This week Woody caught up with Rachel Hawkes and Kate Hunter who play our Othello and Desdemona respectively and pretended he knew how to conduct an interview. Writer/director SJ Brady and pillar of By Jove activities James Walker-Black were also present and occasionally chime in with interesting things.
You can buy tickets to Othello here.
[Note: The following transcript has been tidied up slightly. I thought it better to leave out the the barely articulate rambles I make when my brain is getting into gear. You’re here for the interesting things the actors had to say, not for the under-the-breath meta-conversations I have with myself while thinking.]
Woody: Hello. We are in the Bussey Building for By Jove. An interview for Othello. We’re here with Rachel Hawkes and Kate Hunter, and apparently I think I’m on the radio. (laughter) Good. Hello.
Rachel and Kate: Hi.
Woody: Shall we just leap right in? I assume you both roughly knew Othello before starting this? And you’ve been working on it for a little while now. So, what do you think, as actors, is interesting about your characters? What makes them engaging to sink your teeth in and work on?
Rachel: Well for me, I think just playing a female version of Othello. She’s a powerful woman, she dominates those around her.Playing a black, female, lesbian character in a Shakespeare play is pretty unique. It feels really good, I think, politically and sociologically. She’s very relevant. It’s I think quite significant and important to play a female Othello because of the different elements within society that perhaps she could be discriminated against. But she presents herself as really strong, dominant person within the military, which is unique, so I feel really good about her. It’s a really important role to play and feel really lucky that I get to do it
Kate: Desdemona, she’s very different to Othello, but she’s very real inasmuch as the problem she faces is basically this struggle of becoming her own person, and letting go of her familial ties, and accepting who she is. In terms of both the fact she’s a homosexual and that she perhaps doesn’t have the same beliefs and morals as her parents. That’s a really tough decision. To break away from that. I think that’s really relevant to this generation as well.
Woody: Lovely. And do you think the audience gets the same things out of your characters as you do? I mean, do you think there’s a difference between how you read them because you’ve got to be them and how the audience does?
Kate: Yeah, but then that’s your job as an actor. I mean if the audience don’t get that then we’re really not doing our job properly. Like, the actor has to go into all these little pockets of what it is to be human. Y’know, humans are complicated. We don’t just just feel one thing at a time. We feel a hundred different things, we are a hundred different things. The situations that we’re in, they force us for the strongest and the most appropriate – or sometimes not most appropriate – feelings to come out. As an actor you can only play one thing at a time, but you can feel a hundred, and you just want the audience to receive that.
Woody: Lovely.
Rachel: I think for me it’s just empathy. like with playing a tragic hero; SJ and I have discussed a lot whether Othello is a tragic hero. The assumption for me is that yes he is. He is for me a hero. He has his nobility, his goodness, overall good character. Then he’s got his tragic flaw – jealousy, or insecurity, self-doubt, whatever it is – leads to his downfall. So the female version for me — I respect Othello as a character, but have to try to connect him/her to the audience so they feel a sense of empathy. So that in the end he is the hero, the protagonist, so it’s important for the audience to care about him, about his downfall, or her downfall.
Woody: That’s and interesting thing. You started off with Othello “he is” and then you caught yourself. Has that come up often? You’re very conscious of it?
Rachel: Yeah. She’s become a woman in terms of when I’m acting her, but when I think of her outside of that, in the abstract, then I think of her as a guy.
Kate: Well Rachel and I have been on since the beginning and we’ve had other actors come in — It’s quite a thing to get your head around because the story is so – for us anyway – the story is so ingrained: Othello is a black man. But this time round I’ve always referred to Othello as a woman. But it is a big one to to get your head around, because you can accept it and go “Yeahyeahyeah, I understand” but actually to get it in your head. That’s what we need the audience to do, rather than sit there and question it “But, Othello’s a man!” (laughter)
Woody: it’s easier for an audience, I suppose because you’re acting it, you’re living it so well in front of them, they don’t have that disconnect.
Rachel: And it’s easier because it’s in a modern setting.
Woody: That helps make it more real, yeah. Are you hoping the audience will then have that sort of conceptual thing “Othello’s a man, but that one’s a woman” and have a think after? Would you prefer to have them think “Othello’s a man but that one’s a woman”, or do you want it not to matter?
Rachel: Not to matter, really, yeah. We’re just telling the story in a different context, I think.
Woody: The prejudice is in Shakespeare’s play, in the text, it’s always going to be a play about prejudice among other things. Does swapping things about and making Othello female and a lesbian as well. Does that make a big difference.
Rachel: I think does. I think it swells the prejudice a little bit. I say a little bit because we’ve got the homosexuality being very prevalant in this version and in the original it’s all focused on racial tension. Now it’s all three elements. She’s black, she’s female, and she’s a lesbian. Doing it in this cultural context with a modern day audience. There’s all these elements they can relate to. Also, even if they themselves a’re not black female or gay there’s more of an understanding now of those elements.
Kate: And it’s not – when you say it like that – y’know “Oo! A box! Tick! Tick! Tick!” or “Is this an issues play?” (laughter) No it’s not an “issues play”
Woody: It’s a bloody good tragedy.
Kate: It is what it is. The text has been updated brilliantly by SJ. The main references about Othello being black are from Iago, the one person Othello listens to.
Woody: Same sort of question from the other point of view. Does Othello being female make a difference from our point of view looking at Desdemona?
Kate. No. I mean. It’s still love. It’s love and jealousy and those elements of the play haven’t been changed. Desdemona’s still madly in love with Othello. The change in this version is that Desdemona’s been given a gift. In the original, like a lot of Shakespeare’s females, she’s not got a lot of stage time, so the actor’s got to do a lot of work to get them between scenes. But in our version she’s more dominant in the play, and we SEE she is madly in love with Othello. Othello is a lot of Desdemona’s answers, but she’s also her downfall.
Rachel: Also playing her as a woman it equalises their relationship, because they’re both female.
Kate: We were saying that earlier, actually. They are equal partners in it. They’re so different from and so intrigued by each other.
Rachel: Which is nice.
Woody: You say intrigued. The unfamiliar can be enticing. What is it that attracts them to each other?
Rachel: Well, in the preview there was Brabantio saying Desdemona had been “bewitched” by Othello, manipulated her into loving her. But I think I think Othello’s bewitched by Desdemona’s sense of purity and freedom. Her experience doesn’t seem as tainted as Othello’s. Othello’s had to go through politicised hurdles, her journey’s more corrupted than Desdemona’s freedom and sense of happiness and aloofness from those things. What I think really draws her in is how much Desdemona seeks to appreciate and understand Othello’s experiences and her journey.
Kate: Yeah, that’s it. It’s that they both seek freedom in each other. Othello seeks Desdemona’s purity and untainted eyes, and Desdemona seeks Othello’s wordly knowledge. That’s their middle ground. They’re so intrigued by each other. We have conversations where we understand different things from the conversation we’ve just had and we reflect back on them.
Rachel: I like that phrase “untainted eyes” as opposed to Othello who’s seen it all.
Kate: Yes but she’s not stupid.
Woody: Unaware of her privilege, perhaps. Okay. So we’ve got quite a nice sense of the relationship between the two of you which drives it. I don’t want to reveal too much in case people don’t know how Othello ends.
Rachel: The audience are in for it
Kate: But that is something in itself. When humans are pushed to their edges they can be very animalistic and malicious, and it’s so interesting to watch two women do that. As an audience member you can sometimes cast that aside and say “Well, he’s the man, he’s bigger and stronger”.
Woody: Your phrase “humans are pushed to the animalistic”. Here in this play doing the pushing we’ve got the archetypal Shakespearean villain in Iago. He’s pushing your character, Rachel, so what’s that like?
Rachel: I just love the dynamic between Iago and . Especially how Rick plays him, he’s just so charming. When we’re acting it’s hard not to be charmed. I can almost see what he’s doing, but he gets away with it because he’s just so charming. I’m bewitched by he cool he is. Like we did a scene where he’s telling me how to murder murder and it was this weird kind of chemistry.
SJ: And then he does that to you but we see him act like that to everyone. You think it’s just for you but then he goes and is the same to the next person and the next.
Kate: Iago’s got that thing were it really feels like he’s talking t you.
James: Even with me, the only scene I have with him, he’s horrible to me but I still feel like he’s going to fuck me. You know what I mean?
Rachel: If Othello were male there’s that real archetypal power struggle. As a woman I don’t feel so threatened by him, but I do feel charmed by him. It’s that different dynamic.
Woody: Anything to add on the general Iago-iness – Iagosity, I think?
Rachel:That’s a good phrase.
Woody: Thank you.
Kate:Well Desdemona and Iago don’t really have much contact with each other. Well, he’s weird. He is weird. Desdemona feels very out of place in Cyprus. Desdemona and Othello have come out of their really special place their …
SJ: Honeymoon period.
Kate: Yeah, we’ve come out of that. But so blissfully unaware, with the cracks.
Rachel: They’re getting to know each other. They don’t know each other when they fall in love.
Kate; No, they’re perfect people and then their insecurities seep in as they do in a lot of relationships. But I think Desdemona’s quite cautious of Iago, doesn’t know what to make of him. At the same time she’s Othlleo’s wife and Othello Desdemona 100% respects Othello and her decisions and so –
Woody: Your partner’s best friend.
Kate: Yeah they’ve been friends for years so she will have chats with Iago but I think she’s still cautious, wary of him.
The 2nd part of the interview, where Kate and Rachel talk about how they act and making their characters’ relationship seem real, will be put up as a separate post.
One hopes you’re well,
yrs,
ADWoodward
