News & Media

Karamu House has announced that eighteen (18) local artists will receive awards through Room in the House fellowship (RITH). With generous support from Cuyahoga County residents through a Support for Artists grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture RITH, artist awards are designed to empower artists’ creative practice through a $5,000 financial award, digital exhibition presence and space at Karamu for creation, exhibition, and performance. Applications for the fellowship were open to Cleveland-based artists with demonstrated commitment to their visual arts or performance- based work and alignment to Karamu’s vision of socially and culturally responsive art that celebrates the Black experience.

Karamu House is proud to announce that it has been awarded Best Touring Production for Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor by the Cleveland Critics Circle (CCC). This poetic exploration of Shakespeare, race, and America. Directed by Kim Weild and written and performed by national television and theatre actor, Keith Hamilton Cobb, the action of the play takes place in an audition for the role of Shakespeare’s character, Othello. A middle-aged African American man is auditioning for the role opposite a male director who is considerably younger and white. During the audition, the director, from his place of authority and oblivious privilege, attempts to guide the actor’s performance towards a rendition of the black character that he (the director) insists is most authentic.

Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland Play House, and Karamu House are pleased to announce joint programming to bring diverse audiences of Northeast Ohio together during the 2022 holiday season this December. The three performing arts organizations will join forces for a historic celebration of community to co-present holiday programming in Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre Complex. Programming includes Cleveland Play House’s Festival of Trees, as well as performances of the Karamu House classic, Black Nativity, and the Apollo’s Fire celebratory concert, WASSAIL! - An Irish-Appalachian Christmas. Tickets for all performances will be available to the general public in late November and will be sold exclusively at clevelandplayhouse.com

Cleveland Scene reporter, Christine Howey, reviews American Moor - An audition is a place where an actor signs up to lay his or her soul on the table and then be criticized, judged, and usually rejected. That is one of the several things that is made clear in American Moor, written and performed with stunning clarity by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Now at Karamu House, this almost-one-person performance, directed by Kim Weild, uses an actor's audition as a metaphor for the muted and often ignored voice of Black actors in the American theater in general, and in Shakespeare's "Othello" in particular.