Performing Caliban: Dramaturgies of Difference

A lecture by Dr Miranda Fay Thomas (Drama) for the School of Creative Arts Research Forum.

Caliban is called many names in The Tempest: mooncalf, hag-seed, freckled whelp, monster. In fact, Shakespeare uses the word ‘monster’ around 70 times in his plays, with nearly 40 of these being in The Tempest. This presentation asks: how accurate is the term ‘monster’ when applied to Caliban? Why is Caliban literally, or figuratively, presented as monstrous – and for whom? What is at stake in presenting him as such?
Through a close reading of language in The Tempest and a discussion of the play’s performance history, Miranda Fay Thomas argues that the ongoing othering of Caliban in performance all too often functions as de facto white supremacy in action. When productions costume and shape Caliban through Prospero's eyes - the eyes of a colonizer – they literalize language intended to be metaphorical; a process Thomas refers to as ‘dramaturgies of difference’. Such productions – even unintentionally – replicate and even risk legitimizing the racism that underpins Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the othering process, whereby colonizers justify their occupation by othering the native inhabitants. Through the logic of The Tempest, this paper demonstrates how anyone can be othered. As such, otherness is not an inherent quality of the oppressed; it is fashioned through the oppressor’s own performative processes. 

About the speaker:
Dr Miranda Fay Thomas, FHEA is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at Trinity College Dublin. They are the author of Shakespeare’s Body Language: Shaming Gestures and Gender Politics on the Renaissance Stage (Arden, 2019); editor of The Tempest (Arden Performance Editions, 2021); and co-editor (with Sally Barnden and Emer McHugh) of An Alternative History of Shakespearean Acting: Contexts, Practices, and Cultural Authority (forthcoming, Arden 2027). They have also published numerous essays and book chapters. Recently, they edited the First Quarto of The Merry Wives of Windsor, to be published as part of The New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Alternative Versions (Oxford University Press, 2027). Since 2021, they have been the EDI Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association. Today’s talk is the subject of Miranda’s new book, Performing Caliban, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

This event is run in accordance with Trinity’s Dignity and Respect policy, and its commitment to nurturing a respectful and inclusive research culture.
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