Our acclaimed script-in-hand performance series, Read Not Dead returns, ready to examine another lesser-known early modern play through a twenty-first-century lens. This year, we turn a critical eye to Richard Brome’s satirical comedy The English Moor.

While Brome’s piece hasn’t been staged since the 1640s, it has served as a consistent subject of scholarly study due to its extremely challenging and provocative engagement with race, disability and gender. To a modern sensibility, it is unstageable as a full performance, but it’s ready for interrogation and exploration in the investigative space of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Director Steven Kavuma (GALWAD, Sky Arts), Dramaturg Zoë Svendsen (Macbeth, 2023) and a company of actors will ask: what do we stand to learn about the culture and values of Shakespeare’s world and seventeenth-century society by confronting – rather than ignoring – Brome’s work?

Join them for a script-in-hand performance, and the opportunity for reflection and discussion with the creative team, to find out.

Since 1995, Read Not Dead has staged readings of over two hundred neglected early modern plays. Today, we invite artists and theatre-makers to enter into conversation with the long-forgotten stories that formed Shakespeare’s cultural backdrop.

Content guidance notes: The play contains offensive racist, misogynist and ableist theatrical tropes and language. Please contact the ticketing team on 020 7401 9919 or [email protected] if you would like further details on the play’s content.