American Moor

The intelligent, intuitive, indomitable, large, black, American male actor explores Shakespeare, race, and America ... not necessarily in that order.

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.

American Moor has been seen across America, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2019.

This edition features an introduction by Professor Kim F. Hall, Barnard College.

“Spellbinding….a Must See! …. Anyone who covers it for a living has to believe that theater is among the necessities of existence. Otherwise, why bother? There are plenty of other ways to fill the nights and weekends. But some plays, and some performances, take the idea of necessary to a deeper level. In those rare cases, the critic's adjectival exhortation “must-see'' can almost border on the literal. “American Moor'' is one such play and one such performance.” —Boston Globe

“After American Moor, you may not see Shakespeare - and a lot of roles played by black actors - quite the same way.” —Washington Post

“I have spent my life thinking about Shakespeare, but that did not prepare me for the depth of thinking and feeling that this play provokes.” —Michael Witmore, Director, The Folger Shakespeare Library

“A witty, passionate, furious, and movingly intimate record of an African-American actor's often unrequited love for Shakespeare.” —New York Review of Books