A Change Is Gonna Come

To my Sisters and Brothers,?

Like many of those who have come before us, history has found us yet again, this time caught up in an argument with a stranger at the crossroads leading back to Thebes, so to speak, with many of us unaware of how complex or consequential our roadside argument may prove to be, not just to ourselves but for everyone.?And though we may be acutely aware of issues such as racism, discrimination, bias and hate, what are we actively doing about it?

The words and works of William Shakespeare have historically been the cultural property of many of the same people, whose hearts and minds we would like to open up and offer a new perspective to or a more nuanced way of seeing and understanding the events that unfold every day in this country and in the world at large, and how all of the events taking place here and now are inextricably tied to our collective past and our history of freedom and oppression, haves and have nots, minorities and majorities, masters and servants, between power and impotence.

In the coming months, theater companies producing summer Shakespeare festivals will begin to gather and rehearse narratives saturated with metaphors?and language that gave rise to the language of institutionalized oppression and subjugation and they realize this. We have now begun to understand the?consequences, longevity, and the afterlives of oppressive?language. The scholarship on early modern race making is extensive and the reckoning has been worldwide.

In response, some theater companies will change a word or two. Others will offer a different sort of casting, but Shakespeare's song basically remains the same as it has for centuries, with lyrics famous Shakespeareans and Shakespearean actors in particular know word for word - words and actors that changed the course of American history. Think about it...

A Shakespearean actor puts on blackface in nineteenth century New York, creates a character named Jim Crow, which begins a theatrical tradition of minstrel shows, a tradition that would endure until the 1970s and beyond, and?by extension, the Jim Crow laws named for that stereotype, we are still feeling the consequences of and living out its legacy to this very day. Other Shakespearean actors helped to overthrow the sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii. A Shakespearean actor named?Ulysses S. Grant would fight to push the Mexicans out of Texas, become the president of the United States, then go on to wage some of the most horrific of the Indian wars during Indian removal. Another US president and Shakespearean, John Quincy Adams, would fight for the abolition of slavery then years later publish an essay on the character of Desdemona, stating that the moral of Shakespeare's Othello is that black and white races should never mix. And then of course there's the Shakespearean actor who walked into the Ford Theater one night and assassinated President Abraham Lincoln then jumped on stage reciting lines from Julius Caesar.?

Words words words. Words become deeds. Shakespeare's words, a president's words, your words, my words, they matter. Words are powerful. They endure. They shape the way we see the world and the way we see each other. So, today I am calling to all of the actors out there, especially my Shakespearean actors of color, my LGBTQIA+ actors, to join us and help Shakespeare do the right thing - roll up his sleeves as we use Shakespeare's Words to change some of the more persistent narratives that we've lived with, for entirely too long.?

The Globe theater in London has a maximum capacity of 1,421 seats. The Ashland Shakespeare Festival's Elizabethan theater seats 1,198 people, the Delacorte Theater in Central park seats 1,800 people. The Folger theater in the Folger Shakespeare library on the national Mall can seat 250 individuals.?

On November 1st, 2020, two days before election night, 8,000 people around the globe joined us from the Performing arts center on the Big island of Hawaii to see if Shakespeare's Othello could be used to speak to what was happening in the streets and in the hearts and minds of Americans concerning the value of black lives, policing, and the use of the US military at home and abroad. The performance moved audience members in ways I could have never imagined when I was writing it or creating the online surveys for my dissertation research. Because of its accessibility, because so many people were able to see the performance, MOORE went on to be taught in classrooms around the world from Stanford University in Palo Alto to Trinity college in Dublin. I'm still Zooming into classrooms around the globe to discuss what we did with Shakespeare's play and why.?

All because they could see the show, because people had access to it.

We are not Shakespeare's Globe. One does not need Shakespeare's Globe to experience Shakespeare's plays. There are worlds elsewhere. Our stage exists in the virtual world, and seats tens of thousands of people, online, path traced, beautifully and photo realistically rendered in real time in the NVIDIA Omniverse, optimized and accelerated by Nvidia, powered by Epic Games' Unreal Gaming Engine and Reallusion 's Iclone and Character Creator, and like Joseph Papp's vision of a theater of the future, the “Omni Blackfriars” is free for anyone and everyone who wants to experience what Shakespeare's plays have to say at this critical moment in history, as we here in the United States prepare once more to elect another US president and everything that implies.

This summer, America Shakes will?be joined?by a company of high school and community college students around the globe, in the Omniverse, to stage the world's first real time animated performance of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, addressing some of the most pressing issues we are facing in our current moment.?

Over the past year, our team of animators have been working around the clock to create the characters and the virtual world of the play. It is now time for our first live "wild read" of the script by our cast of voice over actors. The audio from the reading will be used as the baseline VO track for character animation, facial motion capture and lip sync in preparation for the live show, which will be helmed by our company of students at the end of summer 2023.

We are?calling to all of the actors out there, asking you to donate 90 minutes of your voice to those who do not have a voice. Donate 90 minutes of your skill set to those who may never have an opportunity to acquire those skills and help us change the sort of narratives that say that they never will.?

If you would like to participate in the reading as an actor, or if you just want to be present for the moment and enjoy the lightning in a bottle, email me at [email protected] with your availability and let's make it happen the weekend of April 29th, 2023 at 3PM EST, como vez? Sale? Vale. Mahalo nui loa, I also have also included a link to the Eastside Story script below.

I shall see you anon, in the NVIDIA Omniverse....

SR