Red Velvet Scores Big at SF Playhouse "Empathy Gym"

Given the enormous success of the rap play "Hamilton," it may be hard to believe that Black actors were once kept from even playing the roles written for people of color. 

Here in our city, San Francisco Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director) continues its thirteenth Mainstage season with the West Coast premiere of Lolita Chakrabarti’s biographical play Red Velvet, directed by Margo Hall.

Carl Lumbly  stars as Ira Aldridge, the African-American actor who, in the nineteenth century and against social mores of the day, built an incredible reputation on the stages of London and Europe. 

It is 1833 in London. No black man has ever starred on a British stage—not even as Othello—until tonight. Edmund Kean, the greatest actor of his generation, has collapsed on stage while playing Othello. Ira Aldridge, a young black American, breaks more than the color barrier as he battles the entrenched social and theatrical norms of his day. But as the public riot in the streets over the abolition of slavery, how will the cast, critics and audience react to the revolution taking place in the theatre?

In an interview with Bay Crossings and Cultural Currents, Playhouse co-founder, Bill English notes that his audience is very diverse, and younger than the Bay Area average: 

"We have every ethnicity and people from widely divergent cultures," he says.  "I think our audience likes to think, to wrestle with the difficult issues facing our culture and to feel. They expect to be moved and touched. I like to call our theatre 'The Empathy Gym.' Most our patrons know that and they come to get a good work-out!"