Marginalizing the Bard: Playwrights

of Color & Shakespeare

By Julia Herrero
Why this idea?

● When thinking specifically about Jackie Sibblies Drury and plays such as
Fairview, I was wondering how else its possible to disrupt predominately white
theatre spaces, and I settled on investigating Shakespeare’s plays, which I
believe to be a prime example/one of the origins of those spaces.
● I wanted to find out if/how playwrights of color are using his plays as
inspiration to tell stories that center the voices of people of color and
challenge the ideas of “universality” that Shakespeare is often praised for.
Introduction
How have playwrights of color reclaimed and de-colonized Shakespeare? Is that possible?
How can Shakespeare be altered to fit POC rather than asking POC to alter themselves to fit
Shakespeare?

My argument is that if Shakespeare is meant to be universal and applicable to the modern

world, his plays should be be produced and taught alongside, or completely substituted by,
translations/adaptations of his work written by people of color. In my research I have focused
on adaptations of Othello: American Moor by Keith Hamilton Cobb, Desdemona by Toni
Morrison & Rokia Traore, and Harlem Duets by Djanet Sears.
Othello
Professor Ayanna Thompson in the Shakespeare & Race Podcast 2018:
- “American minstrelsy and Othello are intimately tied together and it’s almost impossible to
uncouple that history. So I feel that while there are all these really great efforts to recuperate
the play so that it is not constantly vilifying black masculinity again but is instead a critique of
a culture that wants to vilify black masculinity, just ends up vilifying black masculinity.”
- “This is not a real black man. Othello is not a real black man, right? This is a fantasy of black
masculinity and what happens when that fantasy gets trotted out over and over and over again, it’s
toxic, right?”

There are many questions about mounting productions of Othello and who should be playing this role,
white men or Black men, and how it is complicit in reinforcing stereotypes of Black men as well as the
exclusive white-male world the play takes place in. The three plays that I have chosen to discuss
dismantle this world in different ways.
Direct Dialogue in American Moor
- First performed in 2013 in Virginia, then at the Shakespeare and Race Festival at the Globe in 2018,
and then off-Broadway in 2020.
- One-man show starring Keith Hamilton Cobbs where he is in direct conversation with the audience
during an audition for the role of Othello.
- “American Moor is, on its face, a play about a physically and intellectually imposing
African-American actor auditioning for the role of Shakespeare’s black hero, Othello, opposite a
much younger white director who presumes to know, and subsequently to dictate, how the character
should be performed. He wants to tell the black actor how to portray the black character. The
scenario, in the simplest of terms, is one of subordinate and sovereign; of supplicant and supplier; of
one who seeks a job and one empowered with bestowing it, if he chooses.” (Cobb)
- Confronts that fantasy of a Black man that Shakespeare was writing about and asks audiences to
confront their own prejudices and assumptions about Black men that they bring into the theater
while watching Othello.
American Moor Sources and Quotes
“Lessons in Whiteness” by Vanessa Corredera
● “American Moor holds a mirror up to America’s white supremacist nature.” (2)
● “As the actor demonstrates a command of Shakespeare’s verse alongside the play’s beautiful
dialogue, American Moor demonstrates the inadequacy of the Senate’s and director’s views of the
Black men before them. So too, the white audience brings restrictive presuppositions regarding
Black identity, the same ones that easily characterize the work of BIPOC Premodern Critical Race
Studies (PCRS) as less rigorous because it is too provincial or label protests for justice as riots.” (2)
● “The play depicts how whiteness centres itself by functioning as the seemingly universal standard
and perspective against which it measures all others… It is not enough simply to realize how
whiteness imposes its perspective; the next step entails ceding the previously white-dominated
space to diverse voices.” (3)
American Moor Cont.
American Moor Review for the Shakespeare Bulletin by Kevin Ewrt
● Discusses “the infantilization-the lessening or ‘extenuation’- of the actor at the hands of the director,
within a second-nature, taken-for-granted theatrical hierarchy.” (307)
● “Cobb’s play proper thrives on his authentic presence, not ‘in service of’ but utilizing Othello in an
individualized and highly personal performance skewing what is wrong with the ‘classical’ way
Shakespeare often gets produced.” (310)

“The irony of the American Moor” by Keith Hamilton Cobb

● “You do realize that the play is not about a new envisioning of Othello, but about White American
Theater’s absolute lack of interest, or even awareness, that I might offer one, yes?”
● “...it is ironic, is it not, that many of those who make and control the American Theater, just like
those who control most everything in these United States, would rather see less of themselves so
honestly delineated, and only as much of me as will confirm how they see themselves?”
American Moor Thoughts
While the play itself does predominantly speak on issues of whiteness in
Shakespeare, America, and American Theatre, the story at its center focuses on
the experience of a Black man and his personal journey throughout a world full of
people who are telling him how to be himself, and how he knows his own identity
best and cannot be defined by these outside fantasies. In comparison with Othello
itself, this piece allows for those fantasies of Black men that Shakespeare wrote to
be directly confronted and called out in front of audiences, who will hopefully keep
Cobb’s words in mind as they consume other theatrical pieces.
Rewriting History in Desdemona
- An opera written by Toni Morrison with music by Malain composer Rokia
Traore in 2011.
- Uses magic realism to place the story in the afterlife with Desdemona, who
meets Barbary, or Sa’ran, her mother’s African maid, and discusses with her
their understandings of the divine, privilege, and other elements of life itself.
- Inspired by the “Willow’s Song,” which was mentioned and briefly sung by
Desdemona in Othello, but focuses on how that was a westernized version of
that song taken from Barbary, and in this piece the music and history of Africa
is front and center, rather than pushed to the sidelines along with the Black
women of the play who never made it onstage in Othello.
Desdemona Sources and Quotes
“Toni Morrison’s Desdemona and #BlackGirlMagic” by Marissa Joseph

● “Othello reflects, maintains, and normalizes his (Shakespeare’s) world systems. Morrison dares to
imagine what social, emotional, and spiritual growth Black women can accomplish in a world where
the status quo is eradicated in exchange for complete freedom.”
● “Takes place in a supernatural world where they are granted dialogue, agency, and a chance to
reclaim their narratives. It reimagines a space for self-definition.”

Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory in the New World by Joyce Green
MacDonald

● “Sa’ran is an emblem of what we can learn when we listen to the stories that
Shakespeare’s plays allude to but do not tell.” (5)
Desdemona Cont.
“Africa as Voices and Vibes: Musical Routes in Toni Morrison’s Margaret Garner
and Desdemona” by Serena Guaraccino
● “By accessing their story through the Willow’s Song, Morrison and Traore exploit a multi-layered
silence in the Shakespearean text through what is now an almost canonical post-colonial practice of
rewriting.” (66)
● “Explores ‘remembering without representation’, where a musical performance, more than the written
score or any other kind of aide-mémoire, produces social and affective meaning, including affective
memory…the “Willow Song” enacts Desdemona’s memory of Barbary, but also, as emerges from the
director’s and author’s notes to the play, our own repressed memory of Africa in Othello” (66)
Desdemona Thoughts
I believe that this would be the best text to present/teach alongside Othello,
because it dives into the characters unseen in the play and addresses the
shortcoming of Shakespeare’s attempt to “include” African culture in this piece. It
gives depth to Desdemona as well, who often seems lacking depth in Othello
itself. Having Sa’ran/Barbary a main character in this piece pushes the focus to
the Black women Shakespeare leaves out, and the appropriation of African culture
finds a truthful home in Traore’s music, giving the audience an accurate
representation of Africa and the divine as Sa’ran would sing it.
Inspiration in Harlem Duet
- Originally published in 1997 by Djanet Sears
- Follows the story of Billie & Othe (inspired by Desdemona and Othello), a
Black couple living in Harlem, who have just ended their 9 year relationship
when Othe leaves Billie for a white woman.
- Travels in between time periods showing the stories of a Black couple in 1926
and 1860, with Billie and Othe playing the couple each time, meant to show
the repeating of history.
- While inspired by Othello, the plotline itself does not mirror the events of
Shakespeare’s play.
Harlem Duet Sources and Quotes
Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory in the New World by Joyce Green MacDonald

● “The substitution of a white female body for a Black one and the knowledge that Black female bodies might
convey is where Sear’s Harlem Duet begins its encounter with Shakespeare’s text.”
● “Sears’ Harlem Duet sets out both to return these distorted and forgotten stories to the control of the black
women who authored them, and to establish these hitherto spectral Black female characters as narrators and
actors in the play she inherits from Shakespeare.” (117)
● “In Sears’ play, the personal, the intimate, the private are political, and political history unfolds within a firm grasp
on personal memory.” (118)
● “Othe rejects Billie’s version of their story where love is the hinge that links them to the flow of a broader black
history. Her attempts to reclaim that lost intersection between personal hope and collective memory, to
re-enchant love into living presence, drive her toward murder and madness.” (125)
● “Harlem also echoes for Djanet Sears, who imagines it as ‘a central location in the psyches of Black people.
Harlem is almost mythological.…It has an extraordinary history, a rich culture and my relationship to it is
borderless, very much like my relationship to Blackness. Harlem feels like another country, not exactly the USA,
a country unto itself that I am part of as well.” (120)
Harlem Duet Thoughts
If looking for a play that is inspired by Othello and has elements of the play
weaved throughout an original story that focuses on the experiences of people of
color, I think this is a perfect example. It touches upon themes of personal and
collective memory and identity that Othello is recognized for, but shifts that
memory to tell a story that is somehow small-scale and larger than life at the same
time. It allows once again for those ignored in Shakespeare’s plays to control the
narrative.
Conclusion
While it is inevitable that Shakespeare will continue to be produced, it’s necessary
to investigate what has always been missing from his plays: Knowledge of
anything besides the cis-white-male view that he writes from, no matter how he
tries to be relatable within his work. Shakespeare has never been “universal,” but
through the words of playwrights of color it is possible to see how these works can
be retaken, challenged, and adapted in ways that centers those originally left out
of the universe he created.
Works Cited
Cobb, Keith Hamilton. (14 July 2020). “The irony of American Moor”. Folger Shakespeare Library. Retrieved April 22, 2022 from
https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2020/07/14/american-moor-irony-keith-hamilton-cobb/

Corredera, Vanessa. “Lessons for Whiteness: Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor”. Shakespeare Online Journal. Vol. 17, Issue
number 1. (2021). Retrieved April 22, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2021.1891962.

Ewrt, Kevin. “American Moor (review)”. Shakespeare Bulletin. Vol. 38, Issue number 2, pp.306-310. (2020). Retrieved April 22, 2022
from https://americanmoor.com/themoor/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Review-Kevin-Ewert.pdf

Guarracino, Serena. “Africa as Voices and Vibes: Musical Routes in Toni Morrison’s Margaret Garner and Desdemona” Research in
African Literatures, vol. 46, no. 4, 2015, pp. 56–71, https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.46.4.56. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.

Joseph, Marissa. (13 October 2020). “Toni Morisson’s Desdemona and #BlackGirlMagic”. The Sundial. Retrieved April 22, 2022 from
https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/toni-morrisons-blackgirlmagic-29576056eefb

Karim-Cooper, Farah and Thompson, Ayanna. (24 September 2018). “Shakespeare and Race” [Podcast]. Produced by Shakespeare’s
Globe. Retrieved April 21, 2022 from https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2018/09/28/such-stuff-s1-e4/

Macdonald, Joyce Green. Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory in the New World. (2020). Palgrave Shakespeare Studies.
Retrieved April 22, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50680-3