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The accomplished contributors add significant understanding to the staging and teaching of Macbeth and reflect on the rich history of African Americans struggling to find a voice on the American stage.

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Weyward Macbeth , a volume of entirely new essays, provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare´s ´Macbeth´ has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions. Comprehensive in its scope, this collection addresses the enduringly fraught history of ´Macbeth´ in the United States, from its appearance as the first Shakespearean play documented in the American colonies to a proposed Hollywood film version with a black diasporic cast. Over two dozen contributions explore ´Macbeth´s´ haunting presence in American drama, poetry, film, music, history, politics, acting, and directing - all through the intersections of race and performance.

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PART I: BEGINNINGS What is a ´Weyward´ Macbeth?;Ayanna Thompson Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton´s The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth; Celia R. Daileader PART II: EARLY AMERICAN INTERSECTIONS ´Blood will have blood´: Violence, Slavery, and Macbeth in the Antebellum American Imagination; Heather S. Nathans The Exorcism of Macbeth: Frederick Douglass´s Appropriation of Shakespeare; John C. Briggs Ira Aldridge as Macbeth; Bernth Lindfors Minstrel Show Macbeth; Joyce Green MacDonald Reading Macbeth in Texts by and about African Americans, 1903 1944: Race and the Problematics of Allusive Identification; Nick Moschovakis PART III: FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT(S) Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production; Lisa N. Simmons Black Cast Conjures White Genius: Unraveling the Mystique of Orson Welles´s ´Voodoo´ Macbeth; Marguerite Rippy After Welles: Re-do Voodoo Macbeths; Scott L. Newstok The Vo-Du Macbeth!: Travels and Travails of a Choreo-Drama Inspired by the FTP Production; Lenwood Sloan PART IV: FURTHER STAGES A Black Actor´s Guide to the Scottish Play, Or, Why Macbeth Matters; Harry J. Lennix Asian American Theatre Re-imagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York; Alexander C. Y. Huang The Tlingit Play: Macbeth and Native Americanism; Anita Maynard-Losh A Post-Apocalyptic Macbeth: Teatro LA TEA´s Macbeth 2029; José A. Esquea Multi-cultural, Multi-lingual Macbeth; William C. Carroll PART V: MUSIC Reflections on Verdi, Macbeth, and Non-Traditional Casting in Opera; Wallace McClain Cheatham Ellington´s Dark Lady; Douglas Lanier Hip-Hop Macbeths, ´Digitized Blackness,´ and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom; Todd Landon Barnes PART VI: SCREEN Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty: Roman Polanski´s Macbeth; Francesca Royster Semper Die: Marines Incarnadine in Nina Menkes´s The Bloody Child: An Interior of Violence; Courtney Lehmann Shades of Shakespeare: Colorblind Casting and Interracial Couples in Macbeth in Manhattan, Grey´s Anatomy, and Prison Macbeth; Amy Scott-Douglass PART VII: SHAKESPEAREAN (A)VERSIONS Three Weyward Sisters: African-American Female Poets Conjure with Macbeth; Charita Gainey-O´Toole and Elizabeth Alexander ´Black up again´: Combating Macbeth in Contemporary African-American Plays; Philip C. Kolin Black Characters in Search of an Author: Black Plays on Black Performers of Shakespeare; Peter Erickson Epilogue: ObaMacbeth: National Transition as National Traumission; Richard Burt Appendix: Selected Productions of Macbeth Featuring Non-Traditional Casting; Brent Butgereit and Scott L. Newstok

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