Studi e ricerche

Playing the Angles: Finding Shylock and Gratiano

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Abstract

Written by one of the only members of Compagnia de Colombari who worked on Coonrod’s Merchant in all of its iterations, this chapter gives a jobbing actor’s account of the 2016 production from its pre-life to its afterlife. For Sorab Wadia, the most daunting challenge was to double Shylock, the dignified Venetian moneylender in the opening scene, with Gratiano, the spitting Jew-baiter of the rest of the play. He could not reconcile the two parts, but he found, in rehearsing and performing them, how they – and the play – needed each other. Being in this play, he thinks, is like finding yourself in a George Braque painting.


Open access

Published June 10, 2021 | Language: en

Keywords Rehearsal • Actors on Shakespeare • Shylock • Performing Shakespeare • The Merchant of Venice • Gratiano • George Braque and Shakespeare • Site specific performance

Copyright © 2021 Sorab Wadia. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-503-2/005


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