This week Woody critiques your hopes and fears, and those of fictional characters.
You can buy tickets for our Othello here.
Hello. I’m writing to you from the past. It’s not as impressive as writing from the future, granted, but given my debilitating fear of physicists it’s as close as I’m going to get. I suppose technically I’m always writing to you from the past, but I’m a bit further back than normal. If all goes to plan when this post goes live I shall be in Edinburgh speaking jokes about my own beard into a microphone at a groups of strangers. I’m telling you this so that, if in the interceding weeks the women of the country throw of the shackles of patriarchal oppression and form their own society like in The Thesmophoriazusae, you won’t wonder why I’m not writing about that instead. It’s because I’m not there. Or rather, I am there but my laptop and blogging tweed are still down here.
If I had one piece of advice to give to Othello and Desdemona it would be don’t trust things called Iago, even the parrots with that name are a bit scheme-y. If I could give them another bit of advice, one that might also be of some use to the rest of you, it would be don’t put all your hopes for happiness on a single outside source, particularly a person. This is not to say that other people won’t make you happy. They can and hopefully will. I myself list good company as one of the greatest joys, and friendship as one of the highest goods. In my interviews with them Rachel and Kate (Othello and Desdemona, respectively) said their characters were ‘intrigued’ by and ‘seek freedom in’ each other. Both grand things on their own, but here’s where my advice comes in. You see if you tie your happiness solely to one thing you’re going to come unstuck. Believing “I’ll be happy if they fall in love with me” or “if I get that job” or “if I get to live there” is a dangerous thing. Either you don’t attain your desired criteria and feel like a failure; or you do attain them and you still feel all the stresses and pains of being human and you start to doubt the quality of what is was you sought: “This job is just as thankless as my last one”; “This address isn’t so exciting”; or, as is the case in this play, “she can’t really love me, she must be cheating.” Your needs are complex and won’t be satisfied by such simple, box-tick cures
Keeping focused on people; if you view one person as a magical panacea, you’re probably over-simplifying them. Don’t do that. You’ll be disappointed. No matter what love ballad plays when you first meet someone (for me it’s Elvis’ Falling in Love With You – that way I can sing it myself if the band I employ to soundtrack my life don’t turn up) they are not perfect. Othello’s a soldier so could quite often forget to use a coaster; and Desdemona, I don’t know, she probably persists in shouting the wrong answers when you’re watching University Challenge, or something. People don’t explode into your life and give you happiness, they help you be happy. I speak from experience. Earlier this year I spent a couple of weeks, and I quote, “being moody”. My best friend was instrumental in my breaking out of that, but it wasn’t unilateral magic. When she announced we were going to play in the rain I could have refused. Instead I put the effort in to open up to it and had a marvellous time. (We splashed and told crap jokes and enjoyed the quizzical looks of the drivers who drove past the giant puddle in which we sat. I’d highly recommend it.) The point is, it was a two-way process and to have the effect it did required the trust of an established, 3-dimensional friendship. These things take time to build. In the play Desdemona and Othello are taking time t get to know each other properly, but they don’t have a chance to build resilience into their trust before it’s shattered by blasts of concentrated Iagocity.
This oversimplification mentioned above also risks putting people on pedestals. Don’t do that either. A pedestal doesn’t give a person any more room than a cage, either way you’re forcing them into your concept of what they should be and not letting them be who they are.
Now, chances are things still wouldn’t end happily for Othello and Desdemona; Shakespeare wrote them as a tragedy and he’s cleverer than I am so it’s probably going to end tragically no matter what advice I offer them. I might be wrong on all of this. Equally, though, you could do worse than giving yourself and those around credit for being wonderfully, confusingly multi-hued and complexly human as they seem. Knowing there’s more to the world than you may be inclined to think will give you a better chance and finding things which help you create joy in yourself. It really is that simple.
One hopes you’re well,
yrs,
ADWoodward
