THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III is Coming to The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse
The cast features William Henry Brown, Destiny Danielle and more.
The Atlanta Shakespeare Company at The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse will present a special week-long return engagement of Carlyle Brown’s The African Company Presents Richard III. Performances will run from January 30-Feb 1, 2026.
Forty years before the abolition of slavery, William Henry Brown, a free Black American, organized a production of Shakespeare’s Richard III under his company, African Grove Theatre. At the same time, the leading producer of New York City, Stephen Price, has secured the famous English actor Junius Brutus Booth to play Richard III at his Park Theatre. Threatened by the potential success of Brown’s Richard III, Price is intent on shutting them down. While Brown fights to get his production to opening night, he must also contend with his company of African American actors who aren’t sure of their place in English drama, or if they’re even prepared for the consequences of presenting Shakespeare in their own way.
Tre’ Whitley plays William Henry Brown, Destiny Danielle plays Ann Johnson, Tyren Duncan plays James Hewlitt, Vallea E. Woodbury plays Sarah, Greg Hunter plays Papa Shakespeare, Eric Lang plays Stephen Price, Jake West plays the Constable Man.
Earning their bread with satires of white high society, the African Company came to be known for debunking the sacred status of the English classics (which many politically and racially motivated critics said were beyond the scope of black actors). Inside the Company’s ranks, similar debates raged about whether to mimic the English tongue, or to provide a more lively interpretation of white theater by acknowledging the vibrancy of the black experience (in the words of the African Company’s manager: “Say ya Shakespeare like ya want").
Shakespeare is the chosen cultural battleground in this inventive retelling of a little known, yet pivotal event in the African Company’s history. Knowing they are always under prejudicial pressures from white society, and facing their own internal shakeups, the African Company battles for time, space, audiences and togetherness. Their competition, Stephen Price, an uptown, Broadway-type impresario, is producing Richard III at the same time as the African Company’s production is in full swing. Price has promised a famous English actor overflowing audiences if he plays Richard in Price’s theatre. Fearing the competition of the African Company’s production, which is garnering large white audiences, Price manipulates the law and closes down the theatre. The Company rebounds and finds a space right next door to Price’s theatre. At the rise of curtain of the next performance, Price causes the arrest of some of the actors in a trumped-up riot charge. The play ends with the Company, surviving, its integrity intact, and about to launch an equally progressive new chapter in the American theatre: They’ll soon be producing the first black plays written by black Americans of their day.
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