theshakespearesociety

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/star-crossed-lovers

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/caledonia

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/three-musketeers-miladys-revenge

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/three-musketeers-rochefort-fight

[theshakespearesociety]

https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/three-musketeers-the-fight-at-the-luxembourg

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/the-three-musketeers-fight-music

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https://soundcloud.com/alex-57-3/shakespeare-music-discussion-hartford-stage

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Ending of Othello OMG SPOILERS

Something that was said by a great director/scholar that was either Ayanna Thompson or Michael Sexton, and has been stuck in my brain: Desdemona’s love is a value that survives what is otherwise a pretty terrible play. [That’s terrible in the sense of horrifyingly tragic, not poorly written or structured.] The one gift that Shakespeare gives us in the midst of a truly depressing finale is the fact that Othello has just enough time to learn that she did in fact love him and was true.

One of Desdemona’s last lines is “Nobody, I myself,” in response to Emilia’s “Who did this?!” That’s always been a little tricky, at least for me, because it’s like GIRL are you seriously accepting blame for this male nonsense? But Ayanna helpfully pointed out (read her intro to the newest Arden edition of Othello), marriage in the early modern biblical sense is conceived as “one flesh,” so it’s not necessarily that Desdemona is blaming herself so much as acknowledging that the perpetrator (Othello) is one half of herself.

#shakespeare #spoilers #othello #early modern biblical

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Othello, the cheater

So there's a lot that's crazy about Othello's Act 3 Scene 3 ("the deception"). But the actual craziest part is the very end. Most people stage it so that the two men (Iago and Othello) end up kneeling together – and they make some pretty weighty promises of…love? Faithfulness? Othello says: In due reverence of a sacred vow / I here engage my words. And the scene closes with Iago: I am your own for ever.

So ACTUALLY, if you’re gonna get technical about it, Othello kind of cheated on Desdemona with Iago. At least in the spiritual/contractual sense. Which makes the reason for her death all the more painfully ironic.

#shakespeare #iago #othello #marriage pact #irony

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Basically.

A Shakespearean Character Guide to Dealing with an Annoying Roommate

Macbeth: Invite him to a sleepover. Then stab him.

Hamlet: Put on a play that outlines all of your roommate’s annoying flaws. Then stab him.

Romeo: Marry his cousin and try to start a new, peaceful relationship. When that doesn’t work, stab him.

Brutus: Petition your roommate to change for the better. Then stab him with 60 of your closest friends.

Othello: Talk to your friend about the problems you’re having with your roommate. Then strangle him.

Shylock: Make him sign a pound of flesh as collateral on your roommate agreement. Collect on it.

Cleopatra: Set a poisonous snake loose in his room.

Henry VIII: Marry him. Then cut off his head.

#shakespeare #roommate problems #shakespeare jokes #literary humor

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The Women of Othello

I came away from this pre-show panel ("The Women of Othello") way more into Bianca (and the lovely Nikki Massoud, who plays her in the NYTW production) than any of the other characters, men or women. Nikki talked about how Sam Gold encouraged her to think of Bianca and Cassio as star-crossed lovers in a war zone – she is a local, he is a soldier (I mean, that’s certainly textually accurate). Bianca may be a prostitute by trade, but she is the only person in the show who is always direct about what she is thinking and what she wants. Ironically, she is the most honest.

At one point a woman in the audience asked the three women (Rachel Brosnahan as Desdemona, Marsha Stephanie Blake as Emilia, Nikki Massoud as Bianca) what their dream Shakespearean role would be – man or woman. Nikki surprised and delighted me with her response: she said that there weren’t any male characters she was all that interested in, and anyone who thinks that Shakespeare didn’t write strong women is a victim of a lazy director. She illustrated her point by saying (I’m paraphrasing as best I can), “If I’m walking home late at night, and I’m a small woman, there are certain fears, certain dangers, that I am facing that a man would not. And that affects me in that moment and in my life generally. I don’t think it’s portraying weakness to portray that reality onstage.”

Yaaas Nikki yaaas! For putting voice to something that feels so true that I never could have said so directly (must be the Bianca in her).

#women of othello #shakespeare #othello #desdemona #shakespeare society #ayanna thompson #arden

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The set design concept. Basically: intimacy and implication. Particularly important for Othello, when Iago spends so much goddamn time potentially breaking the fourth wall.

Also, out of context quote from a long-ass interview, but it’s great: “The abstraction of music is much closer to the abstraction of Shakespeare than a contemporary play. This production feels much more like doing a musical than any of the plays I’ve done lately.” (Sam Gold)

#iago #othello #nytw #daniel craig #david oyelowo #sam gold #shakespeare #nyc

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Where would we be without Mallory Ortberg at The Toast?

“Dirtbag Othello” :

IAGO: how many guys like on average would you say Desdemona is having sex with

OTHELLO: what

IAGO: like just you or you and also one more person

OTHELLO: what are you talking about

IAGO: if i were you just to be safe i would smother her to death

OTHELLO: oh my god

IAGO: just to be on the safe side

#othello #dirtbag othello #the toast #mallory ortberg #shakespeare #shakespeare humor #gallows humor

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Shakespear is relating to teen culture

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Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques –literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.

Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)

Whoa. What a thought. “Most of Othello.”

#shakespeare #othello #virginia woolf

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This is all just so alarming - it’s one thing to call Coriolanus a play for our current political climate (and I did, and it was, and is). But when a characterization of Iago feels a little bit terrifyingly real...we’re screwed.

I’m so intrigued by this bit from Tamsin Shaw:

Without some religious metaphysics it is hard to make sense of the idea that there are people who are intrinsically evil; it no longer seems plausible to many of us that people can be motivated by something that can be described as pure evil. Sustained cruelty is therefore often explained as sociopathy (the slick, psychopathic killers beloved of Hollywood), or a personality disorder stemming from some deep personal or social injury, or as some horribly warped conception of what is good. 

I’ve never thought about it this way. But it seems correct, no? I argue against the real existence of intrinsic “evil” all the time, mostly because I feel like it’s letting society off the hook for what it does to people. Simplest example: you can call ISIS evil, but to do so is to ignore the years of foreign policy mistakes that gave rise to their extremism. To call something simply evil is to take no responsibility and forestall change and solutions. 

I don’t know what that means for Iago - Shaw details a few different ways that he’s been played, with which underlying motivations. But he is, for sure, a tough nut to crack.

#shakespeare #othello #nybooks #nytimes #book review #iago #daniel craig

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One day, I will shut up about this production, of this show. That day is not today, or tomorrow. Apologies for being a bit neglectful (hello holiday season), but I’m back and I’m rabid about Daniel Craig & David Oyelowo & Sam Gold, so buckle your seatbelts.

David Oyelowo just seems like such a real, rich, actor. I love the way he talks, in this interview, about his understandable hesitancy to play “the” black role, preferring instead to focus on roles in Shakespeare like Henry VI. Or, you know, if he must, he’ll settle for no less than Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a fantastic line from the above article: “Mr. Oyelowo has built his career on playing good men and on making that goodness interesting.”

I LOVE this. I think it’s so easy for actors to gravitate towards “problematic” characters, or characters with a major evil streak. It’s fun, it’s freeing. Perhaps we could all stand to spend more time finding the nuance and appeal to the “good” characters. Interestingly, I felt this challenge most strongly while playing Desdemona. She’s by no means uncomplicated, but she’s not what we consider a “strong” female character. She suffers and, for the most part, quietly endures abuse. One of her defining traits is her innocence and goodness, because that’s what makes her death so disturbing. I always felt like the audience could not be allowed to doubt her purity for a moment and like...where’s the fun in that? And yet that in itself is really interesting, because she’s charming and defiant (of her father) and fiercely loyal to her friends.

I’m sure I’ll have more on Desdemona later, though, after I attend the Shakespeare Society’s Women of Othello event.

#nytimes #othello #daniel craig #david oyelowo #shakespeare #women in othello