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Othello "without mouths": director's observation of the focus on communication and destruction in William Shakespeare's Othello
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Date
2007-05-01
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Indiana University South Bend
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Abstract
In order to communicate the concept of foil characters that must rely on outside sources and symbolism to communicate, rather than direct interaction. In the production of Othello: Without Mouths, both nights recorded on DVD, that forms the "public intellectual" or creative component of this thesis project, I directed the actors to portray cerebrally motivated characters and relationships. Each actor had to rely on his or her character's--however accurate or faulty--sense of judgment, perception, and intellectual and emotional communication and satisfaction. I required my actors to vicariously experience what their characters feel they experience, based on this production's interpretation of Shakespeare's original text. Each actor was given the task during initial meetings with me to create for his or her character an in-depth history through private journals, shared and private emails with me or various cast members, and lengthy phone and knee-to-knee conversations with other significant interactive characters. With the actors', and therefore their characters', painful personal struggles made public in performance, it was my goal to invite the audience's empathy while feeding the conflict into the tragedy's increasing tension. Since that sense of empathy had to be deeply running through the fabric of the entire production, I required my actors to find some point of commonality with their characters. One of the more difficult steps of character-building for many cast members was the point when they had to explain to me, during one of our character-building sessions, how they could bear to own some of their characters' worst behaviors. While some actors loathed certain aspects of their characters, they still understood what thoughts and fears drove them to be that way. The cast's total, and sometimes painful, immersion into the psyches of the play's characters provided much atmosphere to drive the story of my edited script.
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Thesis (M.Lib.St.) Indiana University South Bend, 2007
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Othello--Criticism and interpretation, Theater--Production and direction--Case studies
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