FEMMEmphis to Present DESDEMONA, A PLAY ABOUT A HANDKERCHIEF
Director Aliza Moran calls Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief "a fun, humorous, and poignant play. I fell in love with the play in college and am so excited to be able to direct it now. Paula Vogel takes three well-known female characters from Shakespeare's Othello (Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca) and breaks their Shakespearean mold by adding depth to their wants, needs, desires, and relationships in this modern language retelling; each character desires to break free from their present circumstances and live lives of their own making."
Having slept with Othello's entire encampment, Desdemona revels in her bawdy tales of conquest. Her foils and rapt listeners are the other integral and re-imagined women of this Shakespeare tragedy: Emilia, Desdemona's servant and the wife of Iago, and Bianca, now a majestic whore of Cyprus.
As the wrongly accused and suffering wife of Shakespeare's tragic Moor, Othello, Desdemona has long been viewed as the "victim of circumstance." But as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel demonstrates in her comic deconstruction of Shakespeare's play-aligning tongue-in-cheek humor while raising serious questions as to the role of women through the ages-Desdemona was far from the quivering naïf we've all come to know. "Vogel remains one of the smartest, most original and engaging playwrights to come along..." -NY Newsday.
Friday, June 8 @ 8PM
Saturday, June 9 @ 8PM
Sunday, June 10 @ 6PM
Friday, June 15 @ 8PM
Saturday, June 16 @ 8PM and 10:30PM
Sunday, June 17 @ 6PM
TheatreSouth
1000 Cooper St
Memphis, TN 38104
TICKETS: $10 at the door or online at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/desdemona-a-play-about-a-handkerchief-tickets-45937092079?aff=efbeventtix
By: Paula Vogel
Directed by: Aliza Moran
Featuring Jillian Barron, Julia Baltz, & Layne Crutsinger
The mission of FEMMEmphis is to champion all women+ by empowering and promoting the female, female-presenting, and gender-queer artistic voices in the Memphis community.
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