How can live performance alter a play’s meaning, and what does The Merchant of Venice tell us about audience sympathy and antipathy in the theater?
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In “Shakespeare in Performance,” Prof. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner takes up the question: “Why perform The Merchant of Venice?” The fraught history of this troubling play has morphed from performing it as a comedy, championing young lovers who outwit the murderous plot of Shylock, a Jewish money-lender, to staging it as a tragedy of social prejudices and institutional injustices that spur inhumane actions. As the play has been cut, amended, restaged, and reimagined, its focus has shifted to encompass questions of gender and sexuality, race and economics, alongside the religious and ethnic dynamics that provide a shifting mirror for audiences’ fears and fantasies. This talk will interweave research in Shakespeare production history with performances by actors from theatre dybbuk, a Jewish theater company that will be in residence in Portland for its new production, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad (for which Prof. Pollack-Pelzner is a consulting scholar).
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is Performance Scholar of Shakespeare’s First Folio: 1623–2023 and Visiting Scholar in English and Theater at Portland State University. He teaches and publishes on Shakespeare, performance, and contemporary theater and culture.
This talk is free and open to all. Please reserve your seat below.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
7:30 p.m.
Lincoln Studio Theater
Portland State University
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This program funded in part by a Signature Grant from The Covenant Foundation.
Presented in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.
This event is part of Shakespeare’s First Folio: 1623–2023, a public humanities project staged by Portland State University and other regional arts organizations from September 2023 through May 2024.