Society of Fellows scholar Eli Cumings will be presenting her paper, "These Our Actors: Performing Macbeth in Colonial Zimbabwe," at the February meeting of the Columbia Shakespeare Seminar on Friday, February 13th. Requests to attend via Zoom or in person should be sent to [email protected].

Paper Abstract

Tuesday, 4th April 1961 was the opening night for a production of Macbeth staged at the aptly named Glamis Stadium in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). Departing radically from local theatrical traditions—according to which public performances of Shakespeare were the sole province of upper-class white performers—this production featured an entirely Black cast, recruited from Salisbury's African townships and performing in “Zulu” costume. These features were remarkable enough to generate significant press attention locally and internationally: newspaper reports circulated widely in the lead-up to opening night, and the dress rehearsal was televised in both the UK and the USA.

Drawing on fragmented and dispersed performance archives, this lecture reconstructs the history of this extraordinary but largely forgotten production and situates it within the social and political dynamics of late colonial Rhodesia. It maps the origins of the project, describes the institutional frameworks that shaped it, and examines the divergent—and often incommensurable—perceptions, motivations, and commitments of its cast, production team and audiences. In doing so, the lecture uses this production as a case study through which to explore the productive tensions that attend Shakespearean performance in colonial contexts, focusing particularly on notions of agency, authority and appropriation.