The dude on top is the great Ira Aldridge, 19th century black tragedian. You could say he was the first black superstar actor, only he had to leave the United States to fulfill his dreams. Most people don't know about Ira Aldridge. I studied theater history in college and I'd never heard of him, but then we really didn't touch upon American theater until the 20th century. And you can be sure we didn't learn anything about what black people might have contributed to the theater. No Williams and Walker, certainly I had no idea there were any black playwrights writing in the 19th Century until I actually directed a play written by a Creole playwright who moved to Paris to write.
I first became acquainted when the theater company I was working with scheduled a production of a play that he wrote called The Black Doctor. I had no idea who he was, but I quickly looked him up and was fascinated that this man existed at a time when black actors were forced to do minstrel shows. Wow, I thought a black actor who specialized in doing classical theater. Somehow I didn't feel so weird anymore for my love of Shakespeare, and Chekhov.
Truthfully the play was pretty creaky. It was one of the those 19th century melodramas designed for the star actor. Sort of an updated version of Othello. You know, well-educated black man becomes doctor, marries white woman, people are shocked etc. But the fact that he wrote it, and that it was performed, and that it hadn't been lost to history like so many other things was pretty cool.
Anyway, back to Ira Aldridge. He was born in New York City on July 24, 1807 to a free couple, the Reverand Daniel and Luranah Aldridge. He was educated at the African Free School in New York City. He probably went to see plays at the Park Theatre, in the special balcony's reserved for blacks at that time. His first theatrical appearences were with a company of black actors at the African Grove.
Confronted with the disapargement and harassment that black actors received at that time, he moved to England where he became a dresser to the actor Henry Wallack. Gradually progressing to larger roles, by the time he turned 18 he had top billing at London's Coburg theater. He eventually played Othello, becoming probably the first black actor to ever play the most famous role for a black actor ever.
Can you imagine what it must have been like for audiences at that time to see a black actor playing that role instead of a white actor wearing shoe polish? The scene where Othello smothers Desdemona must have sent shock waves through the audience. I've read that some critics thought he was entirely too realistic in that scene. Now of course, we take it for granted that black actors play Othello, but even in the twentieth century it was more common for white actors to black up to the play the role, until Paul Robeson took the stage. Even now for a white actor to play Othello, it would be considered a sacrilege. When Patrick Stewart played the role in DC, he was the only white actor in the cast. But things were totally different almost two hundred years ago.
Not only did he play roles like Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, but he also essayed roles that were specifically white characters like Shylock in Merchant of Venice and Richard III. He was considered the black Edmund Kean, the way Billy Dee Williams has been called the black Clark Gable.
He toured all across the British Isles and then onto continental Europe. He spent most of his final years in Russia, where he became acquainted with Leo Tolstoy and where he learned the language well-enough to perform in that language. See Condoleeza Rice isn't the only African-American to learn Russian!
Yes, he married two white women. Get over it, who else was he going to meet back then mixing with white society? He had six children, one of his children Amanda coached Paul Robeson when he came to London to play Othello in the 1930's. Another son was a composer, while another emigrated to Australia.
He's buried in Poland, where he died, in the city's Evangelical Cemetary. His grave is tended to by the Society of Polish Artists of Film and Theatre. Apparently he's like a saint to the Polish theatrical community.
Tomorrow: Ida Wells-Barnett, pioneering journalist and anti-lynching advocate
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