Henry V, Tupac, and the Power of Verse

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Biggie Smalls, Shakespeare. These are some of the major inspirations for playwright, Broadway star (currently in the revival of Gypsy), and Shakespearean actor Jacob Ming-Trent, who says language and storytelling have always been the means for survival, acceptance, success, and creating community. Here he discusses his upcoming play for Folger Theatre’s 2025-2026 season, How Shakespeare Saved My Life, and how theater can challenge us to ask the tough questions.

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What’s the main theme of this play in a nutshell? 

In school, we’re taught to admire Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton—people we’re told are some of the best of us. But they were all murdered. So, Jacob—a younger version of myself—grows up revering these figures but also learning that their fates could be his.

In that unsafe landscape, Jacob finds Shakespeare. Shakespeare gives him value. But he can’t fully accept the blessing of it—of discovering poetry and his own storytelling abilities—because he doesn’t feel safe. The journey becomes about finding safety, and that comes through community. Once he finds a sense of safety and belonging, he gains the ability to forgive. Without safety, forgiveness is very difficult.

So, has Shakespeare saved your life?

A friend joked once that they expected I’d say something like someone shot at me and I blocked the bullet with the Complete Works of Shakespeare. We make fun of that in the play.

But here’s what really happened. In 1992, I was 12 years old. It was the era of the “super predator” myth, the LA riots, the Rodney King beating. The Black male was being vilified. But if a young Black boy could speak Shakespeare clearly—sometimes more clearly than the teachers—that was seen as magical. It opened doors, scholarships, acceptance into schools. It was like a sideshow act at a circus, but it gave access.

I walked into the wrong classroom. They were doing Shakespeare. I was going to leave, but someone said, “You should stay.” I did. They handed me the St. Crispin Day speech from Henry V, and I loved it.

At the time, I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know I had this in me.” But looking back, I realize—my mother is British and studied Shakespeare. My father was an English major, a playwright, and novelist. My grandmother was a journalist and editor. I was surrounded by language. When I was handed Shakespeare, I was already prepared—I just didn’t know it yet.

So that’s one way Shakespeare saved my life. But the play reveals that Shakespeare wasn’t the only thing that saved me. There were other forces, other people, other moments.

What do you want audiences to take away from this play?

I hope people walk away with some good questions to ask themselves, their families, and their children. We don’t offer answers—we pose questions.

Theater is about community, and we want to help grow ours. We want to circle the wagons, sit together, and talk about big issues: What does it mean to feel safe in society? How do we identify our community, our tribe? What are our lifelines?

If people ask those questions—especially around the kitchen table with their kids—I’d feel great about that.

And what were those “lifelines” for you?

For me, the lifelines were language and storytelling. The power of words to affect others is amazing. Shakespeare was a lifeline—another form of language, another way to make arguments. At the same time, I was listening to hip hop—Tupac, Biggie, Grandmaster Flash. They were discussing the same themes Shakespeare was.

Shakespeare was an urban poet, writing for a city of about 100,000 people. He knew his audience, just like Biggie did. There are a lot of similarities between them, but we tend to focus on the differences—skin color, time period, language.

I like to think about how much further we could go if we started to focus on the common ground between these poets. There’s a lot we can learn over a 500-year span if we’re willing to see the connections.