Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona, Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative

The Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen's production of Desdemona (2000) brought several traditional and contemporary Asian performance forms, languages, and mediums together as a response to Shakespeare's Othello. This essay examines this production as an instance of how Asian intercultural Shakespeare performance exposes our investments in Shakespeare and/or Asia as its material, its attractions, and its meta-Þctions. It explores the performativity of failure in cultural exchange and connection in Desdemona, through its presentation of the inauthentic, of performance rituals, and of antitheses that construct Asia in opposition to notions of the beauty of Asian theatres.