Casting Announced For TFANA's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

TFANA presents William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, featuring John Douglas Thompson, directed by Arin Arbus, and co-produced with Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC; Simon Godwin, Artistic Director). The production, premiering February 5 - March 6, 2022, at Polonsky Shakespeare Center and March 22 - April 21, 2022, at STC, continues the co-producing relationship between the two companies.

In the winter of 2020, TFANA and STC co-produced, in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Timon of Athens featuring Kathryn Hunter (most recently, The Tragedy of Macbeth directed by Joel Coen).

With The Merchant of Venice, Thompson and Arbus continue to build on a long-time collaboration that began with Arbus's Off-Broadway directorial debut, in which Thompson played the title role in TFANA's 2009 production of Othello. She has since directed him in TFANA's 2011 production of Macbeth (in which he again took on the title role) and, in rotating repertory in 2016, Ibsen's A Doll's House, adapted by Thornton Wilder, and Strindberg's The Father, in a new version by David Greig.

Ben Brantley, former co-chief drama critic for The New York Times, has written that John Doulas Thompson is "one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation." In a 2012 New Yorker profile, Alec Wilkinson noted that "John Douglas Thompson, ...is regarded by some people as the best classical actor in America. His admirers include James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia who frequently consults for directors in London and New York, and who describes Thompson as 'the best American actor in Shakespeare, hands down.'"

Jeffrey Horowitz observes, "Many brilliant actors have played Shylock, including Richard Burbage in the original production in the 1590s and, over the next 400 years, such celebrated performers as Charles Macklin, Henry Irving, Laurence Olivier, Jacob Adler, F. Murray Abraham, George C. Scott, Al Pacino, Jonathan Pryce, and Patrick Stewart. Ira Aldridge, the first great American Shakespearean, left New York City for Britain in 1824 due to racial discrimination. Aldridge is rightly celebrated for his Othello, the first by a Black actor (though he could not play the role in America, only in Britain and Europe). In 1831, Aldridge became the first Black actor to play Shylock and three decades later was followed in the role in Britain by another African American actor, Samuel Morgan Smith. Black actors who went on to play Shylock in the United States include Paul Butler at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 1994 and Johnny Lee Davenport in 2005 at the Milwaukee Shakespeare Theatre. Nearly 200 years after Aldridge first starred in the role, John Douglas Thompson will be the first Black actor to play Shylock in New York City for Theatre for a New Audience."

In January 2021, Thompson and a diverse company of actors along with Arbus did an exploratory workshop of Merchant of Venice on Zoom. Several of the actors from the workshop are now in the stage production. John Douglas Thompson stars as the moneylender Shylock, leading a company that includes Isabel Arraiza as Portia, Shirine Babb as Nerissa, Jeff Biehl as Balthazar, Danaya Esperanza as Jessica, Alfredo Narciso as Antonio and Sanjit De Silva as Bassanio. Additional cast includes: Varín Ayala as Prince of Aragon, Yonatan Gebeyehu as Solanio, David Lee Huynh as Lorenzo, Maurice Jones as Prince Morocco/Duke/Tubal, Nate Miller as Lancelot Gobbo, Haynes Thigpen as Gratiano, and Graham Winton as Salerio.

A medieval center of trade and an early mercantile state, Venice is often considered a birthplace of capitalism. "Perhaps not coincidentally," notes Arbus, "it's also the birthplace of the original ghetto." Within the world of Shakespeare's predominantly Christian Venice, as a Jew, Shylock is treated as a second-class citizen or worse. In 16th-century Venice, Jews were prohibited from practicing most professions. They were required to wear Jewish signifiers on their clothing. They were not allowed to own land, but rather had to rent homes within the gated ghetto that was locked every evening from 6pm to 12pm.

Says Arbus, "The play depicts a divided society saturated with hate and inequity. The world boils with anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, and homophobia. In private, even Portia - the ingénue - makes overtly racist jokes about the color of the Prince of Morocco's skin. In this deeply stratified society laws enforce inequity. The societal systems enable certain groups of people to have power and ensure that others don't. In Shakespeare's Venice there's predatory lending, a biased justice system, discriminatory practices in housing and commercial markets, and the original ghetto. Any of that sound familiar? By casting a black man as Shylock in America in 2021 one becomes painfully aware of the connections between Shakespeare's 16th C. Venice and our world now."

The director adds, "The Merchant of Venice has a lot to say to us. I'm interested in directing a Merchant with a diverse group of artists, for a diverse audience. Theatrical meaning is created not just by the story being told, but through the bodies telling it. And with a diverse company and creative team, I want to discover what this play means to us in the here and now."

In 2007, TFANA produced The Merchant of Venice with F. Murray Abraham as Shylock, directed by Darko Tresnjak in repertory with Marlowe's The Jew of Malta directed by David Herskovits, exploring the two Elizabethan authors' treatment of Jewish characters. TFANA's 2007 production of Merchant toured to the RSC as part of the Complete Works Festival and in 2011 toured nationally.

Performances of The Merchant of Venice will take place at 7:30pm on February 5, 6, 8, 10-13, 15, 18-20, 22-27 and March 1 & 4-6. Matinees at 2:00pm will take place on February 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27, & March 5, 6. The February 27 matinee is an Open Caption Performance.

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