“Between a Mask and a Face”: Race, Nation, and Nontraditional Casting in Ruth Negga’s Shakespeare on Broadway

Abstract: When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world’s theaters, the Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga was starring as Hamlet at St Ann’s Warehouse, which had transferred to New York from Ireland’s Gate Theatre. When restrictions were lifted, her return to the stage was her Tony Award-nominated performance as Lady Macbeth opposite Daniel Craig in Sam Gold’s 2022 production at the Longacre Theatre . This article uses Negga’s Shakespeare work in New York as a case study for examining the tangled social and cultural capitals of Shakespeare, Broadway, Irishness, and Hollywood, and the ways in which these intersect with larger issues of race, gender, and national identities. We interrogate how Negga’s race and nationality were read and understood by audiences when she stepped into Shakespearean roles on and adjacent to Broadway. Specifically, we examine the use of “nontraditional” casting in these productions and how Negga’s particular identity as a Black Irish woman was (or was not) made legible in performance. While Negga’s casting was presented as conceptual in both Hamlet and Macbeth , both productions ultimately failed to allow for meaningful cultural specificity, resulting in a functionally “colorblind” reception that erased Negga’s identity as an actor onstage.