Lantern Theater Company Extends AMERICAN MOOR and Will Host Conversation With Playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb

Lantern Theater Company announced that its acclaimed production of American Moor will extend its run through Sunday, December 15, 2024, to meet demand from audiences and student groups.

The following public performances have been added: Wednesday, December 11 at 2 p.m. Saturday, December 14 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday, December 15 at 2 p.m.  

The Lantern also announced it will host Artist in Conversation with Keith Hamilton Cobb on Monday, December 9, 2024, from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m, presented in partnership with The Brothers' Network. This free program is open to the community and will take place at Culture Works at 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 300, in Center City Philadelphia. Registration is required at lanterntheater.org/inconversation/.   The Lantern's regional premiere of American Moor has played to mostly sold-out houses since its first performance on November 7. Led by guest director Kash Goins, American Moor features Thane Madsen in his Lantern debut and Phillip Brown, who returns to the Lantern stage following his Barrymore Award-winning performance in the 2022/23 season production of The Royale.

American Moor is Keith Hamilton Cobb’s excavation of Shakespeare’s power in a contemporary American context. An actor waits, preparing, pacing, going over his lines. The director is late. But the actor has been waiting for more than this single audition slot – he has been waiting to be truly seen and heard in the fullness of his experience and identity, and waiting for that fullness to be valued in the audition and rehearsal rooms in which he has spent his career. When the younger, white director arrives, we watch as the actor wrestles with his relationship to Othello, the frustrations and indignities faced by a Black classical actor who sees himself in all of Shakespeare’s canon, a process that he knows will not honor his lived experience, and his desire to tackle this towering, troublesome role anyway. The actor lets the audience into his innermost thoughts while also negotiating the tension between the director’s power and his own hard-earned authority – a tension that Othello himself must navigate. Shakespeare’s text and modern lyricism knit together in this vital, propulsive monologue play, holding up a mirror that reflects both 400 years of theater history and the current moment.

Performed across the United States and making its Philadelphia premiere with the Lantern’s production, American Moor has been added to the Folger Shakespeare Library’s permanent collection in recognition of its insistent and penetrating perspective on Shakespeare in a modern world. Originally conceived and written in 2012 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Keith Hamilton Cobb describes American Moor as “a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about the qualitative decline of the American theatre, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love.” A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Cobb brings a rich classical performance background to the writing, having performed roles including Laertes in Hamlet, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Tullus Aufidius in Coriolanus, and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on regional theater stages across the country – as well as numerous roles in television and in contemporary dramas.

“With American Moor, Keith Hamilton Cobb has created a work of profound and personal insight into the Shakespearian canon as well as a powerful statement about race in modern American society,” said Lantern Artistic Director Charles McMahon. “In the course of auditioning for the role of Othello, a brilliant Black performer who has spent his professional life in deep dialog with the works of Shakespeare is repeatedly undercut by a well-meaning but callow and clueless white director. American Moor is a story told with caustic irony showing the many ways in which Black genius is routinely discarded in American power structures.”

“I see theater as a transformative medium, where the most tangible experiences are felt more than seen,” said American Moor director Kash Goins. “I so enjoy working with plays that allow opportunities to craft a world that includes the audience. What Keith has offered us here is a literal smorgasbord of artistic possibilities. I look forward to sharing the journey that we take with this work with all who will sit with us and consume.”

Lantern Theater Company is delving into the world of American Moor on its Lantern Searchlight blog, available online at lanterntheater.org/searchlight. Written by Lantern Resident Dramaturg Meghan Winch, upcoming articles include background on the play and its themes alongside behind-the-scenes conversations with the artists.

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