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Reviewed by:
  • Othello, and: Julius Caesar
  • Kimberly M. Jew
Othello Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia. August 29-December 3, 2006. Directed by Jim Warren. Assistant Directed by Jeremy Fiebig. Costumes by Erin M. West. Music by Paul Fidalgo. Fight choreography by John Paul Scheidler. With René Thornton Jr. (Othello), Sarah Fallon (Desdemona), James Keegan (Iago), Celia Madeoy (Emilia), Jake Hart (Cassio), Susan Heyward (Bianca), Paul Fidalgo (Roderigo), Álvaro Mendoza (Duke), David Loar (Brabantio), and others.
Julius Caesar Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia. March 31-June 16, 2007. Directed by Colleen Kelly. Assistant Directed by Aaron Hochhalter and Becky Kemper. Costumes by Jenny McNee. With Joseph Langham (Caesar), Adam Jonas Segaller (Brutus), Henry Bazemore Jr. (Cassius), Kevin Pierson (Casca), Lillian Wright (Decius), Tyler Moss (Cinna), Chris Johnson (Metellus), Emily Gibson (Trebonius), Jonathon Maccia (Antony), Anna Marie Sell (Calphurnia), Sybille Bruun (Portia), and others.

The American Shakespeare Center (ASC), located in the Shenandoah Valley of Southwest Virginia, is a true repertory theatre, a semi-professional theatre troupe with the mission to produce at least eight Shakespearean and early modern plays in rotation each year. Two additional features distinguish this emerging theatre company and educational center: unique performance conventions and a historic space. First, the ASC seeks to approximate the original performance conventions of Shakespeare's day, including universal lighting, double casting, gender play, a two-hour time frame, minimalist and emblematic design, and contemporary references in costume, language, and music. In a similar vein, the ASC embraces the traditional value of audience participation, breaking down the fourth [End Page 104] wall through direct audience address, audience role-play, and the close proximity of actors and spectators: not only are some audience members seated on the upstage balconies and the sides of the stage floor, but actors often venture into the audience seating areas.

This eclectic and improvisational approach to renaissance performance is positively enhanced by the ASC's Blackfriars Playhouse, a re-creation of Shakespeare's original private theatre complete with bench seating, chandeliers, a thrust stage and a beautifully designed tiring house with a highly functional discovery space. Despite its aesthetically pleasing features however, the five-year-old Blackfriars Playhouse is not a museum space meant to elicit distant admiration. During intermission, concessions are sold on stage while the actors sing for the audience; indeed spectators are allowed, if not encouraged, to eat and drink throughout the performance. The frequent presence of laughing, questioning, and napping children in the audience also helps create a festival atmosphere where theatre becomes an active part of the rhythm and flow of everyday life.

Given the exploratory nature of the ASC, it is not surprising that the troupe's productions vary widely in approach and execution. While the ASC's fall production of Othello in 2006 adopted a more naturalistic performance aesthetic, building slowly in intensity as its action came into focus and form, the spring production of Julius Caesar in 2007 offered a tightly packed experience that highlighted the power of choreography and theatrical effect in dramatizing social phenomena.

Othello may be envisioned as a fist that clenches itself tighter and tighter until it suddenly explodes into violent movement. If Othello is the hand, Iago is the muscle, the sinews that contract the object at will. In the ASC's production of Othello, directed by Jim Warren, the inherent structural tension of the script—as embodied by the obvious differences in race, class, age, gender, and geography—was downplayed in favor of a more contemplative, if not introverted, exploration of the lives on stage. A slower, naturalistic pace was clearly evident from the very beginning of the play; both the street fight and the late-night senate meeting ran at a relatively leisurely pace that suggested a Venice burdened with a heavy sleepiness and weariness to act.

In keeping with a dramatic naturalism that favors truthful introversion over active engagement and clean theatrical form, the characters often appeared focused on their own internal processes, a choice that minimized potential conflict among stage partners. For instance, when the Duke replied to Brabantio, "Your son-in-law is far more fair than...

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