Harvard to Host Performance of Re-Imagined Macbeth for Black-Only Audience

A Harvard University theater will host a performance of a re-imagined take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth exclusively for “Black-identifying audience members” Friday, the day after the premiere of the show.

Macbeth in Stride will have its world premiere Thursday at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, but Friday’s “Black Out” performance is reserved as an “exclusive space for Black-identifying audience members,” according to the theater’s ticket website .

The website thanks “non-Black allies” for their support in “making this a completely Black-identifying evening” and invites them to attend one of the other performances of the show.

The retelling of Macbeth is billed as an examination of “what it means to be an ambitious Black woman through the lens of one of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters” and is the first of a five-part series that the theater commissioned from artist Whitney White.

“The first of White’s five-part series commissioned by A.R.T. excavating the women from Shakespeare’s canon, the production uses pop, rock, gospel, and R&B to trace the fatalistic arc of Lady Macbeth while lifting up contemporary Black female power, femininity, and desire,” reads the performance website .

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The theater goes on to say that it “center[s] anti-racism” and “Habituate[s] anti-racist practices in our policies, structure and culture.”

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