Keith hamilton cobb biography of william shakespeare
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The New York City off-Broadway Premier
Limited Engagement
August 27 through October 5
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What is the role of a lifetime?
What is the role of a life?
The intelligent, intuitive, indomitable, large, black, American male actor explores Shakespeare’s Othello, race, and America… not necessarily in that order.
American Moor is a play written and performed by Keith Hamilton Cobb, examining the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of William Shakespeare’s character, Othello.
It was conceived and written in the fall of , and had its first reading in March of It was first publicly performed under the direction of Paul Kwame Johnson as an offering of the Humanities Institute at Westchester Community College in November of , with funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities. Subsequent productions have been Luna Stage Company in West Orange, NJ, February/March, , Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Manhattan, April/May, , and The Anacostia Playhouse, Anacostia, Washington D.C. July/August, The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble production won the Outstanding Solo Performance honors at the AUDELCO Awards, and The Anacostia Playhouse production was recognized by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the script taken into
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Excerpt — Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’: An introduction by Kim Hall
At the heart of Keith Hamilton Cobb’s one-man play American Moor are explorations of blackness, racial dynamics in American theater, “ownership” of Shakespeare, and the subtext of Othello. He has performed the play across the United States, including an off-Broadway run in , and now the script has been published by Methuen Drama:
Keith Hamilton Cobb embarks on a poetic exploration that examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s character Othello, offering up a host of insights that are by turns introspective and indicting, difficult and deeply moving. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about whose lives and perspectives matter, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love.
A copy of American Moor has been added to the Folger collection.
The excerpt shared below is from the introduction written by Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, reprinted with permission from Methuen Drama.
“Othello is one of Shakespeare’s most agonizing audience experiences. T
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Untitling Shakespeare: A Transient Biography look up to an Evolving Practice
Keynote Blackfriars Conference, Nov,
American Playwright Center, Staunton, VA
©Keith Mathematician Cobb
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