Introduction
As an ll-year-old from Brooklyn vacationing in the South for the summer, Earle Hyman made his way to the black community's recreation center. There he could find a library that would both welcome his presence and lend him some reading material. "I want the biggest book here!," he said boldly. He walked home with a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 1 Earle sat down to begin his reading and at that moment began the love affair and life journey that would take him to the stages of the Jan Hus Auditorium, New York in 1953 and the Stratford Connecticut theater in 1957, where he assumed leading roles in the plays of his literary hero. More familiar to current high school students as the actor who played the grandfather on the Bill Cosby show, Mr. Hyman joined a long and distinguished roster of African American actors who, going back as far as the 1820's, met the challenges of a society that denied them at various junctures the opportunity to learn to read, to go to school, to play any parts (even on occasion to be a comedian in blackface fomenting racial stereotypes 2), then eventually to take on the part of Othello, and finally to have access to an almost total range of parts in Shakespeare productions. Audra McDonald, African American concert vocal artist, joined the 2009 summer cast in New York's Delacorte Theater vehicle of Twelfth Night with little or no fanfare relating to her race. This close to two-century progression provides fascinating and inspiring as well as heart-breaking stories which catalogue the desire of a people denied their very humanity to master and perform the works of the greatest poetic dramatist in the English language. The wealth of material available for research can both challenge and stimulate student interest in the Bard and connect them with heroes and heroines of communities both urban and rural who paved the way for their own involvement with Shakespeare - as analysts, audience and performers.
Comments: