The Henry Experiment: Exploring Shakespeare's Text with OP-ish Methods

Abstract: How can Shakespeare's lesser-known history plays be mobilized to enact antiracist pedagogy as part of an educational theatre season? Ambereen Dadabhoy and Nedda Mehdizadeh have argued that Shakespeare is a key tool in educators' antiracist toolkits and that a crucial component of this work is highlighting salience to help audiences find the pieces of Shakespeare's text relevant to their own identities and experiences. This essay considers an experimental production of Shakespeare's Henry VI ii at the University at Buffalo and how the coauthors/artists engaged with this production worked to find and highlight salience. The coauthors/artists used "OP-ish" methods as a basis for this work—that is, methods that borrowed the pieces of Shakespearean Original Practice that most readily lent themselves to the hunt for salience and jettisoning any that created barriers between text and audience. In so doing, they created low theoretical readings of Shakespeare's history that underscored salience and worked toward undermining hierarchies of knowledge.