Shakespeare and Tony Morrison share the scene in "Othello / Desdemona".

ATELIUS / DESDEMON, the latest ISeries product, is the result of something reminiscent of a phone game. It began in 1565 when an Italian writer Cynthia wrote the short story “Un Capitano Moro” (“Mauritanian Captain”). About 1603 William Shakespeare interpreted this story in The tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi came together in 1887 s Othello, his operatic interpretation of Shakespeare’s play. Then in 2011 the deceased prose writer Tony Morrison decided to make its own turn in the tragedy with Desdemonaa response to the story of Shakespeare, which takes place in the afterlife Othellomain characters.

This month ISeries brings Verdi Othello and Morrison Desdemona together in one theatrical experience, ATELIUS / DESDEMONwhich lasts for two evenings—Othello at first, Desdemona on the second. After two nights of previews at the Source Theater the show is scheduled to open on June 4th and 5th. Later this month the production goes to the Baltimore Theater Project.

The multi-stage production will probably be the first for many spectators. This is certainly the first for Timothy Nelsonartistic director of INSeries and director ATELIUS / DESDEMON. He calls such events “epic theater”, comparing it to him Angels in America, Tony KushnerA two-part play that explores being gay and the AIDS crisis in America in the 1980s, or Peter BrookA nine-hour performance The Mahabharata.

“Epic theater is really my dream,” he says. “I don’t believe in theater as entertainment. The theater should not be a place to relax after work. I believe that the theater is a place where you need to invest time, emotions and emotional energy. And thanks to this investment you get money catharsis. You get money from transformation. ”

ATELIUS / DESDEMONThe return on investment should be a valuable rethinking and rethinking of the white Western canon that dominates the theater and opera spaces.

“Nowhere more than opera –maybe also ballet“We are dealing with such a small canon of work that is so problematic,” Nelson says. “This project came up a bit out of a desire to explore whether there is a way to perform Verdi Shakespeare, to perform Othellothat covers its inadequacy as well as its brilliance. These are amazing works, but there is no way to avoid two white people, no matter how brilliant, talking about the experience of blacks.

The Desdemona part of the production comes from the mind of Morrison, who half his life wrote sharp, brilliant novels about Black’s experience. She was moved to write Desdemona after an argument with the theater director Peter Sellars about the artistic merits of Othello. Morrison defended himself Othello, and said it only seems petty because staging often oversimplifies his characters. Eventually, Morrison and Selars collaborated on a brand new theatrical work that explored Othellocharacters in a manner they did not find in the original.

Like any good Shakespearean tragedy, Othello ends in death. Lots of death. Desdemona intelligently occurs in the afterlife. “Once these characters are dead, once they find themselves in the afterlife, they will finally be able to talk about everything they don’t talk about in Othelloall those conversations that are too difficult for us when we are alive, ”Nelson says.

A piece of Morrison revolves around Desdemona, Othellowife, but another character is here to testify to her reflections –Barbarathe maid she mentions in passing Othello. Morrison and Sellars wondered where the maid’s name came from, and realized it was most likely a call to Barbara’s African coast. They concluded that Barbara was Black.

In the original production of 2011 Desdemonathe role of chanteuse Barbara was taken over by a Malian singer-activist Roque Traore, who performed the author’s songs throughout the performance. Barbara plays the soprano in the production of ISeries Claran McFaddenperforming music by Nina Simona.

“We knew we couldn’t speak [Traoré’s] music without her, and her band, and her language, ”says Nelson. “When we thought that other music could speak that way, especially for an American audience that wouldn’t be familiar with Rokia’s music, Nina Simone’s music automatically came up. She has a very similar voice in terms of the fact that she has incredible musical skills, and has a very deep personal relationship with Tony Morrison, and of course she is a major activist. ”

McFadden will be on stage nearby Maribet Diglwho plays Desdemona for both nights ATELIUS / DESDEMON. Diggle, an opera singer, has stepped out of her comfort zone to take on the role Desdemonafor the protagonist there is no singing.

“I hate talking,” Diggle tells me with a laugh through Zoom. “I really hate talking. But I’m forcing myself to get used to it. “

As an opera singer, Desdemona Verdi is a role that Diggle has always dreamed of. But when she got involved in Nelson’s production, she started by studying the lines of Morrison’s play. Approaching the show in that order – Marison, then Shakespeare – added new dimensions to Desdemona, says Diggle.

“I very quickly treated Desdemona as a victim,” she says. “You can fall into the trap – especially musically – of putting her in a very dramatic, fallen female position. And it just takes away from her a lot that she has in general. So it was very nice to look at her from the other side first. “

This order was carried out by the whole company. Nelson delivered Desdemona first back in December and then delivered Othello in March.

“All the dramatic decisions we made in Shakespeare are the motivations of the characters? What are their stories? What is their off-stage relationship? It’s all based on Tony Morrison, ”Nelson said. “So even though Tony Morrison died in 2019, she was our playwright. She taught us Othello».

The modern American novelist, who specializes in stories of Black’s pain and joy, may seem an unlikely teacher for the work of a white English playwright who wrote about 400 years ago. But Morrison and Shakespeare – and Simon and Verdi – are bound together by their brilliance and devotion to their craft, Nelson says.

“There’s something really significant about putting Morrison and Shakespeare on the same shelf in the library and putting Verdi and Nina Simone instead of different musical spaces and saying,‘ Well, it’s pop music, and it’s classics, ’but put them right next to each other, clamped and experienced as one phenomenon ”.