PICT keeps Othello relevant

“Othello”

Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre

May 20 – June… “Othello”

Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre

May 20 – June 12

Wednesdays through Saturdays — 8 p.m, Saturdays and Sundays — 2 p.m.

Heymann Theatre in Stephen Foster Memorial

$20 for people younger than 25 with valid ID

Pro Arts Tickets 412-394-3353, proartstickets.org

About 400 years after it was written, the Shakespearean play “Othello” was featured in more than 60 theaters throughout the country. This week, it will come to campus in a production put on by Pitt’s Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre.

“Now, I don’t know how that connects with Obama,” said Andrew S. Paul, the play’s director and the co-founder of PICT. “In a lot of ways, I don’t think it does. But it is interesting that the year Obama got elected, there was something like 62 productions of ‘Othello’ in American Theatre magazine. On an average year, there might be 15. People jump to the idea that now we can do a play about race because we have a black president,” Paul said.

The play follows Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian Army, as he falls in love with, and then wisks away, Desdemona. Villian Iago, who works for Othello, hatches a plan to make it look like his own rival, Cassio, is having an affair with Desdemona. After several plot twists and a misplaced handkerchief, four characters die in true Shakespearean fashion.

Paul said Javon Johnson, who plays Othello in the PICT production, captures the title character physically and psychologically.

“[Johnson] has a lithe, panther-like presence. He’s very quick on his feet too, for a big guy. He’s about 6 foot 1, 240 — he’s like a fullback, but [Othello]’s also a beautiful speaker and, for the most part, a very reasonable, rational human being in a way that almost no one else in the play really is,” he said.

Iago’s irrational motives are influenced by more than just race, although Othello’s feeling of “otherness” is an important element in the play, Paul said.

“I think it’s much more about the fact that this guy is not only black, but is also his boss. [Othello] passed him over for a promotion that he really wanted, and the guy that got the job is sort of a pretty boy,” he said.

The pretty boy, Cassio, and Othello’s wife, Desdemona, fall victim to Iago’s plot, even if Iago’s original intention was only to foil Othello.

Ironically, Jay Stratton and Allison McLemore, who play the suspected lovers, are actually married.

Contrary to their current roles, their own lives sometimes read closer to comedy than tragedy. Stratton searched for an engagement ring for McLemore by slipping out to shops secretly with one of her friends.

“I remember thinking that this could be the beginning of a really great play by Shakespeare or a really tedious sitcom,” Stratton said.

The play “Othello” is more dramatic, although it sometimes resembles real life more than TV shows or films do.

“It all seems very plausible in the two and a half hours in the theater, but I think if you take the time to digest this as a sequence of events you’d find it very implausible. But then, if you ever watch these true crime shows like ‘48 Hours,’ it always seems implausible,” Paul said. “This is how murders happen.”

Some of the lesson from “Othello” can be carried over into real life.

“If your best friend comes up to you and says, ‘Hey man, I think maybe your wife is running around,’ it’s never going to be good news. But it can behoove you to not say, ‘Well, then you must be lying to me,’” Stratton said.

“But it could also behoove you to go ask your wife,” McLemore said.

Through her role as Desdemona, McLemore learned “what can be gained from being forthright, from trying your best to look at a circumstance for what it is and keeping your doubtful mind quiet enough to look at a situation for what it is,” she said.

The truth of the situation in “Othello,” of course, is a difficult and tragic one.

“It’s very harrowing experience for the audience and it’s, at times, a very unwatchable play because we don’t want to see it happen,” he said. “That makes it, in a twisted way, equivocally compelling theater.”

Quoting Chicago actor Harry Lennix, Paul said that it’s impossible for a black actor to successfully play the part of Othello because the character is a white man’s fantasy of what it means to be black.

“There’s a lot of truth in that. Clearly Shakespeare wouldn’t have known black people. He may have come across a few in his life, but he wouldn’t have had friends who were black or have had any context for writing a black character that would be in touch with his culture,” Paul said.

Shakespeare scholar Stephanie Thompson spoke about the play at Pitt last year, citing a Peter Sellers production with John Ortiz, a Latino actor in the title role and an Obama look-alike as the Duke. The production was terrible without the race element, Paul said.

Othello faced challenges from the Venetian citizens specifically as a black man.

“They didn’t really think of him as a Christian, even though he probably convert[ed] to marry Desdemona. They considered him a Muslim. There is a strong sense of complete isolation there, and yet he’s in a position of authority in a culture that’s not his own.”