The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0303 Wednesday, 10 June 2009
[1] From: Harry Rusche <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 9 Jun 2009 15:04:16 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
[2] From: Cary Mazer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 09 Jun 2009 15:12:39 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
[3] From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
[4] From: Evelyn Gajowski <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 9 Jun 2009 12:16:35 -0700
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0291 Iago
[5] From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 10 Jun 2009 17:00:56 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0291 Iago
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Harry Rusche <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 9 Jun 2009 15:04:16 -0400
Subject: 20.0291 Iago
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
Patrick Stewart did a production of "Othello" where he played Othello
and everyone else was played by a black. One critic called it a kind of
"reverse negative."
Harry Rusche
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Cary Mazer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 09 Jun 2009 15:12:39 -0400
Subject: 20.0291 Iago
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
1985, Folger Shakespeare. There's an essay about it in Ayanna Thompson's
Colorblind Shakespeare.
Cary
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Subject: 20.0291 Iago
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0291 Iago
If my memory does not fail me, I saw both the productions referred to by
Harry Rusche and Cary Mazer above. If I am not mistaken, Iago was played
by Andre Braugher to Avery Brooks's Othello with Franchelle Stewart Dorn
as Emilia. As I recall, Braugher played Iago as being motivated by
revenge against Othello for falling for a white woman and thus rejecting
his blackness. The "photo negative" casting in the Othello with Patrick
Stewart was particularly interesting to me for its providing another
perspective by which to view the inherent racism of the play. I recall
vividly Craig Wallace's Duke delivering the line "I think this tale
would win my daughter, too." with a venom and bitterness that I have
never heard from a white actor's delivering the line. Before this
production, I wanted to read the Duke's remark as an example of a white
man's being relatively free from the racism of the play, but Craig
Wallace opened my eyes to another, just as valid, reading. Also, of
interest to me was that Fran Dorn played Emilia in both productions
completely differently. In the 1985 production, her Emilia was a strong,
willful woman, who was not to be messed with, reminiscent of her
Paulina, while her Emilia for the reverse negative Othello was a woman
who had been so abused by her husband that she would do anything to get
relief from her husband's incessant violence and abuse toward her, even
to the point of stealing her mistress's handkerchief.
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Evelyn Gajowski <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 9 Jun 2009 12:16:35 -0700
Subject: 20.0291 Iago
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0291 Iago
For Louis Swilley,
At the Washington, DC, production of a few years back starring Patrick
Stewart as Othello, the rest of the entire cast was black.
All the best,
Evelyn Gajowski
Professor of English
Department of English
University of Nevada
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 10 Jun 2009 17:00:56 +0100
Subject: 20.0291 Iago
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0291 Iago
Didn't Patrick Stewart play a white Othello in a colour-reversed
production by Jude Kelly?
David Lindley
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