She’s made theater for 40 years. Now she’s making her Shakespeare debut, and it’s a doozy

Datebook: It’s not that no theater has ever offered Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe a Shakespeare role previously. But until the early 2000s, when the veteran Oakland actor, director and founder of Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience trained with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., it hadn’t been a “burning desire,” she told the Chronicle. Shakespeare opportunities have come her way, but “I was looking for the right one.”