‘Red Velvet’ spotlights a pioneering Black actor who played Othello
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on June 21, 2022
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In 1833 London, in the kind of show-must-go-on substitution that is the stuff of theater legend, actor Ira Aldridge stepped into the role of Othello, replacing Edmund Kean, the ailing English celebrity who had previously played the role in blackface. Aldridge was a Black American and accomplished Shakespeare interpreter, who had sought opportunity abroad after racism at minimum hindered his career in the U.S. The New York-born thespian had . . .
