Tina Benko and Rokia Traore perform Desdemona. Photo credit: Pascal Victor, courtesy of Oberon Books.
“My mother had a maid called Barbary,
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad
And did forsake her. She had a song of “Willow,”
An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune
And she died singing it. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind. I have much to do
But to go hang my head all at one side
And sing it like poor Barbary.” (Othello, Act IV, scene 3, lines 26-33)
From these few lines of Shakespeare, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, director Peter Sellars, and Malian signer-songwriter Rokia Traore have fashioned a mesmeric performance piece which blends the music of Mali with the haunted words of Desdemona from beyond the grave. Desdemona, which played only two nights at the Barbican, offers a depth to the doomed bride and transforms the story of jealousy into a different kind of tale altogether.
The action in Othello is all over in 48 hours: the young couple elope on a Monday night and by Wednesday night he has killed her. There is little time for reflection. Othello himself has only one soliloquy- and we never gain an insight into the minds of the play’s female characters. Morrison’s play, weaved from Desdemona’s recollection of her mother’s maid, who died of a broken heart, redresses this imbalance. Iago’s malicious, doubting voice is removed completely, and the story is told from the perspective of Desdemona. We join her in the afterlife as she recalls the restrictions of her upbringing, the joy of first love and the bitterness of betrayal.
The women gather on a dark stage, dimly-lit with flickering lights, suggestive of a campfire. Lined up in rows are a range of vessels- glass jars, bottles, silverware: a familiar sight in graveyards from Alabama to Angola: a banquet laid for the spirits. The music of the kora, which sounds like liquid sunlight and the shadowy, mysterious n’goni (both instruments that have been played in Africa since Shakespeare’s time) creates a spellbinding accompaniment to Rokia Traore’s original songs sung in her native Bambara.
Tina Benko as Desdemona, speaks not only as herself, but also gives voice to Othello, Emelia, her mother and others. This gave the eerie effect of all the action being in her head, all these characters being her memories or inventions. In dialog with her own memories and thoughts, she tries to make sense of her short life. “We should have had such honest talk, not fantasy, the evening we wed” is Othello’s post-mortem conclusion.
Her most powerful exchange, however, is with the black maid, Barbary, played by Traore. We can never know whether Shakespeare intended Barbary (which some gloss as an alternate spelling for Barbara, but was also a geographical label for North Africa to the Elizabethans) to be African; indeed the Willow song she sings is actually an old English ballad, not an African song. But allowing for this artistic license brings us to a deeper truth. Madame Brabantio could plausibly have had a black maid in Venice. There were black maids in other Italian-set plays of the time, such as Zanche in John Webster’s White Devil (1611). But it would also have been possible in London: there are records of some 200 Africans living in England during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
But what is most powerful is that after almost two hours of Desdemona’s voices, Barbary finally speaks. And what she says cuts to the heart of the matter. Her name wasn’t Barbary at all – that was just a name the Venetians had given her. Her true, African, name was Sa’ran. She was not Desdemona’s friend in life, but her slave. “But,” she says, “I have thought long and hard about my sorrow. No more ‘willow’. Afterlife is time and with time there is change. My song is new.” And the two women bend their heads together.
This piece of transatlantic theatre, composed between New York City and Mali, deftly rebraids cultural ties that were torn so cruelly by the transatlantic trade in human flesh that cannot help but inform it. The inherited anger and pain is met with a gentle, healing river of peace flowing from Morrison’s beautiful words and Traore’s transcendent music, promoting understanding and “honest talk”.
Peter Sellars and Toni Morrison talk Desdemona:
