New play by celebrated Canadian playwright premiering at OV Arts Centre - Nanaimo News Bulletin

“William Shakespeare was a black woman.” In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote speech at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia’s speech from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29 “for” her; how else could he have so aptly described the harsh realities of the Black feminine condition? “Of course he wrote it for me,” Angelou declared. “Of course, he was a Black woman. I understand that.

'The fair is proceeding as planned and final preparations are underway,' a spokesperson said. The post After Protests and Riots, Art Basel Readies Paris Show appeared first on Artnet News .