Ayanna Thompson
Scholar of performance and author of the forthcoming book The Art of Watching: What Great Acting Can Teach Us About Ourselves (Tarcher, 2027)
Ayanna
Thompson
Thompson’s research explores Shakespeare, race, and performance. She is the author of many books including Blackface, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America, and The Art of Watching: What Great Acting Can Teach Us About Ourselves (forthcoming from Tarcher, 2027).
A Regents Professor of English and executive director of the Culture Foundry at Arizona State University, Thompson’s work fuses rigorous scholarship and ambitious artistry to create new cultural experiences.
Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga on stage during their performance of Macbeth at The Public Theater. Directed by Sam Gold. 2022.
Theater collaborations
Ayanna Thompson works as a textual consultant, dramaturg, and collaborative consultant in major cultural institutions including The Public Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Theater for a New Audience, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and more. She works on Shakespearean productions and new works in equal measures. Because her scholarly research focuses on how race operates in performance and as a performance, she works with theatre companies, directors, and actors to discuss how race (can, should, and does) makes meaning onstage.
Blackface by Ayanna Thompson
Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? And why aren't there as many examples of people of color in whiteface? This book explains what blackface is, why it occurred, and what its legacies are in the 21st century. There is a filthy and vile thread-sometimes it's tied into a noose-that connects the first performances of Blackness on English stages, the birth of blackface minstrelsy, contemporary performances of Blackness, and anti-Black racism. Blackface examines that history and provides hope for a future with new performance paradigms.
“Blackface reveals a legacy of performance that is pointed and detrimental, known but purposely forgotten. Thompson's analysis is exquisite and exact. A new entry for the historical record.”
– Ibram X. Kendi, Founding Director, Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and author of How to Be An Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning
A New Statesman essential non-fiction book of 2021
Featured in Book Riot's 12 best nonfiction books about Black identity and history
A Times Higher Education Book of the Week
2022 Finalist for the Prose Awards (Media and Cultural Studies category)
Scholar of race and performance
Although she is frequently labeled a “Shakespeare scholar,” a more adequate label for Ayanna Thompson is something closer to a “performance race scholar.” Thompson’s research employs historicist, theoretical, pedagogical, and practical lenses to ask how race operates in performance and as a performance.