Turning A Play Into A Séance

Desdemona is the result of Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars shifting the spotlight of Shakespeare's Othello from the titular role to his wife.

Having played everywhere from Vienna to Berkeley since its 2011 premiere, Tina Benko joined the cast replacing Elizabeth Marvel in the lead role in time for a Paris production - but not before rehearsal in New York.

"Once Peter cast me we had been working in a space in a beautiful museum in New York City and I got off the plane and met the other part of the show - with Rokia and the musicians and the singers - and so to be rehearsing one half of the whole, to spend all that time with Toni's words, and then when I first heard the first strum of guitar of Rokia's music, it... I mean... I lost my mind. It is so beautiful!"

The combination of performance and music and the scale of the show has meant the use of microphones for the cast, but they are so state of the art Benko reasons they allow for a more natural performance. The microphones are so sensitive they pick up on me blinking, I can't eat anything before the show or I think you'll hear my digestive tract!"

The combination of elements is also integral to the aura and mood of the production; Sellars doesn't see Desdemona as a play, preferring to see it as a séance, meditation, or concert piece, where the audience is free to come and go.

The cast, however, don't have quite so much freedom, but have been gifted some wisdom by Sellars: "Peter said this great thing to me and it took me a while to understand it," Benko muses. "He said, 'You have to get on African time, because this shit will not work on New York time!' And there's literally a slowing of the metabolism and of the heart rate. I've never been a part of anything like this, it was something that happened the first day. It's about sitting around the fire telling a story and the Creole tradition."

Reaching this state, however, is no easy task, particularly when the show tours in bursts after months with members of the cast at work on other projects, Benko, for her part, has just finished a play called Informed Consent, which was examines genetic testing, alzheimers, DNA, and is also at work on a play about a mother and her autistic son exploring alternative methods for treatment: "I've been wearing a lot of lab coats basically!" she laughs.

But there is a strange magic in the Desdemona ensemble that holds it together. "This particular piece, we pick it up and we do it and it's always a different experience, and we go away and do our different things, and then we meet up again, it's very special. We won't do this shows for months, or a year, but as soon as we get in a room together, something about the energy of the group, it's unlike anything I've known."