From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

Within the Shakespeare canon, there are a handful of plays that we might consider the superstars,

the ones that theaters and audiences love again and again season after season. Among this group of plays, none is more fraught in 21st century America than Othello,

the story of a tragic murder and suicide involving a dark-skinned general and his aristocratic,

white-skinned bride. Who should direct it? Who's allowed to? What if a white director and an

actor cast as Othello simply do not see eye to eye on the play's subtext, the Moore's motivations,

and what the audience is supposed to take away from the production? That conflict is at the heart

of a one-man show currently being performed

around the country called American Moore. In it, a black actor, the play's author, Keith Hamilton

Cobb, stands on stage and addresses an invisible white director who simply does not get Othello.

Their disagreement allows for a searing exploration of the gulf between black and white Americans

that some like to believe simply does not exist.

Keith Hamilton Cobb came in to talk about all this after a recent performance in the Washington,

D.C. area.

This podcast is titled,

Is this the Noble Moore?

Keith is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

First, just to get us started,

why don't you give everyone an idea of what the show is like so that they can picture it as we talk about it

and later play some clips?

So what's the premise and

...