Blessed Unrest to Present NINE MOONS - A Prequel To Shakespeare's Othello
Thirteen performances will be staged from May 30-June 15, 2025, at Theater for the New City.
Blessed Unrest Theatre Company in partnership with The Untitled Othello Project and with support from Sacred Heart University, will present Nine Moons, an original overture to Shakespeare's Othello, written by Keith Hamilton Cobb in collaboration with the devising ensemble.
Artistic Director Jessica Burr directs a cast of four, including Robert Manning, Jr., Sophia Marilyn Nelson, Perri Yaniv, and Aaron Michael Zook. Thirteen performances will be staged from May 30-June 15, 2025, at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue in NYC 10003.
In Nine Moons, the archetypes that Shakespeare gives us of Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Brabantio, gather in our version of Venice to explore the realities of a family full of secrets, powerful friendships, and a story of unknown and ungovernable passion. Nine Moons is a narrative that we all can recognize and be touched by. We transform alongside these people to navigate the depths of our own humanity as we witness January through September in a stifling house of secrets.
“Blessed Unrest and The Untitled Othello Project seek to explore social themes more deeply through a process of creating backstory that turns dimensionless archetypes into dimensionalized characters, representations of humanity into human beings,” states playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb. “What was the spark that caused the fire of Shakespeare's tragedy to begin to burn out of control?”
“The creation of Nine Moons requires that we as theatre-makers bring our unadulterated humanity to the table in order to embody the exquisite, painful, grotesque, inconvenient and alluring renderings of the humans who enact a tragedy that is perhaps not as familiar as it seems,” shares director Jessica Burr. “The ardent narrative that is Nine Moons, however, is not a tragedy. Not yet…”.
Nine Moons emerges from the Untitled Othello Project, a deep and sustained exploration of Shakespeare's text that seeks to center the African-descended hero and provide dimension to all characters that people the world wherein his story unfolds. Through ensemble-based creative practices, the project aims to reveal a plausible black hero's journey that Shakespeare left us both too few and perhaps too many words to illustrate.
Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. Plus, Mondays: June 2 and June 9 at 7:00 p.m. (with Talkbacks). Opening Night: Sunday, June 1 at 3:00 p.m with a reception following. The runtime is approximately 105 minutes, no intermission. General admission tickets are $20. For tickets, visit BlessedUnrest.org. Direct ticketing link: https://our.show/ninemoons.
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