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.

The Actor is the main character and protagonist of American Moor. Since the Director’s voice is disembodied, the Actor is the sole person onstage in this one-person play. The Actor is described as a tall, strong Black man in his late 40s or early 50s, wearing a short-sleeve black button up shirt, tan khakis, and sneakers. The stage directions say he is “only imposing if you see him that way” (6), hinting early on at the theme of Personal Identity and Artistic Integrity, as the play draws attention to the preconceived notions the audience may have about Black men. Occasionally, the Actor is called “Keith” in reference to the playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb, who also played this role in productions of the play.

The Actor is a classically trained actor who was introduced to Shakespearean drama in college. Before he began to encounter Systemic Racism in Theater, which tried to limit the roles he could play, he thought his “crazy-ass African-American emotionality could serve the words well” (7). In addition to believing he is suited to play Shakespearean roles, the Actor sees them as an outlet for his emotions, due to how Shakespeare’s characters “give voice to even the most vile of pronouncements in the most beautiful of ways” (7). As a Black man in America, the Actor feels he must “keep a rein on full half of himself just so people around him don’t get nervous” (41), but acting in Shakespeare’s plays allows him to channel these emotions through the characters, balancing his personal identity and artistic integrity.

When the Actor was a young man, his teacher told him that certain Shakespearean roles were not for him: He was discouraged from playing Titania, Juliet, Romeo, Hamlet, or Prince Hal, and instead, he was encouraged to play Aaron the Moor or Othello, who are some of Shakespeare’s few Black characters. These characters are often depicted as villains and are always racist stereotypes. The Actor initially balked at being type-cast as Othello, who is a man who kills his own wife. Gradually, however, the Actor starts channeling his own life experience as a Black American Shakespearean actor to understand Othello’s interiority; he understands that the microaggressions Othello faces in the Venetian Senate have generated so many “tiny little cracks” that made “him finally snap completely and kill someone, even if that someone was the solitary love of his life” (38). Though the Actor knows Othello has done terrible things, the Actor’s own lived experience prompts him to recognize that Othello lives in a larger social system that is hostile toward him every day.

Throughout the play, the Actor is in turns hostile and compassionate toward the character of Othello. At one point, he calls Othello an “emotionally unstable misogynist murderer” (28), and at another, he calls him a “perfect, precocious Black child in the body of an aging badass” (35). Especially when people like the Director and the systems he represents stereotype Othello, the Actor feels like Othello is “a brother who can’t defend himself” (30). The Actor’s rhetoric shows how he conflates his personal situation with Othello’s, and how they are both similar. To the audience, the Actor says that the Director “wouldn’t understand a single word of all that’s not being said…if I said it…if Othello said it” (19). The subject in this sentence switches from “I” to “Othello,” showing how the Actor is blurring their two characters. Later, when the Actor is telling the audience about Othello’s frame of mind as he addresses the Senate, the Actor says that “he stands here, in front of you, having to play this game of civility” (21). Since the Actor uses the pronoun “you” rather than “them,” which would indicate the Senate, the subject of the sentence—the “he”—could refer to either Othello or the Actor, paralleling their situations.

Despite the constant microaggressions the Actor faces from the Director, he tries to connect with the Director during the audition. The Actor says, “You have the courage not to dismiss me, I believe in you, Michael […] I will protect you. I will not let anything hurt you” (43). The Actor constantly faces systemic racism, and he has his personal identity and artistic integrity questioned; yet, he still wants to meet the Director from a place of compassion so that, together, they can try to create a new and better version of the stories that have been told for hundreds of years. Though the Director does not live up to the Actor’s invitation, the Actor has a “hint of a recurring smile” before he leaves the audition (44), showing that he will keep trying to take his message to other directors and other audiences.