Opera Philadelphia Sounds of Learning Self-Guided Resources
The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre “Venice and Race” http://www.phillyshakespeare.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Venice-and-Race.pdf The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre reimagines Shakespeare’s writing to educate and enhance how the world thinks about these Elizabethan works. For a very long time Venice, the setting of both Shakespear’s Othello and Rossini’s Otello, was a cultural and economic hub. People from all over the world came to travel and live in Venice, making the native European far more familiar with diversity than residents elsewhere in Europe. Still, this familiarity did not mean the white Venetians held no prejudice towards people of other races and religions. These travelers had to accommodate their lives and practices to the standards of Christian Venice– living in specific quarters of the city and bearing mandated markers of their otherness. Further, the Venetians often tokenized the people from Africa and Middle East for this otherness, they viewed their culture and appearance as novelty.
The Hare; Online Journal “Performing Death and Desire in Othello,” Paige Martin Reynolds https://thehareonline.com/article/performing-death-and-desire-othello This Op-ed examines death of Desdemona in Shakespear’s Othello and how, as an actress, the performance of that death is a mirror to the way her character is seen while alive. Reynolds looks to her own experience playing Desdemona, citing her desire to show a woman who is obedient and meek for survival rather than because she is just plainly weak; Nurture, not nature.