Word: robeson
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...Paul Robeson as Othello
When Paul Robeson first played Othello on Broadway in 1943, he was given a twenty-minute standing ovation. Robeson was the first African-American actor to take the role of Othello in over a century, and his hallmark production showed both how much progress America had made on issues of race...
...Paul Robeson as Othello” exhibit, opening Wednesday in the Harvard Theater Collection of Pusey Library, includes photographs and documents that demonstrate why some people believe that Robeson’s Othello was “the most important Shakespearean production of the century,” according to Harvard Theater Collection curator Fredric W. Wilson...
...Before Robeson, while it was not uncommon for black actors to perform on Broadway, in America, the role of Othello had to be played by white actors in makeup. It was inconceivable that a black man could marry a white woman and kiss her onstage, even in a Shakespearean play. But as Robeson’s Othello toured the nation, playing to packed theatres in every city and amassing huge box office profits, audiences gradually became accustomed to the notion of the mixed-race pairing...
...segregated according to Texas’s Jim Crow laws. The production’s artistic company refused to perform before segregated audiences, and so Othello did not tour Baylor University, or, in fact, any Southern city. Even in Northern cities, segregation was such a fact of life that Robeson, although a national star, had trouble finding hotel accommodations in some cities...