Knives are out for theaters that bear the name ‘Shakespeare’
The messages started pouring in earlier this week.
“Your play depicting the murder of our President is nothing but pure hatred,” read one of the tamer ones.
“[H]ope you all who did this play about Trump are the first do [sic] die when ISIS COMES TO YOU [expletive] sumbags [sic],” read another.
The senders were outraged over the Public Theater’s controversial staging of “Julius Caesar,” a production in New York’s Central Park that has become a national flashpoint for its depiction of the stabbing assassination of its Trump-like title character.
But the e-mails went to the wrong place — Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., one of several Shakespeare companies around the country that have been inundated with a flood of venomous e-mails, phone messages, and social media posts condemning them for the Central Park production.
The Lenox company has received roughly 40 such messages, including one that wished the theater “the worst possible life you could have and hope you all get sick and die.” At Shakespeare Dallas, executive and artistic director Raphael Parry says his company has received about 80 messages, including threats of rape, death, and wishes that the theater’s staff is “sent to ISIS to be killed with real knives.”
Meanwhile, New York Classical Theatre, which performs in Central Park, has received a host of threatening messages, and Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, D.C., has received about a dozen caustic e-mails and numerous tweets accusing the company of inciting violence and linking it to this week’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice.
“We just got slammed,” Parry said. “It’s pretty amazing the vitriol, the wishing we would die and our family would die. A whole lot of them say that we should burn in hell.”
Those who claim that this play is "violence against trump" need to look in their own backyard.
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Originally Posted by Crepitus
