A production of “An Evening With Desdemona and Emilia” starring Cynthia Nixon, Uzo Uduba, and Heather Lind sparked conversations about the contemporary epidemic of violence against women.
The cast of "Public Forum Drama Club: An Evening With Desdemona and Emilia," at Joe's Pub at The Public on March 16.
Simon Luethi
Some 400 years after Shakespeare conceived a character who kills his wife for believing she's been unfaithful — all over a misplaced handkerchief, mind you — the brutality of intimate partner violence detailed in Othello feels disturbingly contemporary. A 2014 study from a Northwestern Medicine review of research noted that anywhere from 25% to 75% of queer people experience physical, sexual, or psychological harm in their relationships. It was difficult not to think of this statistic while watching an all-female cast perform the play — a tragedy culminating in the murder of not one, but two wives at the hands of their partners.
As part of The Public Theater's Public Forum Drama Club Series, "An Evening With Desdemona and Emilia" brought together exclusively women — including novelist Meg Wolitzer and the actors Cynthia Nixon and Uzo Aduba — to perform certain Othello scenes this past Monday, March 16, for one night only.
Othello's wife, Desdemona, "is the most famous victim of domestic violence in literary history," the show's director, Jeremy McCarter, told BuzzFeed News. He went on to say that Emilia, the wife of Othello's tormentor Iago, is a victim of the same fate. "Their stories got even more timely — horrifically so — last week when the U.N. released a report saying that 1 in 3 women globally have suffered domestic physical violence. That's more than a billion women facing the kind of abuse that Desdemona and Emilia sustained."
To place the play's currents of jealousy and rage into a contemporary context, the performance's stage directions were read by Liz Roberts, chief program officer for Safe Horizon, the largest domestic violence service agency in the U.S. "Of the 100,000 calls a year Safe Horizon receives from the New York," Roberts said. "Many of them sound like Desdemona." Victims of abuse are often accused of being sluts and whores ("strumpet" is Othello's own accusation of choice), and women subjected to those verbal assaults internalize the blame, said Roberts. "They think, If only I loved him better."
Heather Lind, Uzo Aduba, and Meg Wolitzer
Simon Luethi
The few selected scenes for the show, which was staged simply with a line of performers standing before music stands, focused on the dynamics between the sweet and submissive Desdemona, read by Heather Lind, and her quietly defiant attendant, Emilia, read by Cynthia Nixon. Francesca Faridany as Iago, Uzo Aduba as Othello, and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart as Cassio gave nuance to characters infamous for their distinctly male bravado. The women delivered their lines with damning humor and poise as their characters barreled ever closer toward calamity.
The tragedy of Desdemona and Emilia's deaths, spurred by the rage of viciously jealous and controlling husbands, was the primary driver for discussion after the reading's applause-inducing end. As the actors settled down in their chairs with glasses of wine, McCarter, moderating the conversation, dove in: "Did we just hear a feminist play?" he asked.
Nixon had performed the play's most arguably feminist lines ("as a modern woman, we all want speeches like Emilia's," Lind commented). During the reading, Nixon's Emilia referred to men — among many other things — as "all but stomachs, and we [women] all but food. [They] eat us hungrily, and when they are full, they belch us."
Yet, after conceding that there were ways in which the reading could be interpreted through a feminist lens, Nixon ultimately answered McCarter in the negative. "If this was a feminist play, the tragedy wouldn't be that [Othello] killed [Desdemona] because she wasn't true," Nixon said. "The tragedy would be that he killed her."
