In 1936 Orson Welles directed a celebrated allblack production of Macbeth that was hailed as a breakthrough for African Americans in the theater. For over a century black performers had fought for the right to perform on the American stage going all the way back to an 1820s Shakespearean troupe that performed Richard III Othello and Macbeth without relying on white patronage. Macbeth in Harlem tells the story of these actors and their fellow black theatrical artists from the early nineteenth ce