The Racecraft of Romantic Stagecraft

Abstract

In this chapter, I present the problem of how to understand “race” as a concept of identity in relation to theatrical practices of acting and spectating during the Romantic period, and then introduce Barbara and Karen Fields’s useful concept of “racecraft” to frame the discussion of racial dramas in terms of the performative dimension of race. To further explore the racecraft of stagecraft, I offer a reading of John Fawcett’s pantomime Obi; or Three-Finger’d Jack (1800) that attends to the affordances of props and stage design. This chapter highlights both senses of the word “craft” in that race is a tricky (crafty) concept to get hold of and its theatrical representations require practical knowledge of stagecraft. The craftiness of racecraft during the Romantic period is particularly important since the concept of race itself was a malleable and somewhat undefined construct, slippery, deceitful, and illusory through and through, which informed the manifold techniques of stagecraft – the artisanal form of labor – involved in constructions of race on stage.