Actors deal with a lot of crap. The things we have to go through can be incredibly frustrating.
The actor played by Keith Hamilton Cobb in “American Moor” is auditioning for “Othello”. The actor makes is quite clear that auditioning is a major frustration as actors only have a few minutes to prove they are worthy of a role.
This is clearly a semi-autobiographical piece as the actor, also named Keith, delves deeper into the annoying aspects of auditioning. The audience is the actor’s sounding board as he vents everything on his mind.
The director is a faceless entity sitting somewhere in the audience. He’s late for the audition and proceeds to continue as though nothing is wrong. The director is a much younger man, clearly not as experienced as the actor, yet he talks down to the actor as though he knows everything.
One of the actor’s many gripes is that directors talk about Shakespeare and his plays as though they know everything Shakespeare intended.
All the research in the world could never reveal Shakespeare’s true intentions as he’s been dead for centuries. The only thing that the young white director and Shakespeare have in common is that they believe to know what a black man is thinking. These racial tensions are the prevalent story in Mr. Cobb’s play. Yes, he is auditioning for the role of “Othello”, but he knows firsthand what it’s like to be Othello in the sense that they are both black men who want better things for themselves, but society does not aid them.
Society hinders them in their journey.
The actor explains all this to the audience. He does not however, tell this to the director as he wants the job.
Of course in telling the audience, we are continued to be made aware of a major problem still found in this industry. There is still a major lack of diversity on the stage, and if there isn’t, there is probably a lack of diversity in the director’s seat. That lack of diversity in the director’s chair may unwittingly prevent an actor of color from fully expressing their opinion on a character, which occurs with the actor in this play even during the audition, and this is where the frustration stems from.
Some may take this personally while watching the show. The anger and frustration are justified though, and truly never sound accusatory.
It also makes sense as we watch the actor and director interact. The director played by Josh Tyson, stops the actor a few lines into Othello’s monologue, and gives him adjustments.
The actor does not agree with these adjustments. The actor tells the director why he has made the acting choices he has. There’s nothing he can ultimately do however, except do the adjustments as asked.
The actor does so and it is what it is.
“American Moor” finds clever ways to tie the actor’s experiences and Othello’s experiences together. Just as Othello must switch the way he talks in the presence of senators, the actor talks differently to the director than he does to the audience. As his frustration with the director grows, you expect the actor to break at any point.
As interesting as this play was to watch, it did get repetitive at times. Points that were made before the director shows up were made again afterwards. As the actor’s frustration grows, the points get drilled more than once.
There is definitely a difference between the actor’s discussions with the director and those with the audience. It does take a moment to get used to, though.
The play is important and will hopefully encourage more dialogue between everyone involved in the industry. It is something that still needs to be fixed. Still, the length of this play could have been cut.
It’s also exhilarating to hear Mr. Cobb’s love/hate relationship with Othello. Othello provides a great three dimensional character for black actors to explore, but that is usually the only Shakespeare role people can see them in as opposed to any of the other Shakespearean leads in existence, which honestly any actor of color can relate to.
Mr. Cobb is great. His interpretation of Othello as well as his delivery of the director’s interpretations were fantastic and I wish we could have seen more of that. I’m looking forward to seeing any future projects he’s in.
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