There is a school of thought in the acting world where applying the makeup works to release the human from his earthly bounds, to become whomever and whatever he or she may choose. Al Jolsen said he found the black-face to be both releasing and invigorating, as a Santa Clause, with red cheeks and a phony beard.

There was never any disrespect intended.

Then there was that fiasco of Ted Danson showing up at a primarily black fund raiser in black-face. He thought it was funny. I thought it was funny, but in poor taste. Those at the fundraiser found it to be humiliating, and the relationship he and Whoopi Goldberg had been building crumbled apart.

It’s hard to say why people do the things they do. Many are simply bad choices made on the spur of the moment, which we all find must then be driven home. Others require weeks, months, sometimes years of development before they are discovered to be fundamentally wrong, but are followed through upon anyway. I think it’s mostly terror that drives it onward, a sort of fear that someone might find fault with the plan’s designer, rather than with the plan itself, so it presses on, to its final, at times horrific conclusion.

Without getting into Jones’ head, with no knowledge of what was happening around him at the time, whether locally of via correspondence, it’s hard to say why he played in white-face, but any guessing made here, at this point in time, would have to be considered as “over thinking the bit.”

Back to topic:
My nephew is in New York, recently married, and, being "One of the Guild," has had opportunity to do Shakespeare in the Park a number of times. I’ll have to ask if he has ever done King Lear.