UPDATED ON 1/28/2021: The BBC Radio 4 play Voodoo Macbeth is available online at bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rlm1
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Orson Welles’ groundbreaking all-Black stage production of Macbeth in Harlem in 1936 is the subject of an upcoming BBC Radio 4 play.
Voodoo Macbeth will be broadcast on January 28 at 2:15 p.m. on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Welles was only 20 years old when he was approached by John Houseman to direct a production for the Negro Theatre Unit — an offshoot of the Federal Theatre Project established by President Roosevelt to generate work among unemployed actors. Welles’ wife, Virginia, suggested he relocate Macbeth to 19th-century Haiti, harnessing the island’s voodoo culture as a more authentic incarnation of Shakespeare’s medieval supernatural setting.
On April 14 1936, a 10,000-strong crowd gathered outside the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem for the critically-acclaimed and commercially successful production.
But Voodoo Macbeth attracted attention before it opened with some in the Black community convinced the production was out to make fun of them and protested the rehearsals.
The story will be dramatized in a new radio play by Sharon Oakes
“It’s extraordinary so few people know of it,” Oakes told The Telegraph.
Oakes did not want to present the young Welles as a white savior figure.
“He definitely wanted to put on a piece of entertainment,” Oakes said. “And he certainly relished the publicity benefits of the protests.”
She added, “But there’s no doubt he cared. Yes, Voodoo Macbeth is notable for being an artistic rite of passage for Welles; the techniques he developed during it would massively influence his later filmmaking. But its egalitarian approach to Shakespeare also expressed his political beliefs about race that he would maintain throughout his career.”
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