There have been many theatrical adaptations, reinterpretations, and explorations of Othello over the years, including this legendary Canadian play which premiered 25 years ago.
Listen here:
Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears
Meeting date and time TBC
DM us or contact christine@shakespeareintheruff.com to be kept in the loop. (Don’t have time to read the play but still interested in the conversation? Join us anyway!)
Harlem Duet is available at Queen Books (10% off with the code RUFFREADS), the Toronto Public Library, and as an e-publication.
From the Publisher:
“A rhapsodic blues tragedy…
Harlem Duet is the prelude to Shakespeare’s Othello, and recounts the tale of Othello and his first wife Billie (yes, before Desdemona). Set in contemporary Harlem at the corner of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X boulevards, the play explores the space where race and sex intersect. Malcolm X once suggested that Martin Luther King’s “dream” would turn into a nightmare before it was over. Harlem Duet examines both the dream and the nightmare.
Harlem Duet is Billie’s story.”
Djanet Sears is an award-winning playwright and director and has several acting nominations to her credit for both stage and screen. She is the recipient of the Stratford Festival’s 2004 Timothy Findley Award, as well as Canada’s highest literary honour for dramatic writing: the 1998 Governor General’s Literary Award. She is the playwright and director of the multiple Dora Award winning production of Harlem Duet, which was workshopped at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in NYC, where Djanet was the international artist-in-residence in 1996. Her other honours include: the 1998 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Cultural Industries, and a Phenomenal Woman of the Arts Award. Her most recent work for the stage, The Adventures Of A Black Girl In Search Of God was shortlisted for a 2004 Trillium Book Award and enjoyed a six month run in the fall/winter of 2003/2004 as part of the Mirvish Productions Season. Her other plays include Afrika Solo, Who Killed Katie Ross and Double Trouble. Djanet is the driving force behind the AfriCanadian Playwrights’ Festival, and a founding member of the Obsidian Theatre Company. She is also the editor of Testifyin’: Contemporary African Canadian Drama, Vols. I & II, the first anthologies of plays by playwrights of African descent in Canada. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto.