'Red Velvet'

In 1833, English actor Edmund Kean collapsed onstage at London’s Theatre Royal while portraying Othello. Taking over the lead role in Shakespeare’s tragedy was black American actor Ira Aldridge. In her 2012 drama Red Velvet, playwright Lolita Chakrabarti offers a fictionalized account of Aldridge’s story and the challenges he faced as a black actor during a time of racial unrest. Award-winning thespian Jolie Garrett stars as Aldridge in a staged reading of the play presented as part of the Vermont Shakespeare Festival’s Salon Series. A postshow discussion explores the concept of artistic identity as it relates to social, aesthetic and political struggles.