American Moor
by Keith Hamilton Cobb

Off-Broadway

American Moor Book Cover — American Moor Cover

Highlights

Male

90 minsPresent DayRole(s) for Black Actor(s)All MenUnit Set/Multiple SettingsContemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Synopsis

A seasoned African-American actor auditioning for the role of William Shakespeare’s iconic Black hero Othello must respond to the dictates of a younger white director who presumes to understand how to maximize the Black character for believability.

What could possibly go wrong?

A poetic exploration of Shakespeare, race and America, not necessarily in that order.

Press Reviews

"American Moor is a witty, passionate, furious, and movingly intimate record of an African-American actor’s often unrequited love for Shakespeare…"
— New York Review of Books

"Some plays…take the idea of ‘necessary’ to a deeper level. …American Moor is one such play…a blisteringly eloquent and penetrating meditation on the ever-urgent matter of race in America – though ‘meditation’ seems far too tame a word for the dramatic force Cobb brings to the subject.” – Boston Globe“Cobb’s earnest, reasoned script slashes so precisely that you may not see Shakespeare – and a lot of roles played by Black performers – quite the same way for a while.” –Washington Post“American Moor…offers a promising avenue into the future of Shakespeare performance, a conversation with the text, in a modern idiom, as opposed to a translation of it, that brings us closer to Shakespeare’s language, not further away."
— Slant Magazine