Shylock’s ghosts

Abstract

Compagnia de’ Colombari, directed by Karin Coonrod, fashioned The Merchant in Venice from the stones of the Venetian Ghetto: Shylock's haunting ghost corporealised under moonlight. This 2016 production followed Max Reinhardt's Venetian Merchant in 1934: another lingering ghost of Shylock. These productions intersected in a vision to create bonds between strangers. Looking back on them in the Covid-19 pandemic context of isolation and intolerance, they remind us of the restorative hope in a globalised theatre. This essay engages with the way the Ghetto, Venice and Shylock speak back, inverting the perspective of the ‘other’, framed by personal reflections of the author-actor playing Nerissa.