Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrow on Shakespeare’s Stages Today (Elements in Shakespeare Performance)

Casting is the process by which directors assign parts to actors, creating the idea of the character for the audience. Casting is how we rehearse change, as we come to see an expanded repertoire of the kinds of bodies that are selected to play the lead, the hero, and the villain. This Element focuses on the casting in productions of Shakespeare from 2017-2020 to demonstrate how casting functions affectively and cognitively to reimagine who can be what. The central argument is that directors are using casting as the central mode of meaning-making in productions of Shakespeare.