When: Tuesdays, 1:30 – 3:30 PM | April 11 – May 16
Where: In-Person at Congregational Church of Henniker: Parish Hall
Instructor: Glenn Stuart | Facilitator, Dick Hesse

We will share and discuss three distinct experiences of Othello: a video of the 2015 live stage production by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) directed by Iqbal Kahn and featuring Lucian Msamati as Iago, the first black actor to play this role at the RSC; a 1995 feature film directed by Oliver Parker and featuring Laurence Fishbourne and Kenneth Branagh; and a 2017 novel inspired by the play, Tracy Chevalier’s New Boy, which you may acquire for the course.

Director Michael Bogdanov has observed the following about producing Shakespeare’s plays: “The job of the artist in the theatre is illumination and reconstruction and the endless task of assimilating the objects of the past into the interests of the present, on the understanding that the physical artifact which is the occasion
for such an enterprise will be retained in some place in its original form, so that it is available for anyone else who wishes to make a competitive reconstruction of his own.” We have long since abandoned the notion that somewhere out there lies a definitive version or production of any of Shakespeare’s plays. Each and every production brings a new and unique experience of the play.

Glenn Stuart is is a Professor of Theatre Emeritus at New England College where he taught for 38 years, designed 125 theatre and dance productions, and was founding Director of the Open Door Theatre for which he designed and directed 20 productions including King Lear, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, and The Tempest. He holds an MA in Theater from the
State University of New York, Albany, where he studies with Roger Herzel, Jark Burian, and Judith Barlow.