Scholars at SHU Examine Social Justice in Othello

Themes of misogyny and representation emerge in the problematic classic play

Three nationally respected voices in theatre, race and social justice have been named artists and scholars in residence at Sacred Heart University, extending a two-week theatre residency into a year-long immersion into Shakespeare’s Othello. The group explores the matters of race, class, misogyny, mental illness, intimate partner violence and myriad other issues that plague the current cultural moment.

A scholar and two theatre-makers―Keith Hamilton Cobb, award-winning playwright and actor; Jessica Burr, founding artistic director of the theatre company Blessed Unrest; and David Sterling Brown, a noted Shakespeare scholar and assistant professor of English at Trinity College―are consulting for four workshops during the academic year. Along with SHU faculty, and an ensemble of 10 theatre artists, they provide comprehensive curricular support and resources, as well as mentorship for students. Their residency dovetails with Untitled Othello, a project of the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Communication, Media & the Arts; the departments of languages and literature, Catholic studies and media and performing arts; the theatre arts program and the Multicultural Center. 

Untitled Othello places SHU at the forefront of a national conversation on how the performing arts respond to—and inform audiences about—systemic and structural racism, domestic violence and other issues. It started in fall 2021 with a residency that expanded on Cobb’s work as a playwright, whose well-received American Moor looks at the role of the Black artist in the white theatre hierarchy and fights against dehumanizing stereotypes of race and gender. 

At root, the Untitled Othello Project asks whether Shakespeare’s classic play can be produced to any redeeming social benefit in America today, given the structures of racism and misogyny it perpetuates.  

“As we’ve embarked on this adventure at Sacred Heart,” Cobb said, “what has become quite obvious, and I believe most exciting, to all of us involved is that it offers the University the singular opportunity for their students to watch, study and participate in the most pressing conversations of our time, held by actual working professionals in the vocation that is defined by the ability to metabolize what it means to be human.“ 

The initial residency, led by playwright Cobb, Burr and Emily Bryan, assistant professor of English in the department of languages & literatures, has evolved into a host of initiatives, from two faculty-penned scholarly articles on the experience to workshops and talks at universities across the country and in-depth sessions considering theatre, film, media and English components in the problematic play. 

Scholars are nationally renowned 

Cobb, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, wrote American Moor, which won an Elliot Norton Award, an AUDELCO Award and two IRNE Awards. It is part of the permanent collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. 

Burr has been honored with the 2019 Kennedy Center ACTF Commendation for Distinguished Leadership, first prize at the 2016 Secondo Festival in Switzerland, the 2011 League of Professional Theater Women’s Lucille Lortel Award and New York Innovative Theatre awards, including outstanding production, choreography/movement and the Caffe Cino Fellowship Award. She has directed and choreographed more than 20 productions for Blessed Unrest and was a featured panelist in the 2016 Brave Summit on women leaders, experts and scholars to drive cultural change. 

Of the Untitled Othello Project Burr said, “We are providing a space wherein everyone involved in the process of creation—and that extends to students and educators within the room as well as artists—has a voice and full human autonomy. We embrace the whole person, and not just the parts of them that are convenient to our process. This is an exciting and fruitful opportunity, but also a huge responsibility. People require care.” 

Brown, a 2021-2023 American Council of Leaned Societies/Mellon Scholars and Society fellow, is a Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar whose anti-racist research has been published in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Literature Compass, Radical Teacher, Shakespeare Studies, Hamlet: The State of Play, White People in Shakespeare, Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues. He has two forthcoming book projects under contract with Cambridge University Press, the first of which examines how racial whiteness operates in Shakespearean drama in relationship to the “color line.”  

Residency’s initial purpose 

The initial two-week residency included nine professional actors and many SHU students—along with people viewing from other institutions—completing intensive “table work” on Othello’s characters, scenes, motivations and themes. The lab welcomed critical thinking and let students in on the intricate process of developing a performance, Bryan said. 

The residency spawned Bryan’s fall course “Untitled Shakespeare,” which will be followed this winter by “Women in Othello.”

She credits the lab for developing students’ skills in critical thinking, collaborative interpretation, historical and social consciousness and engagement with fundamental human questions. “One of the exciting things about it is my students have been writing reflections, and this has been such a broadening experience for them,” Bryan said 

While scholars have long studied the racist tropes and stereotypes in Othello’s dialogue and themes, Untitled Othello considers the concept of race in pre-modern literature and ways to view it in modern times. 

“We are at a different place than Shakespeare was,” Bryan said. 

American Moor, which centers on a Black man auditioning for a production of Othello (a circa 1603 tragedy about a Moor driven to murder by a jealous rival) ran at the off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City in fall 2019. Cobb said he’s excited to offer students and faculty a window into what theatre-makers do, how they approach a work and consider ways to make it relevant to a modern audience. 

The Folger Shakespeare Library provided a grant to record the SHU residency in the Folger Archives. The program leverages SHU’s world-class media resources to record and live-stream, in part to classes at the University of Maryland, the College of the Holy Cross and other institutions. 

 The Untitled Othello Project is also supported by Midnight Oil Collective, a Venture Studio that invests in creative-economy-based businesses and assets.

Top: Actors, from left, Josh Tyson, Stephanie Hodge, Kevin Ewert, Terrell Donnell Sledge and Heather Benton work through a scene at the Martire Center. Inset: Jessica Burr and Keith Hamilton Cobb during a readthrough with students observing.