Rethinking 'Othello' In The Age Of Obama
Director Peter Sellars sets his modern take on the Shakespeare classic in D.C., and says he found inspiration in recent history: Obama's election and inauguration, and the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. "In the age of Obama," Sellars says, "This play needs to yield new meanings."
With Julian Acosta, Gaius Charles, Jessica Chastain, Liza Colon-Zayas, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Leroy McClain and John Ortiz
The Public launches its 2009-2010 season with a bold contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare’s most passionate and spiritually-charged creation. Longtime co-artistic leaders of LAByrinth Theater Company and Public Theater favorites John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman are Othello and Iago, intense and fiery figures in Shakespeare’s globalized contest of deception, ambiguity and overpowering love. Internationally acclaimed director Peter Sellars, renowned for tearing through boundaries with his visionary stagings of the classics, finds in the play a modern resonance that raises a mirror to our own culture’s overwhelming personal and political yearnings. His production charts the new prospects for hope in 21st-century