Hello my lovely readers
This week's #WordyandWheelyWednesdays entry is a return to usual service because, although I'm still grafting away with uni work, the topic is incredibly relevant to my own research.
Last night Mama, Gramma and I went to the Globe for an event titled Against Prejudice, in celebration of Ira Aldridge. Aldridge came over to the UK from America in 1824, aged just seventeen, and soon became the first black actor to play Othello. He then went on to take over the management of what is now the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.
This is where last night comes in. The event was comprised of a rehearsed reading of a short play written by Professor Tony Howard of the University of Warwick (one of my undergraduate tutors and an all-round awesome human), followed by a thought-provoking panel. Each panel member had a different perspective on, and connection to, Aldridge (ranging from historical to practical to personal) but all were united in their desire to give Aldridge the continued and lasting recognition he deserves.
It is the essence of these diverse yet united perspectives (both from the panellists and from the play's cast and creative team) which forms the substance of my post today. For the underlying message (whether portrayed through Shakespeare, traditional song, or news snippets from Aldridge's time which showed the significance of his success) was one of heritage and community, coupled with a sense of incredulity. This latter emotion arose from two sources - either related to the personal joy of finding him for the first time but wondering how people had not known before, or from the more general feeling that this knowledge (even now) remains fairly niche and that, consequently, each 'new' discussion is treated as a revelation by the wider theatrical establishment. Such a paradox was referred to as the 'ten-year-cycle of rediscovery', and the abiding consensus was in making concerted efforts to ensure that the cycle is broken; of which last night's event was just one of many ongoing.
For me (as I'm sure for many other audience members), this sentiment was encapsulated in the presence of Earl Cameron, a veteran centenarian actor who took voice lessons from Aldridge's daughter, Amanda. Not only did he wow everyone with an impromptu rendition of Othello's final speech (I still have goosebumps thinking about it as I type) but he led Tony to say what an honour it was 'to hold the hand, that held the hand, that Ira Aldridge held'. Of course this was a very emotive and poignant literal statement, but it also struck me as an extremely useful metaphor for the impact of authentic, representative and diverse casting practices, hence the title of this post.
Through witnessing themselves represented, people have hands to hold, and can use those hands to reach a position from where they can then be hands to help others in future years. Such was the power of having members of the Belgrade's Black Youth Theatre in the cast, and this is where my own research and practice fits in. Whilst I am forever conscious of the privilege afforded to me by my whiteness and my educational achievements, as a wheelchair-using actor and aspiring academic, I am also acutely aware that I, too, have very few generations of former practitioners' hands to hold. (I certainly could not stand on their shoulders - I think my wheels might be a tad uncomfortable!) I long to find some, as Virginia Woolf did in A Room of One's Own, and I share the sense of delight exhibited by the panellists yesterday when I do. (Oh, the rapture when I discovered Samuel Foote, the eighteenth-century amputee actor and comic!) More than that, though, I want to be part of making change so that someone else might feel that they could use my hand if they need it.
This is why figures like Aldridge need not just to be celebrated but to be talked, and taught, about - continuously, and as a matter of course, embedded into our curricula at every level. Their stories impact everyone in society by changing the dominant narratives, providing the kind of knowledge which gives much-needed hands to hold, and could go a long way to making Aldridge's fabled 'land of freedom' a lived reality.
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