American Moor — Marjorie Rubright

American Moor is 90-minute solo play written and performed by Keith Hamilton Cobb and directed by Kim Weild. It examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of William Shakespeare’s character, Othello. It is not an adaptation of Othello but an echoing of it in our lives today. It 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 the qualitative decline of the American theatre, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love. It is not an “angry black man play.” Rather the widely diverse audiences that have experienced it echo the piece’s awareness that we see only what we want to see of one another, and that we all long to be wholly noticed and wholly embraced. It is an often funny, often heartbreaking examination of the pall of privileged perspective that is ultimately so injurious to us all. It is a gripping, challenging, timely drama that leaves its audiences reflecting on Shakespeare, race, and America... not necessarily in that order.