you've been taught etc.
Not everyone is as impressionable as you.
I've always had very close white friends.

>who gives a shit? do you whinge and whine about the costumes too? or the props?
I do. I want to see more girls getting wet before BBC

>I'm not biased! I have lots of white friends!
Really dude? This is THE stereotypical response to being outed as a racist.

in my country they tend to be slightly brutal capitalists who vote unerringly liberal

so no

I don't know what you want me to tell you, but that feels a whole lot like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>you're indoctrinated to hate white people
>you're best childhood friends were white?
>obviously racist

how does that even follow when my ONLY claim was that I don't mind seeing a cast with a mixed demographic?

This kind of autism makes me wonder if you know Verona's not in London.

Who gives a shit? The most important part for any Elizabethan work is that the actors fucking understand their lines and what they mean. Otherwise it's just three hours of torture where one sad cunt who cares about the play is the only one of the ten people on stage actually trying to tell you a story.

I'd take a blind casting over an amateur casting of Shakespeare any day.

Did you read the entire OP closely? And comprehend the distinction between play and film?

u just got meme'd on dude

This is actually the board for stage drama.

>Did you read the entire OP closely?
fuck no

if I wanted to read closely I'd read a book, not Veeky Forums

Maybe you should if you intend to fly off the handle.

>globe
>RP
m8 they haven't tried to go back in time to the 50s to capture that vital radio market. What production did you see? I've seen a couple there, and RP wasn't standard. True, one was MacBeth but I've never heard this.

I've been meme'd

> my ONLY claim was that I don't mind seeing a cast with a mixed demographic?
No, you made many claims, including the claim that black actors somehow "portray emotional depth with a certain grace that's more true to life," which is more fawning over noble savage bullshit, and that you like to see humorous Asian characters.

It's pretty prejudiced stuff. You then tried to defend your racial preference for minorities in traditionally white roles by claiming, "I don't hate whites, I (used to) have lots of close white friends!"

It was disgusting, and while your response did fulfill the racist prophecy I cast for you, it's not like you were forced to answer by means of the most stereotypical cowardly subterfuge possible. The simple fact that you confirmed my prediction doesn't mean that it was designed in such a way that one couldn't possible avoid doing so.

fuck off

look, I'll tell you what I think. Yes, it's weird that they chose black actors for a period piece. But among a hundred other historical inaccuracies of dress, set design, etc., it is only worse in that nobody is stupid enough to miss it.

I'd like to see the filmmakers give a shit about accuracy. They don't. They haven't and they never will.

There is a difference between someone wearing plate mail a few hundred years too early, and someone wearing a WWII helmet in a Medieval piece. One you'll notice but can still ignore, the other makes it almost impossible to continue being immersed.

Blind casting is horseshit cultural marxism seeping into the already infested world of theatre faggotry. And this is coming from someone who did theatre for over a decade.

Blind casting is a meme. Plain and simple. It's done as a cheap way to get people talking about your production, nothing more. Then, when you get critisized for it, you can just cry rascism and theatre fags will flock to your defense.

And before I get told to go back to /pol/, this isnt a whites only thing. There was a production of Emperor Jones being put on when I was in college. For those of you unfamiliar with Emperor Jones, the lead character, Jones, is an escaped slave who flees to an island nation. Really good play. Talks about inherent rascism, examination of how class plays into oppression. Good show.

Jones dialogue, and he has a shit load of it, is written in stump speech. "I done gibs dem all dey gots fo wat it blah blah blah". Thats how his text is wirtten. Show I was referring to? 90 pound asian girl as Jones.Absolutle horseshit.

Another one was a famous Indian play about a poet that becomes a courtier, abandoning his love to an abusive relationship and returning at the end, only to find out that life is not like his poetry: it goes on without him. Cast? Lilly fucking white. All of them. all dressed in traditional Indian garb. It's rediculous.

Normally you can hope, pray, with regular shows that the rights holders have "integrity" clauses in the rights contract to stop this kinda shit. But the worst is with Shakespeare.

ROMEO AND JULIET ARE WHITE.
CESAR AND ANTONY ARE WHITE
OTHELLO IS FUCKING BLACK

But, everyone needs to be edgy and race and gender swap them to be different. Disgusting, and shits on original intent with post modernist bullshit.,

Very coming-of-age post

What do you mean?

>Romans
>white

Did I just get memed? I think I just got memed.

Not him, if you want to act like immersion in Shakespeare's times is necessary to you, don't refer to it as a medieval piece.

I think you have idiosyncratic foibles about what's historically accurate and what's not, and they aren't historically accurate or all that artistically inclined.

I don't think you know enough about Elizabethan theatre to be scandalized that a Webster production is put on without pearl dust or candles, or anything that would ruin immersion for someone with genuine knowledge of it or earlier theatre.

I think what ruins your immersion is that your preconceptions of history are constantly being challenged by the reality of the history of theatre production, which has always tended to innovate to get the crowds in, and you want to go back to the details in your historically inaccurate fantasy world, not in Shakespeare's or anyone else's world. You're actively resisting immersion in something new because your fantasy's cloth is too thin to support accuracy or innovation. It's not good.

I think you need to refer again the distinction I made in the OP between a stage production and a film production. What works fine on stage, does not necessarily work fine on film.

>What works fine on stage, does not necessarily work fine on film
...and you think film should be the one that's closer to your understanding of Elizabethan history of the two? This is worse than I thought.

You should get done with the female race as a whole.

>negroes committing suicide over women
>ever
>implying they wouldn't just hit it, quit it, gtfo

"like shit nigga just turn your head away from the dead bitch s m d h 100 100"

The Henry plays not Elizabethan history, they are set in the Middle Ages.

I'm saying a film production that spends millions for expensive props, is going for something different than a play. When you have long battle scenes, this right here is a sharp distinction. Shakespeare's plays couldn't do this, and he even offers such a disclaimer at the beginning of Henry V. We're talking about two very different mediums, which consequently follow very different conventions. For instance, in a play, an actor who is meant to be speaking softly is still going to be relatively loud, whereas in a film that would be extremely jarring.

>The Henry plays not Elizabethan history, they are set in the Middle Ages.
Because when Shakespeare put those on in the Elizabethan era, he was working really closely with the costumers to make sure they got all the previous century's details right?
>battle scenes
>Shakespeare's plays couldn't do this
So, what you're saying is that it wasn't historical inaccuracy that spoils Shakespeare's plays for you, but that you would have been upset if you had sat in on Henry V in the original Globe when Shakespeare first had it out, because you can't see Agincourt's full battlefield like it's the 1400s again? I feel the need to remind you that Verona is not in England, and France wasn't part of England by its first performance either.

What you're saying is that because you like to look at films where there's lots of people replicated through computer imaging, that that is closer experience to Agincourt than Shakespeare got. You're not worried about losing immersion in Shakespeare, you're worried about whether Michael Bay would have done the 15th Century better than the 16th Century knew how.

>an actor who is meant to be speaking softly
Christ on a bike, you're grasping at anything that might make you seem like you've seen enough lives plays to have this conversation.

Yes, I understand, you don't want a movie which looks anything like something which could or would have been produced for entertainment in Shakespeare time or before it to immerse yourself in. What you don't want to stop steeping in are all the things that this millennium told you film should do, and I'm sure you never lost immersion watching 300, but have read exactly none of the Greeks because they really ruin your immersion when they don't conform to the movies.

I feel bad for what your generation is going to do to the Bard to make him better once Stoppard dies and stops holding back the tide.

You seem to continue to willfully and utterly disregard the distinction between film and play. "Well Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to/didn't care about doing x." Yeah, no kidding. We're not talking about a play, we're talking about a film with an enormous budget, which happens to use Shakespeare's play as source material. We're not talking about the same medium, because if we were, it would just be a single angle continuous shot of a stage with no props. Film incorporates visuals far, far, far more than plays do, which are barely more than radio shows where you can see the performers.

there's literally nothing wrong with casting a blind person

Yeah, now you just look ignorant of both stage mechanics, early film, and the range of special effects which are available to both stage and film. The Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight video is so iconic because they went back to how special effects used be shot when film relied on stage effects. John Dee wasn't called a fucking wizard in Elizabeth's time because his sets were only good for "medieval" [sic&kek] shows in the past.
>barely more than radio shows where you can see the performers
Yes, I know you don't like to go to the theatre and want everything to pander to your safety zone of post 90s film, but they learnt a lot of that from old stage management being revived in the 90s too. You want an enormous budget film not because it helps you immerse yourself in Shakespeare better, but because you have no other way of immersing yourself in anything. The stage, radio, special effects that aren't a very niche very recent style, and heaven forbid being actually 3d without glasses are all going to make you lose immersion, not because of a flaw in media, but because you can't suspend your disbelief outside of a tiny corner of mainstream mediocre action films. Anything outside your formulaic view of a medium you don't even barely understand and you're lost. It's not a good thing, and will limit you. To end on a positive note, there's loads of games of Agincourt you could play online for free, which would really immerse you better in medieval times better than Shakespeare could since he never gives a choose your own ending or audience participation cue, and you could feel much more at home there than discussing theatre.

I've read most of Shakespeare's plays and loved them, and I watch his plays regularly and love them. Film, however, is not a play. It seems you are irked by this, and demand it be treated to precisely the same conventions or else it is "just a video game". I understand your aesthetic, but if you want to fully embrace it, you can also decry dimension in art as filthy innovation as well and taking away the imagination needed for flat art.

>boring first year reference to Clement Greenberg
I'm not irked, I'm providing reasons why you seem like an eighteen year old begging for everything to be as limited as you. And eighteen is generous.

It doesn't bother me.

Why aren't you complaining about pronunciation? Surely that is also an immersion breaker considering nobody talked in Standard English dialect back then.

I don't even know who that is.

You're providing snotty condescension and pretty much nothing else. You seem incapable, completely, utterly, totally, redundantly incapable of grasping that film has different standards and expectations than stage does. What is more, you, miraculously enough, manage to resent this without even grasping it.

I read Shakespeare in Elizabethan pronunciation, or at least the closest approximation we have which preserves the rhymes and puns. I don't expect it to be pronounced this way on stage or film because a lot of people would have difficulty understanding it.

He's the champion of flat painting, eg Jackson Pollock.

I'm providing you with name drops so you can wikipedia scholar your complete lack of technical, aesthetic and literary understanding into something more than the idea that nobody else knows what a film or play is. I'm explaining how film and the stage are much broader in their effects than what you can come up with battle scenes are an effect, a big budget is not You're talking with someone who has a broad knowledge on these things and rather than expanding your horizons, you're digging in your heels like a petulant child.

Here's a mind blower- the Romans used stage sea battles in the Flavian Amphitheatre. Going big isn't a new thing that you need film for, and film is not more immersive than real life battleships shooting napalm at each other. It's just that you're not schooled enough or broadly experienced enough to know anything outside of b-b-but only film seems real to me. It'll come with time but if you consider someone who's given you so many points on Elizabethan to modern special effects a detriment to your education, there's really nothing I can do. Enjoy your Mel Gibson's Henry V.

Elizabethan English is pronounced like a lot of East Coast American English I know, you like to sound like you know something but try knowing something instead, it's much easier to manoeuvre

By flat painting, I mean Medieval art, not art that doesn't even represent anything physical anyway.

I don't care what your expertise is, you've done nothing with it but attempt to aggrandize yourself and intimidate me into submission with appeal to authority. You've provided exactly not argument whatsoever except try to equate film standards with stage standards, and then try to equate having a black queen of England in the Middle Ages with any and all deviation with historical perfection.

You argue in absolutes and insults, your expertise is limp and worthless.

It's not pronounced like it at all. People on the East coast don't pronounce "Goth" like "goat", or "my" as "me".

By flat painting, art terminology means the modern movement proposed by Greenberg. this really is fresher art course shit man, are you sure you want me to keep explaining shit to you by typing dumb shit?

I didn't argue in absolutes, you did. You're now starting to argue like a girl by making shit up black queen, wtf, you are going to have to contact the aliens for where I said that in our discussion because your argument of "errybody else too dumb to know what a movie is and how it not a play" has fallen flat. Meanwhile I've been infodumping around the same goddamned delusional argument with quite some variety for hours now. Do you really think this makes you look gracious or well informed, or your argument that nobody understands film or stage like you do stronger?
Trevor Nunn disagrees, but he's just a director of the RSC, knighted for his work on Shakespeare and considers scholarship on him his religion, so what the hell would he know compared with you and your >40 years experience in the field.

>By flat painting, art terminology means the modern movement proposed by Greenberg
By quibbling over semantics, you completely disregard the point.

>Meanwhile I've been infodumping
But not actually making an argument. Your infodumps seem to serve not other purpose but to increase your credibility, and therefore strengthen your argument from authority. They are not, in themselves, an argument.

>Trevor Nunn disagrees
Then unfortunately he's wrong, because there is a pronounciation that makes rhymes and puns work, and there is one which obscures them. Much Ado About Nothing, for instance, is a pun because it sounds (in Elizabethan English) exactly like "Much Ado About Noting", "noting" of course meant to take a sexual interest in someone back then.

It's not semantics, it's what the term means.

Your argument is repeated throughout this thread as many variations on the phrase "you don't understand how a film is different to a play". My counterargument is that you've shitty and limited exposure to both and want to kill off the possibilities of both because of a problem you have, not a problem with the media themselves which are far more flexible and hardy than you.

>here let me read you some footnotes
omg next you'll being saying country matters *did* mean something dirty in Hamlet. you'll be disappointed to find that pronouncing it that way happens on both sides of the Atlantic still. it's why there's the elocution lesson on "This That These and Those that's the way the T-H goes".

Who exactly are you trying to convince you have a leg to stand on at this stage? or film set if you're more comfortable with that I'm all for correcting this shit as you come out with it, but I think you're soiling your trip forever if you didn't want to be the village idiot. For a tripfag who needs the ego boost of recognition, maybe pick a fight where you're not missing years of study and basic information. I mean, do you really think you're coming out of calling scholarship wrong because you haven't read enough scholarship clean? It's not like the RSC are going with your plan over Nunn's and they'd probably think you a green ink writer, not a scholar. I really don't know who you're pretending for now besides yourself

>It's not semantics, it's what the term means.
Yeah, you shifted the point of what I was saying, to the meaning of the term, while completely ignoring the substance of what I was saying.

>My counterargument is that you've shitty and limited exposure to both and want to kill off the possibilities of both because of a problem you have, not a problem with the media themselves which are far more flexible and hardy than you.
Saying film is "robust", is not actually an argument here. Film can do all sorts of things, but if it isn't consistent with itself, it falls flat. Just like if I do a film that aims for realism, and then later introduce a vampire in the last act, it will be jarring, and probably won't work. Just like if you put a great deal of effort into recreating a period, but then completely ignore a glaring detail that would leap out even to those who have zero expertise in the period, it is bad film making, it is not at all consistent with the style the film has chosen. If you're doing a modern or other sort of retelling, that is something else, but if you aim for a detailed period retelling, it's bad film making.

> you'll be disappointed to find that pronouncing it that way happens on both sides of the Atlantic still.
No one says it that way on the East Cost.

>I mean, do you really think you're coming out of calling scholarship wrong because you haven't read enough scholarship clean?
I'm calling it wrong because it is flat out wrong, and "sovereign eye" "alchemy" from Sonnet XXIII don't rhyme in East Coast pronunciation. East Coast pronunciation would a gross, jarring break from Middle English, whereas Early Modern English is the pronunciation which bridges Middle English and Modern English.

The worst thing about this casting is the age, not the race. The guy looks like he's 35 years old, he's 20 years too late to play the part.

Let's be honest, no 15-year-old could act properly in a serious, lengthy play from 17th century.

The substance of what you're saying isn't historical. It's a story you made up, which is why you don't have any technical terms for medieval art. If you want to talk about art, not fucking up the terminology will make you look more like you have an articulate point. Since you didn't, I figured I'd teach you something. Like I have been doing every time you reply with some new ahistorical nontechnical ill informed fantasy of how the world would work if only everybody listened to you like an unfailing font of knowledge and us not knowing the difference between films and plays you'd think we'd be grateful and unquestioning instead of telling you what further research you need to do to sound knowledgeable

>"robust"
Ah, the thesaurus rape approach to quotation.
>stoker didn't know shit why are they still using him as a plot line in films
Yes, your observation that vampire films never do that as genre wide trope really convinced me you knew who the vampire was before reading Twilight. This is the fantasy shit I'm talking about. Think it through, even if it felt like you were right the first time. Considering even when you're wrong you still like to claim you're better versed than someone whose studied something longer than you were alive and has received recognition from his own field and others from his work, that "I'm right" thought you keep having might be considered overblown optimism on your part by others

>recreating the period
The problem with this is a lot of things which really did happen in the period don't mesh with your gloss of history. You're trying to point out errors which would need everyone to adopt a revisionist view of history to see as errors. You don't have the knowledge of history or Shakespeare to do that. Seriously, man, take a second to think about how you dismissed a 40 year noted scholar on the subject out of hand, just because the alternative would be you were wrong on at Mongolian handweaving swapmeet. That shit isn't making you right, it's making you wrong and opposed to knowing better. Put your ego on chill, I'm trying to help you even though you're projecting all this emotion on to me and generally acting like an underagedb& or spoiled girl. It's not a good look, and even if it were, if you're really interested in film, theatre, or history, you could be gather resources to get better at them, instead of needing to make out you're perfect and it's just history, film, theatre, Shakespeare, and academia who are bein' foo's.

>No one says it that way on the East Coast.
See, when you make sweeping statements like this hoping no facts will come to fuck your shit up, it's asking for me to explain which accents say it that way and you'll freak when some of them aren't of white descent, though most of the accents carried from 16th Century England to the East Coast of America are the same accents which still pronounce it "noting" in the UK today

>solid wrong
You're making out like the East Coast is just one accent, when it's a series of amalgams of accents from earlier in Europe, most of which, whether German or English, have the "noting" pronunciation from the 16th Century on. I'm adding the East Coast to things you haven't had enough exposure to.

I'm calling you wrong because I know the linguists involved in tracking these accents have spent more time on checking their hypotheses than you. That smarmy little voice saying "I couldn't possibly be wrong, history will agree whether I learn it or not" is leaving you down again. [I think the migration of these accents is and their pockets based on early settlement is fascinating, but you obviously don't and want to keep it a special Elizabethan English thing.]

Double post, but damn, you keep hoping that if it comes out of your fingertips it's divinely inspired and don't need no research or fact. I've told you how callow that looks right?

You should all get laid with normal people.

When white people do it, it's "whitewashing" and an expression of evil, racism and imperialism. When other people do it, it's "colorblind casting" and an expression of good, tolerance and a 'celebration of humanity'.

Bullshit from start to end. There is nothing contemptible about either casting, although it can harm historic realism and plausibility, but the way it gets labeled certainly is.

They did it all the time when Shakespeare was writing them.

>all these Americans who think black people only arrive in England after they got them
>all these people think actors weren't whores below the social status of rich black man
frankly I think the problem is not enough whoring, who gives a shit what they look like under stage make up or their skirts

As long as they are good actors, I don't really care. You can also do interesting things with it, as casting a black Iago along with a black Othello, or even make both Othello and Iago white and see how that changes the interaction.

I think having quotas is stupid (i.e. having 50% of the cast being black or something like that). You should care about their acting, not their skill color.

In any case, theater is illusion. Things like "immersion" and shit like that don't mean anything.

i think immersion is just the willing suspension of disbelief coleridge talks about, so if you're not getting it, the problem's usually on the user end if it's not bad acting.

I know that, but were they actually good actors?
And, again, I doubt any 15-year-olds today can act complex roles with countless difficult words for like three hours. If there are any, there are few and you probably won't find two of them in one theater.

I've seen a few good ones pass through the local Shakespeare society. Usually they just get smaller parts, but Mercutio was played by a scenery chewing sixteen year old last time I saw their Romeo and Juliet. I think you're underestimating what a teenager boy will do to get famous and laid. Half of them would memorize the bible if they thought that would work.

Well, then I retract my statement.

If it's period reproduction, I'm slightly against it. If it's modern, I've no moral problems if they don't push their own agenda into them.

But unfortunately that's often not the case. Modern theatre is so absolutely liberal that it's often completely disgusting. They tend to push their agenda everywhere and all the time, even into the places that have no literal background, changing the theme and morals of the pieces all the time.

You're not entirely wrong: there have been some who were as bad as the bad adult actors in the troupe, but being 15 gives them time to get better unlike the older ones.

I'm pretty sure they have an all ages policy for the group, so normally they have kids around 10-12 to play pages and a lot of those are very nervous. However, because they're no longer doubling being a page boy and being the lead female, it makes both jobs easier.

Some of the doubling roles like the Duke/Oberon in Midsummer's Night's Dream are hard for adult actors, so if you had to play half the women and any young male parts, I'd say it comes to the same level of challenge if not more.
Most companies are wary about doubling up the Duke/King and Hippolyta/Queen roles in Midsummer's Night Dream with adult actors these day if they have enough bodies, so I can't really fault them for not forcing a 12 year old to learn three roles when they have two older females to fill two of those roles.

It does make me wonder though if any company is dividing parts like they used among a smaller troupe. This is probably going to lead to three drag queens performing Merchant of Venice

>It does make me wonder though if any company is dividing parts like they used among a smaller troupe.
There certainly are. I haven't seen it personally, but there was staging of a relatively obscure Dubrovnik renaissance comedian where 6 actors played 30 roles , like they did in 16th century. If this is done with such little-known (outside the writer's country) plays, it's probably done with Shakespeare as well.

it changes nothing really. it doesn't lessen the bard's work because everyone's already familiar with it. it doesn't permanently change all productions from that point on. it doesn't educate people into believing that there were prominent black houses in italy, and if it did that's just another addition to the countless things people are wrong about so that changes nothing. there's no moral imperative to use art to educate. there's still such thing as artistic liberty and historicity isn't of the highest importance in the arts, especially well-known works such as romeo and juliet. it's not appropriation because the directors and those adapting the play are still white, so whites are still in control. if you are still unconvinced, 'whiteness' doesn't excuse an englishman writing about italians. also it makes an interesting case study about how taboo interracial relationships are so it is relevant to our time

that pretty much exhausts all possible avenues of argument. it's totally harmless and people who get upset about these things i don't think actually care about theatre except when they see something they don't like i.e. blacks

I like it. Anyone else remember when that black director cast a white guy as MLK? That shit was hilarious.

>they expect a lot and dont give much in return

that's a jewish lie designed to get your race bred out of existence like the neanderthals

>rediculous

kill yourself

I don't really care who they cast in a role so long as they're casting them because they'll do a fantastic job.

A lot of the time though it seems more like they are casting a black person to play a white character to be edgy. It does force me to scrutinize the actor as well -- if you're cast in a weird role and you're not fantastic then I'm going to be more critical.

Actually blind casting is fine. I don't believe most of it is actually blind

Didn't know "Jew" stood for /r9k/

lel look at this one...

>Muh immersion
This isn't a video game.

I think with some things it's okay, but for historical works (like R & J) they need to stay true to the source material. I mean, having a black Romeo and not mentioning or rewriting the play to deal with the racism of that time period is disingenuous, and quite frankly, a little disrespectful to the races that delt/deal with that shit. But why in the fuck woild you rewrite Romeo and Juliette? You wouldn't, so cast actors that fit into the roles. It's why I like films like QT's "The Hateful Eight". Sure, listening to those slurs is awful, and the subject matter can be uncomfortable, but at least it's an honest reflection of the time period.

Not OP but where's the best place in NYC to go to see Shakespeare and other classic plays? I'm tired of just reading all the Greek and English dramas missing the vital element of the stage.

Saw Cymbeline at the Globe in January and the entire casting was blind; there was irish, welsh, pakistani, scottish, northern, black across the whole cast and I actually found myself really appreciating it. I'm scottish so I found myself thinking "aw cool there's that accent I recognise and that brings something to the character for me". I thought about it afterwards and really approved of the idea that anyone no matter the ethinic origin would be able to identify someone on stage during that production in that, admittedly kind of silly, but special way. My point is it makes it feel less like Shakespeare belongs to a bunch old Etonian RP cunts and more like he belongs to everyone.

So basically you prefer blind casting because it benefits your self-interest

>The Globe

dailywire.com/news/2404/new-director-shakespeare-globe-theater-determined-hank-berrien

Rice, who has only directed one play of Shakespeare before, has decided that she knows writing better than the Bard, stating, “There’s no way that every line can still be relevant, in my opinion. There is a great case to be made for great editing, making the plays a little bit shorter and punching through the language that has stood the test of time and we do understand.” She told The Guardian,

“I have tried to sit down with Shakespeare but it doesn’t work. I get very sleepy and then suddenly I want to listen to The Archers … He was writing 400 years ago, there is no way in the world every line can still be relevant.”

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

==JUST==

>mfw

I don't get why people get so up in arms when
someone changes something fictional to begin with

The theatre who puts on the play can take any artistic liberties they want to. Why restrict art?

>I find it very jarring because it pulls me out of the immersion.

The story for me is mostly the blind passion between the two characters. As long as chemistry is present I don't think any immersion would be lost

Most people try to do something new with Shakespeare now though, especially since the Globe is back.

I did get to see that tiny ninja Shakespeare thing, and it's well worth going to if he calls through town, because at times you forget it's one guy operating cheap children's toys in a shoebox.

>it doesn't educate people into believing that there were prominent black houses in italy, and if it did that's just another addition to the countless things people are wrong about so that changes nothing.
Yeah, tbqh if Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare's other plays in the city were "educating" people to believe that Verona was like that, the belief they were black isn't the worst inaccuracy about that.
>rewriting the play to deal with the racism of that time period is disingenuous, and quite frankly, a little disrespectful to the races that delt/deal with that shit.
yeah it's really oppressive how instead of focusing on fratricide as a family tradition in Verona, like it was, he focused on killing people outside your family, and staged a fratricide for power in Denmark instead. it's like he's Hitler of the Tudor era.

Why restrict the discussion of art?

Just because you're doing something different doesn't mean it's good. Nobody is saying it should be illegal to put on a mediocre and pandering interpretation, people are simply identifying mediocre, pandering interpretations and examining why they failed.

but the play is so popular that its getting mentioned here. that seems like a success for me

I'm talking about artistic failure, not financial. I'm sure the producers earned a lot of money and publicity by appealing to the prejudices of the democratic taste.

i felt this romeo in particular wasn't that good. he was fine during the comedic and action parts but he only really displayed one tone of voice and it grated after a while. juliet was okay (i think she's now in game of thrones). i think blind casting is fine unless the race of the character is important, as in othello or whatever.

another this about this production was that neither of the montague parents were black, which was a weird choice. i can imagine kids being confused by it.