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The Tempest Defending Prospera : The Ideation Of Spiritual Lineage And Practice In Performance For An Afro-Haitian American Actor., Iva-Kristi Maria Papailler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Imagine: William Shakespeare’s final hero, Prospero and all of his beautiful and majestic White, Italian maleness played by an Afro-Haitian American actress. Something changes. No longer does the audience see a traditional view of the character onstage. The audience sees a woman of African descent delivering lines written for a man of European descent. They may or may not question what they are seeing: certainly, I the actor, must. My Blackness brings an ancestral line to the production that makes a variety of traditional African religions part of Prospera’s spiritual lineage. My Blackness and gender also imbue Prospera with a …