When Farah Karim-Cooper first went to her bosses at Shakespeare’s Globe with the idea of staging a festival about Shakespeare and race, she got the distinct feeling that it was not regarded as urgent subject matter. In the intervening four years, the issue has proved not only urgent but incendiary. Karim-Cooper – and the Globe – have faced vicious social media abuse and trolling for programming events on anti-racism. Further afield, the matter has become even more inflammatory: earlier this month, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare festival received death threats for programming the Bard’s work with references to slavery, and for its casting of women and non-binary actors. The charge of doing sacrilege to Shakespeare’s apparently sacred texts has never been more contested, it seems, and clearly comes with high stakes.
That first Globe festival in 2018 orchestrated by Karim-Cooper, a professor of Shakespeare studies at King’s College London, and co-director of education at the Globe, raised so many questions and conversations – from issues around casting to opening up the text to children of diverse backgrounds – that it became an annual fixture.
