Category: Othello

Othello is a tragedy that explores timeless themes such as jealousy, race, and the destructive power of manipulation. The play revolves around the central character Othello, a Black general in the Venetian army, and his relationship with his wife Desdemona. The play examines the effects of jealousy on both personal relationships and society as a whole, as Othello’s jealous suspicions lead him to commit heinous acts. Additionally, the play delves into issues of race and identity, as Othello’s ethnicity is used against him by those who seek to undermine him. The play also explores the concept of appearance vs. reality, as characters’ true motives and intentions are revealed throughout the story. Overall, Othello remains a powerful exploration of human nature and the consequences of unchecked emotions, making it a classic work that continues to be studied and performed today.

Browse the text of Othello entire play here.

Woops, Wrong Falstaff. A Geeklet Story.

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

I have been writing about Shakespeare on this site for literally my children’s entire lives. If you go back far enough you’ll find the sonnet I wrote for my daughter when she was born. Over the years whenever my love for my children crossed over with my love for Shakespeare, “geeklet stories” were born. The kids are off to college now so the precocious nature of the stories has waned quite a bit, but my desire to share them with the world never will.

Last week I’m driving my daughter home from college when she says, “Next week they’re showing Falstaff at school.”

Falstaff

“See it,” I say, barely letting her finish the sentence. “That’s the other name for Orson Welles’ Chimes At Midnight, arguably one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever put to film. Just last week I was talking about it with a coworker who asked for recommendations about Shakespeare movies and I told him that one. The fun thing is that he’s not a Shakespeare fan, he’s a movie fan, so it’s a good test because when you like a Shakespeare movie because it’s a movie, without even knowing the Shakespeare, you’ve got something special. Absolutely make sure you get the opportunity to see it if they’re showing it.”

“Did he like it?”

“He loved it. Came back into the office raving about it. You kids have seen parts of it, it’s the one with that famous I know thee not, old man speech I’ve shown you. One of my favorite Shakespeare scenes of all time.”

While I was babbling she was looking at her phone, as teenagers tend to do when their parents talk. “It says here it’s by a guy named Verdi.”

Sad face. “Oh. That’s the opera. Entirely different thing, ignore everything I just said.”

I know it’s not “entirely” a different thing, it’s still about the same Shakespeare character, and I did explain that.

Operation Othello

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You never know where you’ll find some Shakespeare. I saw the trailer for the new Air movie about Nike, which prominently features people talking *about* Michael Jordan but no actual Michael Jordan. So off I went to IMDB, curious to see who would be playing him. I found it interesting that the actor in that role is listed seventh, behind the actor playing his father, Julius Tennon, who doesn’t even have a headshot. So I clicked to learn more about Julius Tennon and found …

Operation Othello is “a futuristic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello set in the world of an elite naval special forces unit.”

Oh? Tell me more!

Othello Vintage Poster

Tennon has multiple acting credits dating back to the 1980s, not sure why he doesn’t have a headshot on file (there are plenty of photos). In fact, he’s got a production coming with Viola Davis, JuVee Productions, and this is their project. Debuting at Cannes in 2019 as a “VR series,” and I’m even more curious now about what that means:

“We believe Immersive Media is an integral part of the future of storytelling and presents a unique opportunity to bring a voice to the voiceless. As an ‘empathy machine,’ we’re excited to see how VR can allow viewers to be intimately present with powerful characters across the broad spectrum of humanity.”

“As an avid Shakespeare lover who has been lucky enough to witness and perform his profound words on stage,” Chieffo says, “I was inspired to present the original text in a way that is accessible and exhilarating to a modern audience.”

IMDB calls it a TV Movie. I’m wondering if they adapted it into something more traditional for wider release because the press release seems to imply it’s something more like a game. I don’t think we have a good name yet for immersive movies where you put on the headset and “experience” the story, but really the story is still the same no matter what you do.

Review : David Zwirner’s Othello with Chris Ofili

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

My mom loved a good yard sale. Whenever she saw something with the word Shakespeare on it she’d snatch it up, rarely even knowing what it was, and bring it to me the next time we saw each other. “You probably already have it,” she’d say, “but I got it for a quatta.” (That’d be twenty five cents outside of New England :)) Inevitably it was a collection of the sonnets or a small bound copy of a single play, something that I did already have several of. And each time I’d say to her, “Shakespeare isn’t like other books. It’s not just about the words with each book, it’s about how a particular book chooses to present the words.”

I was reminded of that story when two books from David Zwirner Books arrived. I now have new copies of Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As far as the Shakespeare goes? It’s the same words we all know and love. Well organized and presented, plenty of whitespace, line numbers down the left, glossary on the right. It’s a nice, easy read – and I can’t say that about every book, I’ve seen some real doozies of a teeny tiny font that I could maybe read comfortably twenty years ago.

Then it dawned on me, that’s not what these books are about. David Zwirner is an art gallery. Each of these books showcases the work of a particular artist, using a particular Shakespeare play as inspiration. They are little artworks in their own right. Why have just one image inspired by a play, when you can make a whole series? And if you’ve got a whole series of images inspired by a play, why not decorate the play with those images?

This makes for an interesting challenge for me, because I know nothing about art. I can say what I like and don’t like, but I’d hate to say something stupid or worse, offensive.

So let’s start with Chris Ofili’s Othello. There’s a clear statement being made here right from the opening essay, referring to Othello as a problem play (“doubly so,” even) and referring to it, several times, as a “white fantasy of blackness.” I don’t know how to speak to this, and I don’t want to cloud my description of the book with my opinions. As the saying goes, I understand that I will never understand.

The artwork is all stark white line drawings on solid black background. Each representation is Othello’s expressive face, with a glimpse at what he is thinking. Sometimes he looks happy, sometimes angry, sometimes sad.

I would love to just get all the images from the book and display them here, and we could discuss which images goes with which scene. Or animate them like a flipbook to watch what happens in Othello’s mind as the action plays out. I think that would look kind of cool, actually.

Stay tuned for part two where we look at A Midsummer Night’s Dream!

Achievement Unlocked (A Geeklet Story)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Both my two oldest now are studying Shakespeare — Othello for one, Romeo and Juliet for the other — so the content comes so fast and furious it’s hard to keep up.  My oldest has to write a paper on Iago, in fact, because they finished the play when I wasn’t looking.

“That’s what I was going to tell you,” she says.  “I had to look something up about Iago for research … and you came up.  That was weird.”

Sure enough, if you Google “Othello’s ancient” here’s what comes up:

https://www.shakespearegeek.com/2011/01/othello-ancient.html

The funny thing is that there in the car I said, “It means his right-hand man, right?”  Which is exactly what I wrote in 2011.  And she said, “No, it means flag bearer,” which is also what I learned in 2011 🙂

 

M Night Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about how it’s ok – nay, expected – that you know the ending of a Shakespeare play, but you still go see it again and again, because it’s about how they tell the story to get there.  The only caveat to this rule would be those movies where it’s all about “the twist” (an M Night Shyamalan production).  I noted that Shakespeare doesn’t really do twists.

But what if he did?  I started wondering, which plays could be presented such that you don’t see it coming until the big reveal at the end.

Twelfth Night is an obvious example. What if we leave out Viola at the beginning, and pick it up with Cesario?  Then you’ve got a classic romantic comedy where Cesario’s lusting after Orsino, Olivia is lusting after Cesario, Orsino’s lusting after Olivia but kind of really confused about his feelings for Cesario, and so on.  Enter this guy Sebastian, who mentions a shipwreck and searching for his lost “sibling” and we think, “Aha! Twins! This will be good!”  But then we get to the big finale where we find out Cesario is actually Viola.  Cue happy endings and wedding music.

But I think it’s cheating to just do the easy comedy. Could we do it with a tragedy?  I was wondering – if we took out all Iago’s soliloquies and behind the scenes machinations, could we make a twist out of it?  Basically tell the whole story from Othello’s perspective, rather than Iago’s.  He has to deal with his new father in law’s fury. He has to deal with his right-hand man Cassio getting into drunken bar fights. All the while he puts growing faith in loyal Iago, who hates to say this, but who thinks that maybe Cassio might be fooling around with Othello’s wife.

I think this one would be much harder to splice together, but imagine the payoff at the end?  Suddenly Emilia comes out of nowhere to unveil that it was her husband all along?  Then the husband f%^&*(ng STABS HER?! And then, when they catch him, he’s all, “Yup, not going to explain myself. At all. You get nothing.”  That would be legendary.

Now I’m sad that knowing the real ending, I could never get to see how that would actually pay off, even if they made a movie exactly like that tomorrow.

This has more potential than I thought. What other plays could we twist?  The only rule is that you can’t add more original content.  If Shakespeare didn’t answer the question, we can’t answer it.  We can’t, for instance, learn that it was actually Gertrude that killed her husband (or Ophelia).  You have to stay as close the original material as possible, just mess with how the audience gets to see it.