<p>paying:</p>
<p>Thanks for the thoughtful response. It is much appreciated.</p>
<p>Let me see if I can address a few of your points.</p>
<p>Yes, what I had in mind (in a fleeting thought) was that the entire Jewish community in Fiddler could be made up of AAs and other minorities, and that the Russians be white. That would add a bit of a bite to the script, especially in areas of the US where anti-Semitism is relatively rare but racism against blacks is fairly common. The KKK robes is an interesting twist. I would probably not do that, myself, because I like sublety, and I think that would be condescending to the audience. But that's just my taste. Others might make the other decision and do so with great success.</p>
<p>I'm afraid I don't agree that it's the same thing to insist on casting Jews in Fiddler as it is to exclude non-whites in order to maintain the symbolic illusion. Jewishness may have some tendencies towards certain Mediterranean/Levantine physical characteristics, but I'm sure you're more aware than I that these tendencies are mild, and exceptions are legion.</p>
<p>Let me thank you for introducing a new factor I had not considered. I have become so accustomed to local high school theater where I live, and the fact that it is serious theater for serious performers, most of whom intend to go on to college to study their craft, that I forgot that not all communities are like mine. In some communities, surely, the theater-going audience would not spend much time trying to figure out the symbolism. In those cases, NTC makes sense.</p>
<p>Once again, I agree that, if the director felt it necessary to cast only white people in the play and the school is only 1/3 white, this was a VERY poor choice of plays. Simply ridiculous!</p>
<p>On to Shylock.</p>
<p>"Merchant" is a very, very difficult play to produce these days for several reasons. First, Shylock is clearly a villain and says and does villainous things. Second, there are a number of clearly anti-Semitic comments that are wince producing. The trick, and I believe it's an all-but-impossible trick, is to get the audience to see the play the way Will's audience would have seen it.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the fact that Jews had been banned from England for 300 years prior to "Merchant," the fact that no one knew any Jews who would confess to practicing Judaism (there was a community of "converted" Jews on the road to the Rose and Curtain theaters that Will would have known), the fact that Jews had been reduced in England to something very like the boogeyman, and even the fact that a physician to the Queen had been executed a few years before for attempting to poison her, and had then confessed to being a Jew, is unknown to modern audiences. Even those who know it have a hard time "feeling" it.</p>
<p>I believe that, had Shakespeare been born in the 19th century, he would have been Sigmund Freud. His genius has many facets, but I believe that one of the most important facets is his ability to break with the thinking of his time (a rare thing, that) and postulate environmental reasons why people are the way they are. You see this especially in one of his early works, Richard III, when he opens the play with a speech that turns the Medieval concept of deformity upside down. Richard isn't deformed because he's evil. The ill-treatment from others that he has received because of his deformity has made him evil.</p>
<p>The role of Shylock is in the same Shakespearean tradition. In essence, Shylock was an answer to Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," which can hardly be equaled for its virulent anti-Semitism. Shylock is how he is because of how he's been treated, and Will implies that this extends to Jews, in general. In context, "Merchant" is a gigantic slap in the face to the anti-Semites.</p>
<p>But, man, TRY getting all this across to a modern audience!!! </p>
<p>Anyway, this was a very long-winded (sorry) way to get at a point: I don't think "Merchant" works very well in that way, anymore. Rather than being an attack on anti-Semitism, it appears to a modern audience to be virulently anti-Semitic. I don't know how to fix that. I've toyed with the idea of producing "Merchant" as a play-within-a-play, cutting in scenes from The Jew of Malta to provide a contrast, but I've been unable to figure out how to do that without turning the production into a rather dreary, intellectual exercise.</p>
<p>Would Shylock and his daughter work as African-Americans or Amerinds or Hispanics? Probably not. The trick is to figure out HOW to make it work.</p>
<p>[Note: A really brilliant actor in the role of Shylock can get some of this across. I've seen it. An average actor can ruin the play, entirely.]</p>