The Blackfriars Theater Cuboid

America Shakes stages the photo negative of the predominantly Eurocentric model of the American summer Shakespeare festival. Instead of going outside with wine and cheese, we look and go inside, into the world of the Blackfriars Cuboid, a media rich space where the walls can literally speak, a world slightly out of joint:

a world where audience members must look into each other’s eyes and confront the issues BIPOC and LGBTQIA face everyday in America, as the drama unfolds around and among them:

When Shakespeare began to stage his plays at the Blackfriars Theater, it signified a technological leap in English theatrical production. Advancements in stage lighting, the use of a deus ex machina and pyrotechnics were all introduced into the staging of Shakespeare’s plays at the Blackfriars. Inside the Blackfriars Cuboid, further technological advancements in the production of Shakespeare’s works are taking place as well: the use of Augmented Reality to offer audience members deeper context and subtext of the past and present worlds of the the play, the use of 180 degree projected media, as both architecture and narrative tool, the incorporation of live music, multilingual dialogue, and the abolition hierarchal theater seating, that was born of the 17th century, dividing the audience along socioeconomic lines by dividing the house into Box, Pit, and Gallery. At the Cuboid, there are no seats of privilege. Each audience member shares the same space, as they watch and are watched by their fellow audience members, seated at the feet of a company of actors of color. As noted by Dr. Juan Poblete,

“America Shakes takes advantage of the cultural space, the cultural capital of Shakespeare, and everything behind that cultural capital. The plays bring the audience into a face to face, or I should probably say, a ‘slap in the face’ encounter with the political issues of U.S. / Foreign relations, systemic racism, and the inequalities experienced by BIPOC / LGBTQIA communities. So, through the languages spoken, the diversity of the cast, and the media technology, that theater space transformed into a contact zone, between the form of the tragedy, the cultural capital of Shakespeare, and a political intervention that is critiquing U.S. / Mexican relations, and I’m telling you, people were shaken up by it when they walked out of that building.”