Wednesday’s Acting & Othello, Acts 1-2

Wednesday’s acting class didn’t go so well. It should have been my last day with my lines, but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know—I just didn’t feel funny, or even extraverted enough to try to be funny. And I guess that’s a terrible excuse, but it’s true. The energy levels were down, and Sly just wasn’t as funny. It give me even more of an appreciation for what it is that the acting pros do, because they can’t think of it that way. The character’s not you. Even when your energy is down, your character’s energy is still your characters—if that makes any sense. Anyways, there’s tomorrow.

I have to be honest: When I was in high school, Othello was by far my favorite tragedy, if not favorite play of all. Now, though, I’m just not that into it. Maybe it’s because I’ve read it so many times. Indeed, it’s a play that can be studied as early as middle school and continues to be studied into graduate school, which means I’ve read at least—I don’t even know—four or five times. For some reason, too, I seem to compare it in my head to Titus Andronicus and find it less interesting. I'd certainly rather work with the character or Aaron than Othello, but that's a pretty flawed arguement.

Reading about race and religion in Early Modern England, though, really provided an interesting avenue for me to explore. Namely, in regards to “race” in the period, I am taking with this idea: “Sexuality, as well as color, binds race-thinking and religious imagery in the play…. Christianity’s concerns with purity, sexual purity in particular, are most often located in the female; patriarchal order thus depends on surveillance and control of women” (175).

Certainly the most interesting aspect of Othello, for me, is the connection between English nationhood and virginity. England was so afraid of being dehomoginized, and they projected that fear on to the bodies of white women, even the body of queen--especially the body of the queen. As Elizabeth was impenetrable, England was.

Anyway, without that background knowledge, I find it difficult to get into Othello. Having it, though, I thinking looking at sexuality is so interesting. Othello is always made to be sexually violent: “Even now, now, very now, and old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” (I.i.89-90). It’s almost to say, now, now, very now, your borders are being infiltrated and your homogeneous society is slip, slip, slipping away.