A story's power

I’m eager to see what happens tonight at the first full rehearsal. Tuesday night's read-thru was so alive – Judy, the director, invited the actors to move physically whenever they felt like it – and the play kept catching fire, giving us glimpses of its glory and power. I thought, if just the read-thru is making me feel so much, this production is going to be amazing!

Before the read-thru, Judy spoke about her vision of the play and the setting of this production in the very near future (2015). The designers showed everyone the work they’d been doing over the past months – Tijana’s gorgeous and elegant set model with a gold runway-floor and gold wires, Nancy’s sleek and sexy costumes that pick up the gold of the set and Villa Victoria’s gold-and-purple interior, and GW’s eerie musical themes for Iago and Desdemona. Rob, the violence designer, gave an exciting demo of the modern weapons the actors will be using. Judy told us the action is going to swirl all through the Villa Victoria space, the floor, the balconies, the stairs.

The read-thru gave me such a visceral sense of all these people in the play who are so enclosed inside the bubble of their own stories, and who feel compelled to play their story out. Othello is (among other things) about how powerful a story can be. Othello wins Desdemona with a story. (“My story being done,/ She gave me for my pains a world of kisses . . .”). Iago destroys Othello with a story – a fiction about Desdemona. The characters’ stories about themselves and others, their own belief-systems or world views, are shockingly powerful – WE can see the story might be just a bubble, paper-thin or thinner, that you could put your fist through – but for them, it’s completely impenetrable. They are unable to break through to one another. And I thought, is this what tragedy is? or is this what makes tragedy possible?

Joyce Van Dyke

Dramaturg