“You want to sort that out?”: A Conversation on Overwhelming Whiteness, Anti-Racism, Theater-Making, and Shakespeare with Keith Hamilton Cobb

Abstract

Abstract:Shortly after the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, there was a great outpouring of claims to anti-racist solidarity, including from a great many in the American theater establishment. But what would that look like, in action? The “We See You White American Theatre” manifesto lays down a wide-ranging action plan of “transformative practices” aimed at changing our current theater-making ecology. In this interview, the writer and actor Keith Hamilton Cobb lays down some ideas for transformative Shakespearean theatrical practices. Cobb draws on his long career in theater, film, and television, as well as his experience as author and performer of American Moor, and gestures towards some radical rethinking of rehearsal processes and priorities currently being put to the test in his Untitled Othello Project. Cobb’s insights offer numerous ways to challenge the overwhelming whiteness of the American theater-making status quo.