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Shakespeare & Beyond

Black History Month: A Shakespeare Unlimited podcast playlist

Paul Robeson Othello

Robert Edmond Jones. Costume design for Paul Robeson as “Othello”. Ink and gouache drawing with fabric swatches attached, 1943. Folger Shakespeare Library.

To commemorate Black History Month in February, we’re sharing a playlist of Shakespeare Unlimited episodes about the African American experience, important global figures, and the history of Shakespeare performance in Africa and the Caribbean. The podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, Spotify, and NPR One.

Shakespeare in Black and White

This podcast episode revisits the era when Jim Crow segregation was at its height, from a few years after the end of the Civil War to the 1940s and 1950s. The discussion ranges from landmark performances—Orson Welles’s Depression-era all-black Macbeth and Paul Robeson’s Othello— to powerful, though less familiar, stories from the Folger’s hometown of Washington, DC. It also draws in later questions about African Americans and Shakespeare, including the role of race in casting choices to this day.

African Americans and Shakespeare

This podcast episode examines some of the many ways—including, but not limited to, performance—that black Americans have encountered, responded to, taken ownership of, and sometimes turned away from Shakespeare’s words.

Comments

I imagine they will be fascinating.

Alice Norris — March 8, 2017

I’m looking forward to them.

Alice Norris — March 8, 2017