I’ve got to be honest, I’ve hated the play Othello since a young Black male student came to see me and I saw the negative psychological effect the play had on him. BLACK LIVES MATTER. Props to Shakespeare and all that (Macbeth is my favourite of his) but Othello just does my head in. So when Justine Themen asked me to collaborate with her on a community / professional / scripted / devised project exploring mixed heritage relationships and identities, I remembered my truck with Othello. Shakespeare’s play is still possibly the most enduring representation of a romantic relationship between a Black man and white woman – and it’s a tragedy. Iago, the white guy (with the best lines) who stirs up the whole mess, basically gets off the hook. So, instead of playing it again (as theatres so often do, coining it in for the GCSE / A ‘ Level crowd and all those malleable young minds – boooooooo to you) we decided to create an experiment, an absurdist, anarchic, irreverent, comedic, DIY Coventry community mash up, including elders and youngers, trained and untrained actors, coming together to explore the themes raised by the play from the perspective of the unborn children of Othello and Desdemona. Celebrating Coventry’s City of Culture, inspired by the aforementioned superstar writer from just up the road in Warwickshire, across a 400 year dialogue with the little known Black daughter of Nigerian and Danish parents who also lived locally for a 5 year chapter including a stint with the RSC (me), informed by research interviews with mixed heritage people and people in mixed heritage relationships from across the city of Coventry and directed by Justine Themen, a fantastic practitioner with her own story of being culturally ‘both’, Nothello premieres at Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from 7-21 May 2022. Expect a few laughs, many frowns, tricky questions, uncomfortable reckonings, messy and beautiful theatrical surprises, with music, dance, poetry, classical and contemporary text direct from the home of two-tone served up by a gorgeous crowd of artists who look, sound and smell like our funny little island in all it’s mixed heritageness. Click here to book: https://www.belgrade.co.uk/events/nothello/

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/may/12/nothello-review-clever-and-joyful-shakespeare-upended