![]() ![]() Yet here they are, sitting among polished brass and velvet curtains in one of Broadway’s most legendary theaters. ‘Death of a Salesman.’ Photo by Joan Marcus. Belcher, who intended to study law but got permanently sidetracked after starring in a college production and then earned a full scholarship to USC School of Dramatic Arts, says of the play, “It never occurred to me that it could be a Black family.” The daughter of Jamaican immigrants who settled in North London in the 1950s, Clarke told Vogue that a neighbor once asked her what it was like to live in a house for the first time. Board of Education wouldn’t end racial segregation in public schools for another five years, and it would be nearly two more decades before the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.ĭe Shields has lived through all of it. Set in 1949, the new production positions the Loman family as part of the second wave of the Great Migration, which saw hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners migrate to New York City. Related: The Great Migration Informs a Stark and Stunning ‘Death of a Salesman’ (l to r) Khris Davis, Wendell Pierce, Sharon D Clarke, and McKinley Belcher III. They also represent three generations of the LGBTQ+ community, whose identities bring further nuance to director Miranda Cromwell’s re-examination of the classic text. The three actors have gathered to discuss a history-making moment: the first time Broadway audiences have seen Death of a Salesman‘s Loman family portrayed as African American. ![]()
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