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 note from the playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb about stage direction says the play calls for a “sole actor on stage to address several different amorphous entities” (4), one of which is the audience. The majority of the play consists of the Actor breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience with his internal thoughts and reactions to his audition process. Cobb writes that “the audience should and will find itself playing many parts. It is not intended that this process leave them in comfort” (4). These many “parts” the audience plays mean they can symbolize many things.

One thing the audience symbolizes is society at large—specifically white hegemony in society. At times, they also symbolize the “white gaze.” The Actor specifically draws attention to the existence of the white gaze when he says the Director, who sits among the audience, occupies “Brabantio’s privilege of place” (44), drawing parallels between the systemic racism that structures society in contemporary times and in Othello’s time. Like the Venetian Senate sits around Brabantio, the audience sits around the Director.