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American Moor
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Themes
Personal Identity and Artistic Integrity
Content Warning: The source text and this study guide discuss systemic racism and anti-Black prejudice. The guide quotes and obscures the playwright’s use of racial slurs.
The Actor believes that he cannot fully express his personal identity and emotions outside of the realm of theater because many people in the United States are threatened by Black men. Early in his life, the Actor learned that “people in our American culture, who are not Black like me, they do not respond in the same manner to Black men, like me, raising their voices, even slightly, as they do with one another” (10). He observes that men like him “scare” non-Black people; they assume violence from him, and raising his voice is taken to be a threat. So, in order to be non-threatening, the Actor represses parts of his personal identity and his emotions, and he “keep[s] it all in [his] head. Until [he gets] to be Romeo, or Hamlet, or Titania” (10).
In this way, the Actor’s artistic medium becomes an outlet for his identity and his emotions. Even when he is frustrated about the racism he observes and experiences, and he thinks about “all of the things that should be said…that should be heard” (10), he says nothing in his real life; instead, he waits until he is on stage to vent his frustration. The Actor thinks that Shakespeare’s characters have a “depthless reservoir of emotion” inside them and speak “the most vile of pronouncements in the most beautiful of ways” (7)—their emotions and speeches are cathartic for the Actor, who is forced to keep his own emotions locked up due to racist attitudes that silence him.
However, as a Black actor, the Actor is forced to confront Systemic Racism in Theater, too. People like the white, male Director have the most power in this world, as well, though it is the Actor’s refuge from the real world. The Actor is frustrated that the Director not only misinterprets Shakespeare’s non-white characters, but also has the authority to force the Actor to align with his vision. The Actor notes that the actor who auditioned before him was “ugly and way too short” to play Othello and was “kickin’ the holy livin’ shit out of the verse” (14). Keith Hamilton Cobb underlines and bolds parts of the sentence to mock how the previous actor was overdoing the classic Shakespearean rhythm called iambic pentamer as he recited his lines. The previous actor was clearly unsuited for the role, and this offends the Actor’s artistic integrity. However, the Director invited the man who auditioned before him, signaling to the Actor that the Director thinks “any un-notable, inconsequential rube can be Othello so long as he’s Black” (14). Since he himself is a classically trained actor, the Actor takes pride in honing his artistic performances with care and nuance. The Actor uses his personal identity to inform his performance of Othello, imbuing the role with complexity and history. Seeing the Director audition anyone who is Black for the role is thus doubly offensive to the Actor.
This invites a juxtaposition between how the Actor sees the relationship between identity and artistic integrity and how the Director sees it: The Director sees a shallow association between Blackness and the role of Othello, while the Actor sees a complicated, deeply considered, and intuitive relationship between the two. The Director is incapable of seeing nuance in the role, just as he cannot spot the different levels of acting talent and skill between two Black actors—to him, they are both the same, since they are both Black, and he will pick whoever will embody his own vision for the role. The Actor’s plight shows that he must face racism even in theater and compromise on his personal identity and artistic integrity here, too, even though he thinks of it as an escape from the racism of the real world. In essence, there is no place where the Actor, as a Black man, is free to be himself.
Systemic Racism in Theater
Originally, all Shakespearean roles were played by white men. Until the 20th century, non-white roles like Othello weren’t regularly played by people of color—rather, they were played by white men in blackface. This legacy continues to leave its imprint on Shakespearean theater, as the Actor describes throughout the play, and it is also present in the theater industry at large. In 2020, more than 300 theater artists signed a letter saying that their industry is “house of cards built on white fragility and supremacy” (Preston, Michael. “Theater Artists Decry Racism in Their Industry.” The New York Times, 2020). In American Moor, the Actor repeatedly stresses that the systemic racism in theater is indicative of societal racism.
When the Actor turns to Shakespearean theater as an outlet for Personal Identity and Artistic Integrity, he encounters racism at every turn. He describes how his acting teacher keeps telling him to “[p]ick something you might realistically play” or that certain characters “are hardly your experience” (11). These racist microaggressions stereotype and typecast the Actor based on his skin color, since his acting teacher feels he is not suited to play characters like Romeo, who are traditionally played by white actors. Instead, the Actor’s teacher suggests he play the villain “Aaron the Moor,” and several other people say he will make a “great” Othello. The Actor is offended by this since he sees Othello as an “emotionally unstable misogynist murderer” (28), and the only thing they have in common is their skin color.
The Actor also frequently experiences the power imbalance of auditioning for white directors. He tells the Director that he has “extensive experience as me, standin’ in rooms like this in front of guys like you” (15), indicating that there is a dearth of Black directors in theater. The Actor goes on to say: “I don’t get to audition directors […] I’m sorta stuck with the likes a’ you” (15). If a Director wants to stereotype him as a character like Othello, the Actor must comply if he wants a job. The Director can dismiss the Actor if the Actor doesn’t respond to his requests to perform Othello’s monologue as overly emotional or obsequious, even though the Actor is personally revolted by these instructions. He cannot find a new Director, even though he thinks the Director is putting on the same racially stereotyped play “again.” The power imbalance between actors and directors is embedded into theater; this relationship is especially fraught when white directors can tell Black men like the Actor to obey them unquestioningly, mimicking the power hierarchies of American enslavement.
The Actor also discusses privilege and educational imbalances that perpetuate racism in theater. He talks about the Director’s “fine arts” education, which technically qualifies him to direct the production; the Actor mocks the Director’s “little, narrow, privileged, lily-white, MFA” education and its “euro-centric scholarship” (23). The legacies of enslavement and Jim Crow result in Black Americans having less intergenerational wealth than white Americans. This makes Black artists less likely to enroll in Master of Fine Arts programs and enter roles like directorships, which then makes these positions of power within the field of theater skew toward white people. The Actor does not think that racism in the theater and in theatrical productions will change until people like the Director begin to question their “privilege of place” (44). The Actor inverts the usual phrase, “place of privilege” to draw attention to how the “place” the Director sits in—his directorship itself—is a result of his privilege. The racism the Actor experiences within theater is thus related to larger issues of systemic racism, education, and economics in the United States.
Interpreting Classical Literature in the Modern World
The Actor wants to use his experience as a Black man in America to breathe new life into the character of Othello, using Personal Identity and Artistic Integrity in concert to enhance his performance. However, due to Systemic Racism in Theater, he constantly confronts people who presume that they know exactly what Shakespeare was thinking and want to keep Shakespearean productions unchanged, even if those productions are harmful or racist. The Actor thinks it is vital to update interpretations and depictions of classic literature in the modern world in order to make social progress.
American Moor points out that despite the long amount of time that has passed since Shakespeare wrote Othello, the Actor is still emotionally identifies with the play. During the audition process, the Director replicates the circumstances of the Actor’s chosen monologue in Othello, drawing a parallel between racial injustice in classical literature and the modern world. Othello is forced to do “a number” for the Venetian Senate, just like the Director tries to get the Actor to do “a number” for him in the audition. The Director forces the Actor to replicate the Director’s vision, making his employment contingent on how successfully he performs this “number” of obsequiousness and emotionality, just like Othello’s survival is contingent upon his ability to perform for the Senate.
The play blurs the lines between the Actor and Othello, thereby highlighting the similarly humiliating situations they are both forced to endure as Black men. The Actor repeats sentence fragments while exchanging himself and Othello as the sentence’s subject: “if I said it…if Othello said it,” or, “My anger, Othello’s anger” (19). The Actor’s connection to Othello is personal while the Director’s expertise comes from education and book learning. The Actor says the Director thinks this makes him qualified to “kno[w] how Black guys behave and react” and to “know William Shakespeare like they was his therapist” (22). On the other hand, the Actor has personal experience with “privileged white guys” like the Venetian Senate, so he knows from experience that Brabantio “has no concept whatever that making this majestic warrior run through these party pieces over and over for his dinner guests is like marching out his pet chimpanzee to do tricks” (22). The Actor understands that Othello is being humiliated for the all-white Senate. He connects this to his own audition, telling the audience: “I know…that it is embarrassing, and offensive, not unlike this distasteful scenario that presently engages us both” (22). The “embarrassing” and “offensive” situation Othello is forced to deal with is just like the ones the Actor encounters in his everyday life as an actor and as a Black man.
The Actor’s experience with racism makes him uniquely qualified to play Othello in a 21st-century production, since he can portray the role with the nuance that his personal, lived experiences give him. He tells the Director, “All day long I’m givin’ ya pearls if you could hear me” (23). The Actor tries to reach out with his “pearls” of wisdom to help the Director make a better version of Othello than the same old version that’s been put on for “four hundred years” (43); however, the Director does not hear him since he is engrossed in his own ideas about how the play’s excellence depends on its unchanging quality through the ages. The Actor says there is “nothing more infuriating than white folks actin’ like they know your story well enough to tell it without your help” (43), as has been historically done in productions of Othello.
That said, the Actor says he “[doesn’t] advise” ever putting on a production of Othello, which he believes is too rooted in the white gaze to be redeemed in its current form. He thinks “there’s stuff there” within the plot of Othello “to make a play worthy of four hundred years, but that ain’t the story they’ve been tellin’ over four centuries” (33). Instead of retelling the same Shakespearean story with its racist tropes, the Actor thinks artists and writers need to revisit the “circumstances motivating” Othello from an entirely new point of view based in nuance, context, and experience. There is a corpus of Othello retellings and modern works by Black artists that are reminiscent of Othello that do just this, such as Desdemona by Toni Morrison, Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears, and Get Out by Jordan Peele.
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