Debra Ann Byrd's acclaimed solo show, Becoming Othello: A Black Girl's Journey will be made available from this webiste and arts.ucmerced.edu March 3-5.
BECOMING OTHELLO: A Black Girl’s Journey is a living memoir about a young woman’s trials and triumphs with race and the classics, her memorable experiences growing up in East Harlem and her gender flipped journey on the road to becoming Shakespeare's noble, flawed general. The solo show is complete with moving songs and lyrical language from Black women playwrights, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and the King James Bible.
Watch the show, and then join Debra Ann Byrd for a live Q&A at 7:00 Pacific Time on Friday, March 5th.
Show link (available through March 5).
Password: ShakespeareGirl1902
Link for Q&A: https://ucmerced.zoom.us/j/82237552292
DEBRA ANN BYRD is the Founder of Harlem Shakespeare Festival Take Wing And Soar Productions, where she currently serves as Chief Executive and Producing Artistic Director. Ms. Byrd has guided the company's growth from its birth in 1999 into a viable support organization serving women, youth, classical artists of color and theater arts groups throughout New York. As an actor, producer, arts manager, and business leader she has received more than 20 awards and citations, was recently selected for inclusion in the 2012 Editions of Who’s Who In The World and Who’s Who of American Women; and is the recipient of the 2009 LPTW Lucille Lortel Award and the 2006 Josephine Abady Award for Excellence in “Producing works that foster diversity”. This award winning theater arts professional received a BFA Degree in Acting from Marymount Manhattan College. Debra Ann graduated from the 2001 NYSF Shakespeare Lab at The Public Theater, the 2005 Arts Leadership Institute, at Teacher’s College/Columbia University, and completed producer training with The Broadway League at the 2007 Commercial Theatre Institute.
In January 2021, she was awarded the Sidney Berger award by the Shakespeare Theatre Association to recognize her field-changing work in classical theatre.
Event sponsored by UC Merced department of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures and UC Merced Arts.
