American Moor

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.

A Black, middle-aged Actor stands alone on a stage with a copy of William Shakespeare’s play Othello. He quietly rehearses a monologue before becoming aware of the audience and directly addressing them, telling them about how he was introduced to Shakespearean acting in college. He was taught that “acting is reacting” (7), but as a Black man, the Actor has “a great deal of external stimuli to react to, all the time” (7). He says that Shakespeare’s characters can give “the most vile pronouncements in the most beautiful ways” (7), and he finds this freeing as an actor.

In an early acting class, the Actor was asked to do a Shakespearean monologue. He chose Titania’s “forgeries of jealousy” monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He remembers how, as he gave his recitation, his acting teacher kept implying he wasn’t reciting the “poetry” right. The Actor wanted to say something about how “silly, cerebral fucks” usually recite Shakespeare as if it’s “poetry” when in fact it should be spoken to the people around the actor (9).