‘De-colonizing' Shakespeare: Experts blame ‘white supremacy' for playwright's fame as hometown museum vows change
To be — or most definitely — not to be.
Regarded as the most influential writer in the English language, some of William Shakespeare's work is now viewed by critics as racist, sexist and homophobic.
As a result, the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust is decolonizing his hometown museum over the growing concerns about how his ideas are being portrayed today.
The trust — which owns several buildings in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, England and a collection of personal documents of the writer's — wants to 'create a more inclusive museum experience' by promising to remove offensive language from its collections.
'As part of our ongoing work, we've undertaken a project which explores our collections to ensure they are as accessible as possible,' a statement from the trust read.
According to GB News, the trust intends to research how Shakespeare's artifacts could be interpreted to be less offensive and more diverse and inclusive.
This discussion surrounding Shakespeare's work has been going on for a few years.
Three years ago, a research project conducted by the trust and Dr. Helen Hopkins at the University of Birmingham suggested that the writer's works 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy,' as reported by the Telegraph.
Adaptations of Shakespeare's work have been going on for hundreds of years, but in 2023, the historic Globe replica in London — which is closely associated with the writer — issued a warning of 'misogyny and racism' for their performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
According to the Daily Mail, at the time, a spokesman for the Globe said, 'Content guidance is written in advance of the creation of each production and based on what is present in the play. These will be updated as the production comes to life.'
A year prior to that, many US schools wanted to take Shakespeare out of their curriculum, stating that the writer's work promoted racism.
While many around the world are doing what they can to no longer promote the writer's work, Broadway doesn't seem to be joining the bandwagon.
The playwright's 1603 tragedy 'Othello' has opened at the Barrymore Theatre with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal. The show is set to run through June 8.
Prior to that, the latest adaptation of 'Romeo and Juliet' starred Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor at the Broadway's Circle in the Square, which closed in early February.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Blue Man Group ending 30-year run in Boston
Blue Man Group, a staple of the theater scene in Boston, is ending its 30-year run in the city this summer. The final Boston performance by the bald, nonverbal trio will be July 6, according to a statement published on "It has been a privilege to be a part of Blue Man Group Boston, a camaraderie that has been celebrated by the Boston community since we first opened in 1995 at the Charles Playhouse," Blue Man Group general manager Jonathan Screnci said in a statement. No reason was given as to why the show is ending its run in Boston. Just last year, WBZ-TV reported that the Boston production of Blue Man group underwent a major refresh. Producers said the show would have new elements focusing on hot topics like artificial intelligence, as well as more interaction with the audience as part of the performance. In February, Blue Man Group ended its 33-year off-Broadway run in New York City. The show's director said the decision to close in New York was partly because of declining ticket sales. Blue Man Group also gave its final performance in Chicago in January. Blue Man Group will still have a residency in Las Vegas, as well as international locations. The show got its start in New York in 1991. More than 4.5 million people have seen Blue Man Group perform their unique multimedia shows in Boston. Tickets for the final shows are available at
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Two Lost Exploitation Films from Trash-Cult Favorite Andy Milligan Will ‘Re-Premiere' at Tribeca
'It's so funny to me that Andy Milligan has become this great cult figure,' Laura Shaine Cunningham told IndieWire. To Cunningham — an author and playwright who describes her stint in Z-grade movies as 'a totally aberrant episode in my life' — Milligan was a sadist with a reddish beard who did his best to ruin her good time while shooting a movie on a derelict farm outside Woodstock, New York, in 1965. 'He was prolific, but not talented,' she added, a common sentiment even among Milligan's most passionate defenders. And Andy Milligan does have a cult, a small but devoted subgroup fascinated by the contrast between the cracked auteurism of his films and the callous commercialism of their production. 'These are true independent movies, and if you really are inclusive and you really want to spotlight independent filmmaking voices, then Andy Milligan needs to be there,' said Jonathan Penner, programmer at Tribeca Festival, where two Milligan films will screen on Friday, June 13. More from IndieWire Zoe Saldaña Says Her 'Emilia Pérez' Oscar Is 'Trans': The Statue 'Goes by They/Them' The Beautiful, Brutal Action of 'Predator: Killer of Killers' Milligan's films 'will move you,' Penner added. '[They] may not move you in the most pleasant way, which is OK. Not all art is nice. Andy Milligan was not a nice guy, and he didn't make nice movies. But they are near and dear to my heart, because horror movies in general are about fear and suffering and mortality, and Andy made movies about the darkest shit in humanity.' A once-promising independent filmmaker and gay Off-Off-Broadway pioneer, Milligan sold his soul to 42nd Street in the mid-'60s. He did so by joining up with producer William Mishkin, who would provide Milligan with small sums of money to churn out one-take wonders — horror movies and sexploitation pictures, mostly — that ran continuously in grindhouses until the prints wore out. Then, they were thrown away. 'They were considered orphans that nobody cared about,' Jimmy McDonough, author of the Milligan biography 'The Ghastly One,' said. 'Mishkin in particular cared very little about his legacy,' McDonough added. 'He saw it as all very contemporary stuff that you worked to death at the time. Maybe a few more years passed [when] you could get it into a drive-in and fool people into thinking it was in color.' Then Mishkin's son, Lou, took over the business in the mid-'80s. So the story goes, after an interview with Fangoria, where Milligan complained about him, Lou destroyed the remaining films out of spite. 'Melted down for the silver content,' as Severin Films researcher Todd Wieneke put it. As a result, many of the films Milligan made for the Mishkins are now considered lost. But Wieneke kept looking, and after years of searching, he discovered two previously unseen Milligan films, 'The Degenerates' (1967) and 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' (1968). Both were found in Europe, where it's common for unclaimed materials to be sent to national archives when a film company goes into receivership, a practice Wieneke credited to the 'deeply entrenched film cultures' in these countries. 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' was originally shipped to the Netherlands as part of a package of Mishkin films. This particular title, a hysterical New York apartment melodrama in the style of Doris Wishman, was a poor fit for the all-night theaters in Amsterdam's red-light district. And so it 'sat on the shelf, unscreened, not a single blemish on it,' as Wieneke said, for decades. It was eventually sent to the Eye Filmmuseum and kept, unlabeled, in its archive until it was finally catalogued in 2023. McDonough said that 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' is 'the most mainstream of [Milligan's] exploitation pictures, certainly, and perhaps all of his strange pictures.' McDonough credits this to the fact that Milligan didn't write the film — Josef Bush, best known for the cheeky 1968 gay guide 'The Homosexual Handbook', crafted the script from Mishkin's outline. 'Mishkin really felt like this was his 'Star Wars,'' McDonough laughed. The film was a hit on 42nd Street, possessing a certain tawdry entertainment value. It's also a valuable time capsule: 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' contains some of the only known footage of the Caffe Cino, the bohemian West Village coffee shop that nurtured Sam Shepard, Al Pacino, and Andy Milligan. 'The Degenerates,' meanwhile, resurfaced at the Royal Belgian Film Archive. This print's origins are murkier — Wieneke believed it 'fell into private hands' between its initial theatrical run and its rediscovery at the archive. It comes subtitled in French and Flemish, and like 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!,' it was restored by Severin Films after being scanned at the archives. The restorations are clean, but not too clean: Citing 'defects that are native to the print,' Wieneke said, 'sometimes you can fix things, but it's not aesthetically correct to fix them.' 'The Degenerates' is technically science fiction, although it plays more like a feverish blend of 'The Beguiled' and 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!' 'It's very much in character with Milligan,' McDonough said. 'There's ranting, there's raving, there's poisonous family dysfunction, and total destruction at the end.' Cunningham sounded amused recounting her scenes in the movie, about a band of six women 'surviving in the post-apocalypse' on a dirt farm in Woodstock. 'I do remember running through the rain with a pitchfork … the whole thing was absolutely ludicrous,' she said. 'Everyone said [Milligan's] films were ungettable. As if they didn't really exist,' Penner said. This is especially true of his sexploitation pictures: The eternal popularity of the genre has ensured that Milligan's horror movies — with colorful titles like 'The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!' — have remained in circulation since the VHS era. But sexploitation is 'a pocket that's never going to be duplicated,' according to Wieneke. 'It's very much a product of its time and the carnivalesque characters who worked behind the scenes.' Penner will attempt to capture the atmosphere of old, gritty 42nd Street at 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine,' part of the festival's Escape from Tribeca sidebar. 'There's a secret history of the movies in New York, a really profound history on 42nd Street,' Penner said. 'These movies truly will take you back to a different time and place and filmgoing experience, which is very beautiful to me.' Both 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' and 'The Degenerates' will 'world re-premiere' in the program, along with a selection of trailers and commercials meant to capture the look and feel of late-'60s New York. (The festival will also premiere a new documentary, 'The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan,' co-directed by Severin Films' Josh Johnson.) McDonough and Cunningham will make the pilgrimage, as well as Milligan players Natalie Rogers and Hope Stansbury. All will gather for a celebration of Milligan and the grindhouse film culture that made him — minus the street hustlers and discarded needles. 'The idea that we're showing his pictures at the Tribeca Film Festival … his ghost will be there cackling, madly, just laughing his ass off,'' Penner said. 'These movies sank below the bottom of the barrel, and we've fished them out.' For McDonough, who was close with Milligan in the years leading up to Milligan's death from AIDS complications in 1991, the homecoming is personal. 'I feel his presence on a regular basis,' he said. 'When I wrote ['The Ghastly One'], nobody wanted to hear about Andy Milligan … now Andy belongs to the world in a larger fashion. I'm just thrilled that he's finally being acknowledged as the idiosyncratic, unmatched talent that he was.' Asked if he thinks the ghost of Andy Milligan will be present at the screening, McDonough laughed: 'Wear your Kevlar vests is all I have to say. You never know how Andy might strike back — with a kiss, or something sharper.' 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine' will screen at the Village East by Angelika at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 13 as part of the Tribeca Festival. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Teens Who Fled War Are Now Graduating from U.S. School and Remembering Family They Left Behind
A group of teens who fled the war in Ukraine are graduating from a performing arts school in Philadelphia As they plan their futures, they also reflect on the loved ones they left behind 'I never could possibly imagine that I would be in America and graduating school here," a student saidA group of teens who fled the war in Ukraine are celebrating their graduation in Philadelphia, even as they miss the family and pets they were forced to leave behind. 'I never could possibly imagine that I would be in America and graduating school here,' Oleksandr Melenchuk, an 18-year-old who moved to the United States in 2023, but continued taking classes at his previous school in Khmelnytskyi, told NPR and PBS affiliate WHYY. 'It was in my dreams just to come to America, but finishing school here and knowing English and graduating, that's really fun.' Melenchuk is one of seven students from Ukraine who will graduate from Philadelphia Performing Arts, along with about 150 other students, this spring, WHYY reported. The campus is one of three in Philadelphia run by String Theory, a nonprofit education organization, which has accepted 88 Ukrainian students since Russia invaded the smaller country in February 2022, according to the outlet. The school did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. 'I knew like zero English, and teachers helped me a lot to learn it,' 18-year-old Olesia Skorets, who fled Ukraine in 2022, told KYW Newsradio. 'Ukraine is more home for me, but America is home too.' In February 2023, a year after about 60 Ukrainian students had arrived on campus, Daniel Betekhtin, an English as a second language teacher, told KYW that staffers realized the new arrivals would need extra help. "They, I think, were so moved by the events that we saw starting last February that everyone realized it's like, now is the time for all of us to step up to the plate,' he said at the time. Counselor Susan Thomas admires the focus and dedication of the Ukrainian students, she told WHYY. 'They did have trauma in their background. Many teenagers have trauma, whether you grew up in Ukraine or the United States,' she told the outlet. 'We work with mental wellness. We moved forward and got them into a plan step by step.' Skorets, who plans on becoming a dermatologist, is set to attend Holy Family University in the fall. But she doesn't know when she'll return home, according to KYW. Her classmate, 17-year-old Sofiya Ionina, will also attend the same university to study graphic design, but is worried about her grandmother. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 'I called my grandmother a couple of days before, because some bombs were just next to her. Like, it's two houses away from her,' Ionina told the outlet. 'Of course, I cry sometimes when I think about this. Or, just, I'm very worried about her.' She hopes to see her grandmother and the cat she left behind this summer, but also wants to stay in the U.S., according to the report. Mykola Peredruk, 18, arrived with his mother and sister. His father was injured defending Ukraine. 'Of course it makes me feel bad,' Peredruk told KYW. 'My dad is a soldier. He used to be in the war, but then he got a lot of traumas, and he's a veteran right now.' He will attend Penn State Abington in the fall, while Melenchuk will go to the Community College of Philadelphia to learn about video production. Read the original article on People