The Public Theater and LAByrinth Theater Company host a series of conversations tied to Peter Sellar's visionary interpretation of OTHELLO with prominent artists, academics, activists and community leaders to introduce, discuss and contexualize the production. All three discussions will be moderated by Dr. Avery T. Willis, who has collaborated with Peter Sellars as an assistant director and dramaturg since 2006.
OTHELLO runs from September 12 - October 4. For more information about the production and how to get tickets click here.
“OTHELLO is the most famous piece of art in Western culture depicting a black man in a leadership position. In the age of Obama, this play needs to yield new meanings,” said Director Peter Sellars. “These conversations will create a very different listening space for the Shakespearean text and offer an opportunity to deepen the national debate about race and gender.”
September 20
The Divine Desdemona: Women as Pillars of Our Communities
Panelist Anuradha K. Bhagwati is a Marine Corps veteran and Executive Director of Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), a national non-profit human rights organization devoted to meeting the needs of servicewomen and women veterans. Meghan Rhoad is the United States researcher for the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, where her research focuses on violence against women and reproductive health. Robin Morgan is an award-winning writer, feminist leader, political theorist and founder of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute.
September 27
Haply for I Am Black: Reclaiming Othello From Its Controversial Production History
Featuring Stanford University Professor Harry Elam who is author and editor of six books, as well as journals in Israel, Taiwan and Poland and several critical anthologies. Professor Elam is also the outgoing editor of Theatre Journal and on the editorial boards of Atlantic Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Modern Drama. Playwright, screenwriter and novelist Suzan-Lori Parks' plays include include 365 Days/365 Plays, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and The American Play among others. She received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. Ayanna Thompson is a Professor of English at Arizona State University where she is also an affiliate faculty in Women & Gender Studies and Film & Media Studies. Professor Thompson specializes in Renaissance drama and focuses on issues of race and performance. She is the author of two books: Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage, and the editor of two books: Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance.
October 4
Is It Possible?: Othello in the Age of Obama
Panelists in this discussion include Luis Argueta, a documentary filmmaker and critically acclaimed director of The Silence of Neto. Luis Argueta, along with co-producer Vivian Rivas, are in the post-production stage of abUSed - The Postville Raid, the full-length documentary that tells the story of the most brutal, most expensive, and one of the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the history of the United States. Mary Schmidt Campbell has been Dean of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts since 1991 and is also a Professor of Art and Public Policy. Dean Campbell served as chair of the New York State Council on the arts from 2007-2009 and in 2001 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Majora Carter is the founder of Sustainable South Bronx which simultaneously addresses public health, poverty alleviation, and climate change as one of the nation’s pioneers in successful green-collar job training and placement systems. Her work has garnered numerous awards and accolades including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Carmen Peláez is a playwright and actress born in Miami to Cuban parents and is grand-niece to the revered painter, Amelia Peláez and radio star Ernesto Galindo. She continues her family's artistic expression of life's challenges filtered through the Cuban experience in her ferociously comic and moving one-person play, Rum & Coke.
Please note; panelists are subject to change.
