Debra Ann Byrd doesn’t remember the first Shakespeare performance she saw. She remembers some details – the performance featured a troop of Black actors, and she knows they were doing a series of different monologues and scenes from various Shakespearean works. But, she can’t remember exactly what they were performing.
She does, however, remember how the performance made her feel.
“I remember the rhythms and the way they spoke, and the clarity,” Byrd said. “Even though I didn’t really know Shakespeare, I knew what they were saying.”
Years later, Byrd is a classically-trained Shakespearean actor. She founded the Harlem Shakespeare Festival, as well as Take Wing And Soar Productions, a company that aims to help classically trained actors of color reach their highest potential. And now, she’s combined her love of the bard with her own personal story.
“Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” will play at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts on Friday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m. The one-woman show is described as a “living memoir,” tracing the course of Byrd’s life through song, scene, and selections from Shakespeare – notably, from “Othello.” The show was written by and stars Byrd, and is directed by the late Tina Packer, the co-founder of Massachusetts’ Shakespeare & Company.
Daniel Parker, the director of performing arts programming and operations for Ferst Center for the Arts, said the thing that most excited him about Byrd’s show was its treatment of Shakespeare.
“What excites me most about bringing Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey to the Ferst Center is that it treats Shakespeare as a living question, not a finished product,” Parker said in a written statement. “Debra Ann Byrd’s work reflects the kind of innovation our community values. By founding the Harlem Shakespeare Festival, she opened new pathways to belonging in classical theater. Her one-woman performance is personal, thoughtful, and invites the curiosity and problem-solving mindset that defines Georgia Tech.”
Byrd loves “Othello” and remembers seeing Charles Dutton play the lead role and feeling inspired to play it herself. Breaking convention, she eventually linked up with Lisa Wolpe, an actor with a particular interest in gender-bent Shakespeare plays.
“I asked her if she had any Iago in her? And she said yes,” Byrd remembers. “She asked me if I had any Othello. I said well – maybe!”
The pair went on to produce an all-female staged reading of “Othello,” and Byrd would go onto play the lead role multiple times, each time learning a little more about Othello and also herself. When she began toying with the idea of writing “Becoming Othello,” the name was the first thing she thought of. The connection between her and the Moorish general just felt right.
But, at the time, Byrd was still more of an actor than a writer. She didn’t know the first thing about writing a script, and though she’d always wanted to perform a one-woman show, she had never considered the idea of writing it herself.
“I knew I wanted to challenge myself. ‘Can I really perform a solo show?’ was the first thing in my head,” Byrd said. “I never knew that I was going to write my own story, but I wanted to challenge myself as an artist.”
So, she went looking for help. Byrd developed “Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” as a writer-in-residence at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and then later as an artistic research fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She found that, while she was grateful to have a little institutional support, she still couldn’t quite crack the writing. So, she found story coach Tanya Taylor Rubinstein. She would meet with Rubinstein on Zoom, along with about eight other women around the world, and they would hash out their stories together.
“Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” is a story about Byrd’s journey to Othello, but it’s also a one-woman show about her life and experiences. In addition to verses from Shakespeare, it includes music, singing, rapping, and everything else that Byrd thought would be necessary to make a show that felt personal to her. In preparing the show for the stage, her director Tina Packer helped Byrd tremendously.
The first week, they worked mostly on the Shakespeare portions of the show, rehearsing those monologues in their original intention. Packer would go through the story with Byrd and suggest different Shakespeare excerpts that could be added in for specific moments. For example, it was Packer who suggested a text from “Richard III” for a moment that deals with the passing of Byrd’s mother.
“There were some Shakespeares that were dear to my heart that I just knew I was going to add. But [Packer] came with some new stuff that I had no idea what it was. And I was a little bit reluctant [laughs],” Byrd said. “But as we began to work on that, it was great.”
Packer also helped Byrd make the story clearer, pointing out emotional holes that needed to be filled. She would often send Byrd home with assignments, asking her to write about things like the experience of giving birth to her daughter, or what it felt like when her marriage ended.
“She helped me to make the story clearer – any holes or gaps, [she] helped me to fill that in,” Byrd said.
Now that she’s been performing the show, Byrd says one of the hardest parts is finding her rhythm without any other actors to cue off of. But she has tricks she employs to make sure she stays on pace.
“You pace yourself. You make sure you breathe a certain way,” Byrd said. “Use all the tools that you ever learned in acting class [laughs] or life.”