A hundred years on from the Harlem Renaissance, Gerrad Alex Taylor has adapted Langston Hughes’s Shakespeare in Harlem, which is having its world premiere this month at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, running from October 30 to November 9, 2025. Taylor shares how he's collaborating with both Hughes and Shakespeare to canonize the Black experience; how we call upon our ancestors, both personal and literary;  the power of the written word, from dramatic poetry to a letter written to your city council; how Shakespeare takes us, in his "Seven ages of man" speech through a man's life, while Hughes takes us through a man's blues; and finally, Taylor’s mission to turn Shakespeare into a verb! (Length 21:48)