Booking and details
Dates Sat, Oct 17, 2026, 10am
Venue Folger Shakespeare Library
Tickets Course fee: $150 / $125 for members
Duration 10:00am - 5:30pm
Your course fee includes a private tour, morning refreshments, boxed lunch, and a ticket to the matinee performance of Folger Theatre’s Measure for Measure.
Learn about how Black women have engaged with and used Shakespeare’s language for artistic expression on and off the stage in this dynamic full-day Humanities Lab course.
Discover To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare, a landmark exhibition of poetry, stagecraft, artistry, and lived experiences, and explore Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as you engage with items in the exhibition galleries and talk with scholars.
Your experience culminates with a matinee performance of Folger Theatre’s production of Measure for Measure, followed by a small-group conversation about the play with the associate director and lead actor.
About the course
In this course, participants will start the day with coffee and a light breakfast alongside an introduction to the Folger. Then, they will attend a private tour of the Folger exhibition halls before public hours to learn more about the history of the library and its collections.
They will then explore the exhibition To Hear Her Speak, learning about the contributions Black women made to Shakespearean performance and how they used Shakespeare’s works to bring about new artistic creations. Participants will hear from Dr. Brandi K. Adams, an assistant professor at Arizona State University and one of the Research Fellows who worked with the exhibition curator, and Folger Assistant Curator of Collections Johnna Champion, who will share a closer look at objects on display in the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall that are connected to Measure for Measure.
After a lunch break, participants will attend the matinee performance of Folger Theatre’s Measure for Measure, followed by a post-show discussion with actor Renea S. Brown, who plays the lead role of Isabella, and the production’s associate director, Nadia Guevara.
Everyone’s welcome, whatever your knowledge level. All you need is your observation skills and a willingness to learn! Your course fee includes a private tour, morning refreshments, boxed lunch, and your ticket to the matinee performance of Measure for Measure.
We’re keeping the class small, so space is limited – register today!
About the exhibition
To Hear Her Speak explores the histories of Black women in Shakespearean performance and highlights the ways in which Black women have engaged Shakespeare’s language, stories, and characters in their work. This exhibition also builds on new research about the presence of Black women in early modern Europe and shows how they were represented (and misrepresented) by artists and writers of the day. Nearly 100 objects ranging from photographs, playbills, posters, books, diaries, illustrations, and costumes draw from the Folger collection as well as key loans. Together, they document the stories of Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Lorraine Hansberry, Mae Turner, Esther Rolle, Phillis Wheatley, and many others. As actors, scholars, authors, artists, musicians, directors, and so much more—Black women have spoken Shakespeare’s words into new possibilities.
Speakers
Dr. Brandi K. Adams
Brandi K. Adams is an assistant professor in the Department of English, member of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and co-founder of the Arizona Book History Group with Professor Jonathan Hope. Her interests include book history, history of reading, early modern English drama, and premodern critical race and gender studies. She is also interested in the early history of artificial intelligence, early modern automata and how studying literature can have a significant and positive impact on computing. In addition to articles published in Shakespeare Quarterly and Shakespeare and reviews published in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Shakespeare Survey, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Early Theatre, she has published essays in volumes including Shakespeare/Text, The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Book in Early Modern England, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, Atrocity and Early Modern Drama, and others. She is currently researching and writing her first monograph entitled Extraordinary Readers: A history of books through Early Modern English Drama.
Renea S. Brown*
Renea S. Brown (Isabella) Folger Theatre: Macbeth: A Tribute to the Federal Theatre Project; Metamorphoses, Our Verse in Time to Come, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Round House Theatre: Sally and Tom, The Mountaintop (Helen Hayes Award: Outstanding Lead Performer), Sojourners (Helen Hayes Award: Outstanding Supporting Performer), Nollywood Dreams; Theatre Alliance: Furlough’s Paradise (Helen Hayes Award: Outstanding Lead Performer), Covenant; Arena Stage: Tempestuous Elements, Change Agent; Shakespeare Theatre Company: Macbeth, The Tempest; Ford’s Theatre: The American Five. Co-founder of Imminent Theatre Company. Film/Television: Godfather of Harlem (MGM+), Law and Order (NBC), Beauty’s Keeper (Amazon). www.reneabrown.com @TheRealDarkLady
Dr. Ashley Buchanan
Johnna Champion
Johnna Champion is the Assistant Curator of Collections at the Folger where she collaborates across teams on the exhibition spaces, classroom programming, and collection development. Previously, she has worked at Houghton Library on the Emily Dickinson Family Library, at Trinity College’s Long Room Library in Dublin on Oscar Wilde ephemera, and at the Library of Congress on the Poet Laureate Collection. Her research interests include descriptive bibliography, theatrical playbills, and the archiving of female political participation in post-colonial nation building.
Nadia Guevara**
Nadia Guevara (Associate Director) Folger Theatre: Cymbeline: A Telenovela Dramatic Western (Reading Room Festival 2026), DC I Love You: First Dates; Imagination Stage: Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale; Keegan Theatre: N; Shakespeare Theatre Company: Merry Wives (Helen Hayes Award – Outstanding Ensemble). Regional: Dallas Theater Center, McCarter Theatre. NYC/Off-Broadway: Keen Company/Drama League: Cell; National Queer Theatre: The Survival; The Public: Apple Bottom; The New Group: The Capitalist and the Factory Worker. Additional credits with New York Stage and Film, Red Bull Theater, Latinx Playwrights Circle. Awards: Drama League Stage Directing Fellow, NALAC Fellow, Actor of the Year – San Diego Critics Circle. nadiaguevara.com
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States
**Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
About the program
Learn more about the Humanities Lab and check out upcoming courses.
Become a member
Members of the Folger receive a $25 discount for this course.
Folger Theatre
Your course fee includes a ticket to the performance on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 2:00pm.
Measure for Measure
Check out our other Humanities Lab courses
Humanities Lab: Hamlet
