Buell Hall

TONI MORRISON REWRITES OTHELLO "In this conversation, Jean Howard, a Shakespeare scholar, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a Morrison scholar, and Rebecca Kastleman, a scholar of contemporary drama, discuss Toni Morrison’s radical re- imagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Written in collaboration with musician Rokia Traore, Morrison’s play—whose title, Desdemona, reveals it to be a refraction of Othello—focuses on Desdemona’s imagined relationship with a Black woman who raised her, a character not present in Shakespeare’s script. Together these women make possible not only a new understanding of Othello and his actions, but of the imbrication of race, gender, and white privilege in Shakespeare’s time and in ours. Panelists will discuss not only how Morrison reimaged Shakespeare, but also how Desdemona is in conversation with Morrison’s other work, and how the sonic landscape of this performance piece resonates with other 20th-century postcolonial drama."