In partnership with S. Miranda Productions

Part spoken word, part stand-up comedy, part “TED Talk,” Carlyle Brown’s newest oneman show riffs on the roots of American racism and its consequences for all of us – exploring the appropriation of the African American narrative and tracing its origin, from a single individual on a specific night in Louisville, Kentucky in 1828, to racial conflicts we still endure to this day.

"Acting Black is a generous, provocative work that has the potential to be a change-making kind of performance"

Writer, performer, and Artistic Director Carlyle Brown’s career began over 30 years ago at the Penumbra Theatre Company in the Twin Cities, where his now famed play THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III premiered in 1987 – later produced at Houston’s Ensemble Theatre in 2000. His extensive canon of plays has been produced Off-Broadway and at regional theatres around the country. He has received commissions from Arena Stage, Houston Grand Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Goodman Theatre, and Alabama Shakespeare Festival to name a few. He is the recipient of many playwriting fellowships, including ones from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, and Theatre Communications Group. Brown was most recently awarded the 2018 William Inge Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre Award. He is the 2006 winner of the Black Theatre Network’s Winona Lee Fletcher Award for Outstanding Achievement and Artistic Excellence, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2010 recipient of the Otto Rene’ Castillo Award for Political Theatre, and 2010 United States Artists Fellow.