Othello

At the heart of Keith Hamilton Cobb’s one-man play American Moor are explorations of blackness, racial dynamics in American theater, “ownership” of Shakespeare, and the subtext of Othello. He has performed the play across the United States, including an off-Broadway…

Leah Crocetto (Desdemona) and Russell Thomas (Otello) in WNO’s Otello. Photo by Scott Suchman. I find it fascinating that Verdi’s last two operas were both inspired by Shakespeare: Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), yet they are very different in story,…

Desdemona and Emilia’s friendship inspires resistance and the courage to speak the truth, resulting in Iago’s exposure and Desdemona’s exoneration.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 128 “If, with Shakespeare, we can thrill and tease an audience into embracing unknowing, that is one of the most important gifts that we can give,” says director Iqbal Khan. Khan has directed at Shakespeare’s Globe, in…

Shakespeare characters like Viola and Iago are masters of improvisation, says Folger Director Michael Witmore in this excerpt from the 2017 Shakespeare’s Birthday Lecture.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 76 In 2012, the Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, directed by Tony Award-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter as Brutus. The production was set in a womens’ prison, and would be…

Promptbooks let us peer into the minds of some of history’s greatest theater-makers and see how they imagined Shakespeare’s plays.

Timon of Athens vs. Iago! Actors Ian Merrill Peakes and Louis Butelli discuss these Shakespeare characters, their degree of self-awareness, and their villain status.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 74 Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, takes on the tragedy of Othello in her latest novel, part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. But in a twist, she moves the action to a public…

Read this Q&A with Tracy Chevalier about her new novel New Boy, which retells the story of Shakespeare’s Othello and is the latest book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series.

Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Since their revival by David Garrick in the early eighteenth century, Shakespeare and his plays have always generated a certain aura of celebrity, sometimes referred to as “Bardolatry.” Following in the footsteps…

Paul Robeson was the first modern African American to perform Shakespeare—to perform Othello, and he talks in his letters and in his essays about bringing his experiences as a student in a white arena, his experiences with racism, to the…