AMERICAN MOOR Returns to Anacostia Playhouse for Four Weeks Only

Shakespeare, race, and America - not necessarily in that order - are explored when AUDELCO, IRNE, and Elliot Norton Award-winning American Moor returns to the Anacostia Playhouse for a back-by-popular-demand four-week engagement, January 9 - February 3, 2019.

General admission tickets, priced at $40 plus applicable charges, are on sale now at www.anacostiaplayhouse.org. Pay What You Can preview performances are January 9 and 10. Discounts are available for students, seniors, and East of the River residents. For tickets and information, call (202) 290-2328 or visit www.anacostiaplayhouse.org.

Written and performed by Keith Hamilton Cobb, and featuring Josh Tyson (Off-Broadway's Modotti), American Moor is "a blisteringly eloquent and penetrating meditation on the ever-urgent matter of race in America" (Boston Globe). Directed by Drama Desk nominee Kim Weild, the play explores implicit bias in American theater and culture as it examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of William Shakespeare's character, Othello.

What is the role of a lifetime? What is the role of a life? These are just two of the myriad questions that performer/playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb asks of his audience throughout American Moor, and to which he relentlessly demands answers. In this passionate and poetic exploration, a seasoned African-American actor auditioning for the role of Shakespeare's Othello must respond to the dictates of a younger, white director who presumes to understand how to maximize the iconic black character for believability. What could possibly go wrong? American Moor, now part of the Folger Shakespeare Library's permanent collection, paints the portrait of an American theater unaware of its failures, and of the culture that supports it.

Cobb, who recently performed American Moor at Shakespeare's Globe in London this past summer, is most widely recognized for the landmark roles he created for television. Those include Noah Keefer for ABC's All My Children (Daytime Emmy Award nomination); the galactic mercenary Tyr Anasazi for Gene Rodenberry's Andromeda; Damon Porter for CBS's The Young and the Restless; and Quincy Abrams for the series Noah's Arc on the Logo network. He has also guest starred on multiple television series, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Boston Common, Suddenly Susan, One on One, The Twilight Zone, and CSI Miami.Cobb was last seen in Washington as Capulet in Shakespeare Theatre Company's 2016 production of Romeo and Juliet. He has appeared regionally with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Denver Theatre Center, Huntington Theatre Company, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Geva Theatre Center, and more. His classical roles include Laertes in Hamlet, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Tulles Aufidius in Coriolanus, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar, and he has performed in contemporary works such as David Mamet's Race, August Wilson's Jitney, and Lynn Nottage's Ruined.

Most recently Kim Weild directed the Off-Broadway revival of First Love at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Her world premiere production of Charles L. Mee's Soot and Spit, was a New York Times Critic's Pick hailed as "beautifully designed and dreamily evocative," and was awarded the NY Innovative Theatre Foundation's award for Outstanding Performance Art Production.

American Moor had its first staged reading in March 2013, and its first public performance at Westchester Community College in November that same year as a presentation of the WCC Humanities Institute, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since then, it has had multiple presentations contributing to its development. Among the most notable were an 11-performance showcase produced by Phoenix Theatre Ensemble at The Wild Project, Manhattan in April 2015, directed by Paul Kwame Johnson; a production at the Anacostia Playhouse in July 2015, directed by Craig Wallace; and a joint production of O.W.I. (Bureau of Theatre) and Phoenix Theatre Ensemble at Boston Center for the Arts in July 2017, directed by Kim Weild.American Moor garnered an AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Solo Performance (Phoenix); two IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Awards for Best Visiting Production Small Theatre and Best Visiting Performer Small Theatre (Boston); and an Elliot Norton Award (Boston Theater Critics Association) for Outstanding Solo Performance.

Photo Credit Chris Lang

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