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Chapter 12 - How to Think Like Ira Aldridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2021

Ayanna Thompson
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Summary

We remember Ira Aldridge today as the first black Shakespearean to achieve international professional renown. Indeed, he’s the first American actor to do so. Throughout his life Aldridge was lauded with awards. Born to free blacks in New York at the turn of the nineteenth century, naturalized as a British citizen in 1863, and buried in Łódź, Poland in 1867, Aldridge’s cosmopolitan life was marked by triumphs as well as persistent racist responses to his performances. His cosmopolitan career spanned three continents and countless theatres. This essay surveys seven of Ira Aldridge’s strategies for succeeding on the nineteenth-century stage: educate; emulate; circulate; nominate; innovate; disseminate; elaborate. Such strategies can still inspire us, students, performers, scholars, artists, teachers, and innovators alike.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Elaborate

Andrews, C.B., Ebony, Black –The Diaries, Letters and Criticism: The Story of Ira Aldridge (Known as the African Roscius) (Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University).Google Scholar
Dewberry, Jonathan, “The African Grove Theatre and Company,” Black American Literature Forum 16/4 (1982): 128–31.Google Scholar
Howard, Tony, and Wilcox, Zoë, “‘Haply, for I am black’: The Legacy of Ira Aldridge,” in Shakespeare in Ten Acts, ed. McMullan, Gordon and Wilcox, Zoë (London: British Library, 2016), 121–40.Google Scholar
Kujawinska Courtney, Krystyna, and Lukowska, Maria (eds.), Ira Aldridge 1807–1867: The Great Shakespearean Tragedian on the Bicentennial Anniversary of His Birth (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009).Google Scholar
Kujawinska Courtney, Krystyna, “Ira Aldridge, Shakespeare, and Color-Conscious Performances in Nineteenth Century Europe,” in Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance, ed. Thompson, Ayanna (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 103–22.Google Scholar
Lindfors, Bernth (ed.), Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius (University of Rochester Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, Joyce Green, “Acting Black: Othello, Othello Burlesques, and the Performance of Blackness,” Theatre Journal 46 (1994): 231–49.Google Scholar
Malone, Mary, Actor in Exile: The Life of Ira Aldridge (London: Cromwell-Collier Press, 1969).Google Scholar
Marshall, Herbert, Further Research on Ira Aldridge, the Negro Tragedian (Center for Soviet and East European Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1973).Google Scholar
Roberts, Brian Russell, “A London Legacy of Ira Aldridge: Henry Francis Downing and the Paratheatrical Poetics of Plot and Cast(e),” Modern Drama 55/3 (Fall 2012): 386–40.Google Scholar
Ross, Alex, “Othello’s Daughter,” New Yorker, 29 July 2013.Google Scholar
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