Desdemona at Sydney Festival
Opening to audiences outside of its summer festival dates for the first time, Sydney Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary year with an October season of the acclaimed contemporary Desdemona.
A re-imagined telling of the Shakespeare classic, Othello, by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, the play is told from Desdemona’s provocative and astonishing view from the grave.
A radical woman of independence, courage and love – Desdemona’s thought-provoking tale with her African nurse, Barbary, is set against a spellbinding theatrical séance, moving from Elizabethan England to the courts of Timbuktu.
Under the direction of Peter Sellars and featuring original music from Rokia Traoré, the play traverses continents and time periods, transporting the audience through music and words for the launch of Australia’s largest and most popular summer festival.
“The launch has always been a bit of an industry event,” explained Lieven Bertels, the 2015 Sydney Festival Director. “I thought for the 40th anniversary, we should come up with something that we could share as a sort of gift for Sydney.”
“We present Shakespeare all the time, but it’s the Festival’s role to revisit repertoire and push boundaries. [This] is a great way to do just that and to look at a work of theatre from a different angle and perspective,” said Bertels. “We’re not copying or repeating what other people are doing… With local artists, we will always enable them to do things that they wouldn’t usually be able to do and for international productions, we go after new artists or new names or an unusual project; and Desdemona is a beautiful example of that.” (ES)
Oct 23-25. Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay. $77-$129. For more details: www.sydneyfestival.org/Desdemona or 1300 856 876
EMILY SHEN
