People Really Do Care!

      Issues of antisemitism and other kinds of national and racial prejudice have plagued the world practically since before the dawn of time, and everyone knows these problems still exist today.  We try to keep an open mind, but once it becomes illegal or not politically correct to dislike a certain group, people tend to simply shift their distaste toward the fashionable prejudice of the day.  The Irish and Chinese were looked down on in the 1800s when the railroads were being built in America.  Hitler killed over six million Jews.  After Pearl Harbor was bombed, Americans distrusted the Japanese.  All white nations believed blacks were inferior people until an embarrassingly recent time.  Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslims and pretty much all Arab peoples are met with disgust and distrust bordering on hatred.  Clearly, prejudice has abounded for millennia and still abounds today.  But don't take my word for it!  I'm going to search for social proof to back up my claims.
      One thing I'm curious to know is how people directing Shakespeare's plays deal with the themes of antisemitism and racial prejudice.  These themes appear in many, if not most, of Shakespeare's plays; however, it is the director's prerogative to decide how those issues will be handled and addressed in a production, and all productions are different.  Take The Merchant of Venice, for example.  Somewhere, a director may be very interested in the conflict between Antonio (representing Christians) and Shylock (representing infidels or non-believers), and so that director may choose to emphasize the interaction between these two characters to really dig deep into the real issue of racial and religious prejudice.  However, the production of The Merchant of Venice that we saw at BYU is aimed toward children.  Thus, the whole Christian versus Jew idea was replaced with the general message that "bullying is bad." 
      I'm not sure whether those involved in the creation of this production believed that children would get the idea that Jews should be hated or not, but the reason why it was left out was very interesting to me.  So, I've decided that I would try to contact people who have directed or are currently directing a Shakespeare play and ask them what they thought of the Christian themes, how they would handle them in their own production, and why they would choose to deal with the issue that way.  Some people I already have in mind are the director of BYU's production of The Merchant of Venice and my old drama teacher back home.  I also want to look at the blogs related to some peoples' productions and ask them, either by commenting or by locating their email addresses somehow. 
      I think this would be a great way to find out what other people think of these issues in Shakespeare's plays.  If anyone has any more ideas of who to contact (and how), or anything you can think of that will help, I would really appreciate it!