People Upset About the Trump-Esque ‘Julius Caesar’ Play Are Sending Death Threats To the Wrong Theater

Bryan Michalek | June 20, 2017
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The Julius Caesar play offered by the New York company that oversees Shakespeare in the Park has stirred controversy over its depiction of a Trump-esque Julius Caesar being stabbed to death. And, since the play hit the headlines for its heavily politicized on-stage death scene, many people have been expressing their understandable disdain.

But an online search mistake caused many of those people to send their protest messages to the wrong theaters

The play wrapped up production last weekend, but there's still a whole mess of people expressing their anger through threatening emails. According to CBS in Dallas Fort Worth, quite a bit of hate mail was mistakenly sent to Shakespeare Dallas over the play, even though that company isn't the one showing it.

Raphael Parry, the theatre director for Shakespeare Dallas, discussed his feelings over the incoming mail from disgruntled patrons.

“First, it was funny, and then it made me a little concerned,” he said. “You take it personally. It’s like, I did nothing to you. Why are you wishing these ill things to happen to me or to my staff or to our company?”

Parry described one email as reading, “Your (sic) a disgrace. You should be ashamed - that is the President. I hope you die and so do you (sic) family.”

According to Parry, the confusion comes from a search mistake when one looks up “Shakespeare In The Park.” He claims Google analytics prioritize searches based on locality, explaining, “They’re just doing a general Google search."

"When you Google ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ in the Texas region, our name pops up first, and they just go to town," he said.

 

Local outlet NDTV also released a story about a Massachusetts production company that has found itself the target of a lot of hate mail from people who've mixed up their Shakespeare theaters.

One message reportedly mistakenly sent to the theater read, “F- you,”... “hope you all who did this play about Trump are the first to die when ISIS COMES TO YOU f-- scumbags.” 

Another message allegedly said, “You are vile despicable excuses for human beings. I wish you all the worst possible life you could have and hope you all get sick and die.”

Like the Dallas theater, the Massachusetts company also believe the misunderstanding stems from a domain name issue. Since the mail started coming in, Allyn Burrows, the theater's artistic director, ecided to contact those who called in or sent mails to explain the misdirection issue and found them to be much less volatile once the issue was explained.

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