Who Shot Romeo? And How Can We Stop the Bleeding | Watch the full talk

Presented by Eric L. De Barros at Education: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2021

Eric L. De Barros critiques educative adaptations of Shakespeare plays that seek to create social change through art but instead are too reverential of Shakespeare, especially its poetic language. Such works are insufficiently focused on developing critical consciousness. De Barros provides as an example Romeo is Bleeding, a 2015 documentary about an after-school program that produces Te’s Harmony, a spoken word adaptation of Romeo and Juliet responding to gun violence in Richmond Virginia. While De Barros admires the dazzle and dexterity of the spoken word performances captured in the film, he is critical of how the documentary ignores the legacy of Black lyricism (jazz, hip hop, and more) in presenting spoken word as the newest and most powerful version of Black self-expression. De Barros cautions that Shakespeare’s words are treated as emblematic of poetry, because Shakespeare = poetry is an equation that obscures Black bodies and the violence white verse often does to them. De Barros further points to the white producers and teachers who surround the Black young people creating Te’s Harmony and considers this evidence of white savior mentality at work, focused on art as rescuing individuals rather than addressing systemic causes of suffering.