With Obama as a new President, it’s a good moment to reexamine and hopefully detox the stereotyped image of the black man menacing the white woman. Othello remains a provocative mirror.
In September 2009 „Othello“ will be shown in New York. More

As we enter the era of President Obama, it is perhaps a good moment to re-examine, re-imagine, and hopefully detox the stereotyped image of the black man menacing the white woman that has been used across the last 400 years to win elections and disproportionately fill prisons. Shakespeare’s play, written around 1603, remains a provocative mirror. An ongoing Middle East war is still a global crisis, a national distraction manipulated for other motives, and, surprisingly, a leadership opportunity for a new generation.

Shakespeare’s vivid universe of deception, ambiguity and seething fiction points to our instant and impulsive digital communications, ill-considered e-mails, and 24-hour news cycles. When Shakespeare stirs this virtual reality cocktail, he reaches into the depths of the unconscious with poetry that touches our insecurities, our sad, grasping fantasies, and secret betrayals of principles and people we love. In this searching, disturbing play, people and nations are destroyed by constant repetition of things that no one ever said or did, and lies are projected so powerfully and consistently that you could almost think that the truth never had a chance. But the half-truths appear to have endless career options.At the end of the day, of course, the truth is the truth, and the lies remain lies against the rising tide of hurricanes, typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and uncontrollable fires devouring the hills. Shakespeare pinpoints and explores our proclivity for turning heaven into hell. But he also insists that we can still see heaven. And touch it.

A brilliant cast includes John Ortiz as Othello, Jessica Chastain as Desdemona, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago.

Peter Sellars