7 Take -away meals from 92y's play Othello with André Holland, Chukwudi Iwuji, and John Douglas Thompson

Stage to page7 Take -away meals of 92Y’s Play Othello With André Holtel, Aggrui, and John Douglas Thompson

The actors discussed some of the expectations and challenges associated with playing the Bard’s complicated Moor van Venice.

Actors André Holland, Addand John Douglas Thompson recently discussed their experiences with Shakespeare’s famous tragic character in the panel Play Othello at 92 years on March 7, hosted by the University of Columbia. Holland, acknowledged for many of his film and television work, played the role in a London production at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2018; Iwuji have adopted the role In the public’s Shakespeare in park production the same year. Thompson has played the role six times so far, especially in Theater for a new audience’s 2009 Off-Broadway production in the Duke in 42nd Street. The academics James Shapiro and Thombson darlingboth Shakespeare scientists in the Public Theater residence.

Here are seven highlights from the discussion:

1. People often expect black actors to focus only on black characters in classic plays.
Holland: When I was at university and people discovered that I wanted to do Shakespeare, the first thing they said was, “When are you going to play Othello?” And it just let me go, “I’ll never play it.” Why do you put it on me, that alone On me, out of all the 37 plays? So, I resisted it for a long time, but when the call did it on the globe, it made me say yes.

, Nine out of ten times I am more interested in the role you think I should not play as a black man than to do Raisin in the sun. Because this is my navigation through it. I want to do Ibsen, I want to do Henry VI, and I want to do Hamlet well. It is not up to you to tell me that I should do Aaron the Moor and Othello.

2. John Douglas Thompson’s first production of Othello faced local setback.
John Douglas Thompson: There was a poster of me embracing Desdemona and it was very challenging in the sense that it seemed like we were two lovers, but it also seemed like we were trying to kill each other. There was a threat to the photo. People from the city ordered us to take the photo off because it was too challenging, a black man and a white woman in that particular attitude.

3. The actors debated if Shakespeare Othello gave enough depth. Holland doesn’t believe.
Holland: When I look at the page myself, I don’t see the inner. The play starts with this beautiful speech and it sets it up as if we are going on that road and then go another way for me.

4. Othello is supposed to be a tragic figure, but often ends a comic one – and there is an explanation why.
Thombson Tongo: I think the structure of this play, unlike any of [Shakespeare’s] Other tragedies are closer to a comedy because the audience knows more than the eponymous hero. This is not true of Hamlet, Macbeth or King Lear. The audience can reject their decisions, but we have the same amount of information as they do, we learn things at the same time what they do. That is absolutely not the structure of this play. And so it puts the actor playing Othello, or at least in a comic position to know much less than the audience.

5. The role, and the play, requires the right director.
John Douglas Thompson: For me, the production works best with a female director. I say that and I stand by it because I think that a female director can understand the situation of the character of Othello and can really understand Othello’s journey and Othello’s story. While I feel, when I worked with male directors, especially white male directors, it is much more likely to really lean in Iago and leave Othello to the actor’s own devices.

, I said, ‘If I’m going to do it, we do it as the greatest love story that never happened. If I’m going to do it in one and a half scenes, which is everything that Othello has with Desdemona before it starts wrong, we must determine how much the two of these people love each other. For if we don’t do that I don’t do Othello And to see bored the last half hour of the play is how long it takes between killing Desdemona and the Friggin play. The only way people stay with you and stay with you is if they know that a great love is destroyed. And the only way you don’t look an idiot is if the line “love doesn’t make sense, but too good”. And happy for me, Ruben [Santiago-Hudson] is a romantic and that’s what he wants to play with. That’s what convinced me to do it.

6. Othello have an ominous legacy full of white actors.
Ayanna Thompson, referring to Holland, Iwuji and Thompson: I don’t think Shakespeare could imagine these actors in the first place. It is a part written for a white actor in racial prosthetics.

, Before Ira Aldridge, all the big white actors Iago wanted to play. And in 1833 Ira played Othello, despite the critics who beat his lips who were too big to form the words. The crowd loved he. From then on, all the big white actors wanted to play Othello. So, I ask myself now, if I don’t play Othello, who the hell will?

7. John Douglas Thompson wants to play the role again. But to navigate the issues of the role, Thompson thinks he will only discuss Othello again in public after He takes it next.
John Douglas Thompson: Given the times we live, this kind of discussion makes me put the role under a microscope that I honestly do not want to undergo. It makes me question everything I want to do with the role that moves forward, and I want to play the role again. I don’t want things to hinder me, I don’t want thoughts to hinder me, I want to enter it for free, open and raw and build a production in the room. I understand the world we live for forces us to think about many other things. I have to think about race. Does this white old Iago get a bigger piece of the pie than me, and why is it happening? Does this director focus on Iago because the director is white, Iago is white and they feel more comfortable dealing with him than with me? Do I have to take the racist aspect of Othello and what anti-swimming mean now? And I have to say, these are incredible obstacles for me. Intellectually, if I think about it, I won’t play the role. Its weight is just too much. To a certain extent, I try to keep it all away because I want to play the role and I do not want to walk into the exercise room with all these thoughts, because then I will be paralyzed. I will not be able to make a move or make a choice … I like to say it, but it will probably be the last time I will talk about the role until I did it again.