Desdemona compellingly "reimagines" Shakespeare's transgressive Othello from the perspective of the "Moor" protagonist's doomed wife - and her spectral African nurse maid, known as Barbary. Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison - whose classic novel Beloved confronted the trauma of the African-American diaspora - has written the text and Malian griot/singer/guitarist Rokia Traore its songs. A very symbolic collaboration.
US theatre director Peter Sellars' production has travelled widely since 2011, its Australian premiere at the Melbourne Festival sold out. It stars actor Tina Benko as Desdemona and Traore as Barbary, with a supporting cast of vocalists and instrumentalists (including kora player) all, unusually, mic-ed.
Desdemona belongs to the same tradition of resistant reading as 1966's Wide Sargasso Sea - in which Jean Rhys told the story of Bertha Mason, Edward Rochester's "mad" first Creole wife, from Jane Eyre, while simultaneously critiquing the urtext. Desdemona, too, is radical fan fiction.
Desdemona explores Othello's themes of otherness, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, privilege, exceptionalism, war and domestic violence just as 'mainstream' feminism is grappling with intersectionality. The downfall of Othello, a brilliant general, is exposed as the consequence of sublimated racism, not Iago's mere jealousy or hateration. The intimate performances are alternately intense and subtle, Benko also uncannily voicing Othello. Ultimately, Desdemona's narratives transcend time and place.
