Anti-Racism Conversation: Casting Shakespeare in a Contemporary World
Booking and details
Dates Sat, Jan 27, 2024, 10am
Venue
Folger Haskell Center
Across the street from Folger Theatre
Tickets $20; $15 for Members and Subscribers ($35 - Festival Pass)
Duration 1 hour
What are the implications of multicultural casting using 400-year-old texts that were initially written for and performed only by white European men? Kaja Dunn, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Folger Theatre’s Resident Intimacy and Cultural Consultant, leads a conversation about casting Shakespeare’s plays in today’s world, examining color-blind casting, societal casting, conceptual casting, and cross-cultural casting.
Festival Pass – $35
Access to all Festival open rehearsals, readings, screenings, and conversations.
All-Access Pass – $75
Everything in the Festival Pass, plus invitations to the opening and closing parties.
Students – Free admission to readings and conversations
Admitted free one-half hour before event start time, with a valid ID
Kaja Dunn
Kaja Dunn (Resident Intimacy and Cultural Consultant): Folger Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, Our Verse In Time To Come, The Reading Room; Arena Stage: American Prophet; Denver Center for the Arts: Choir Boy, 5thAve; ACT Theatre (Seattle): Choir Boy; St. Louis Rep.: Private Lives, Confederates; Two River Theatre: Wine In The Wilderness; Penumbra Theatre: Sugar In Our Wounds; Broadway: A Strange Loop (Assoc. Intimacy Director); Television: The Best Man, Final Chapters, Harlem, The Equalizer; Awards: Kennedy Center American Theatre Award, Playwrights Project Excellence in Arts Education; Publications: Arden Contemporary Shakespeare, Intimacy Direction For Theatre, Theatre Symposium, HowlRound, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (UK); Associate Professor Carnegie Mellon University.
Jorge Acevedo
Jorge Acevedo he/him (Casting Director) SIGNATURE: Casting Director & Manager of Artistic Programs: RENT, Daphne’s Dive, She Loves Me, The Upstairs Department, The Color Purple, No Place to Go, Into the Woods, Which Way to the Stage, Selling Kabul, Pacific Overtures, Passing Strange, Sweeney Todd, The Bridges of Madison County, King of the Yees, Ragtime; Casting & Executive Coordinator: Simply Sondheim, Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only Child, Midnight at The Never Get, After Midnight, Detroit 67. DC AREA: The Kennedy Center: The Dragon King’s Daughter; The Mortification of Fovea Munson; Shakespeare Theatre Company: The Amen Corner; Working In DC: Working: A Musical. OTHER: Casting Directive – Broadway for Racial Justice: Inaugural Class. TEDxBroadway: Young Professionals Program, 2018. EDUCATION: Wagner College. @TheeJorgeAvocado.
Danica Rodriguez
Danica Rodriguez (she/her) is a New York/Washington D.C.-based casting director and theater maker dedicated to centering and celebrating the voices of the historically underrepresented. She is currently Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Resident Casting Director. STC: The Lehman Trilogy; Macbeth In Stride; Evita; Here There Are Blueberries; King Lear; Jane Anger; Much Ado About Nothing; Red Velvet; Our Town; The Merchant of Venice. NEW YORK: Off-Broadway: The Public Theater: cullud wattah (World Premiere); Romeo y Julieta; Soft Power; for colored girls…; Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare in the Park); Mojada; Ain’t No Mo’ (World Premiere). REGIONAL: Folger Theatre: Our Verse in Time to Come | Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes; Incendiary | The Kennedy Center: The Day You Begin | Long Wharf Theatre: Passing Strange | JAG Productions: Next to Normal | The Civilians: El Condor Magico, and others. FILM: Braid of Time; Whole; Six Feet Apart.
Nikkole Salter
Nikkole Salter is a Los Angeles-born, OBIE Award-winning actress and writer. Nikkole arrived onto the professional scene with her co-authorship and co-performance of the Pulitzer Prize nominated play, In the Continuum. She was most recently in Mud Row at People’s Light and in the Broadway production of The Great Society. As a dramatist, she has written 8 full-length plays, been commissioned for full-length work by 6 institutions, been produced on 3 continents in 5 countries, and been published in 12 international publications. She made her directorial debut at Baltimore Center Stage with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.