Intersectional Shakespeare: Rewriting, Casting and Staging Othello and The Tempest, 2015-2025

This thesis investigates how contemporary theatrical Shakespearean adaptation
functions as a site of socio-political negotiation, unsettling the historically white,
patriarchal foundations of Shakespearean performance tradition through an
intersectional lens. In an era marked by online scrutiny and anxieties regarding casting
and representational fidelity, this research asks how inclusive performance can be
realised under this cultural pressure. To answer this, I employ an intersectional
framework, paying attention to the overlapping structures of race and gender. I develop
analytical strategies to theorise the ways Shakespeare’s plays are given new form:
through diverse bodies in nontraditional casting, radical textual rewritings, and new
spatial configurations by subversive relocation of fictional settings and site-specific
performance.

Focusing primarily on the last decade (2015-2025), this study centres on adaptations of
Othello and The Tempest, plays inherently engaged with the ‘race-making’ processes of
the early modern period. Combining performance analysis with close reading, I
interrogate adaptive methods across a variety of sources. These range from high-profile
productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe, which
leverage nontraditional casting or fictional settings for broad audiences, to localised
site-specific productions. They also include radical revisions, such as Fengar Gael’s
Sycorax: Cyber Queen of Qamara, which excavate Shakespeare’s unseen, marginalised
black female characters. This study seeks to uncover the new meanings generated by
these choices and their interaction with audience reception.

The thesis makes a three-fold original contribution to the field: it expands the definition
of ‘adaptation’ to include casting and spatiality as core textual interventions; it provides
an intersectional synthesis of scholarship that previously treated performance and
written adaptation in isolation; and it introduces new terminology to address the
persistent and underacknowledged gap between creative intention and audience
reception. Ultimately, this research reveals how these interventions destabilise
historical power structures while orienting Shakespeare’s works toward more inclusive
future possibilities.