A Noise Within Presents Pay What You Can Performance Of OTHELLO On Valentine's Day!

A Noise Within (ANW), California's acclaimed classic repertory theatre, is proud to open its Spring 2019 season this weekend with one of the best-known tragic plays of all time, William Shakespeare's Othello. Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award winner Jessica Kubzansky will direct William Shakespeare's timeless classic, set in the present day, that will examine the consequences of love thwarted. Press opening night of Othello is this Saturday, Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. and runs through April 28.

A special "Pay What You Can" (PWYC) performance will take place on Valentine's Day, this Thursday, Feb. 14 at 7:30 p.m. PWYC tickets go on sale at the box office window the day of the performance, beginning at 2 p.m., and are sold on a cash-only basis based on availability; limit of two tickets per person. There is a suggested price of $10.

There will also be a symposium with Shakespearean scholar Dr. Miranda Johnson-Haddad tomorrow, Feb. 13 at 6:45 p.m. prior to the 7:30 p.m. performance of Othello. Dr. Johnson-Haddad has taught Shakespeare and Renaissance literature at Yale University, Vassar College, Howard University, and UCLA. She is the author of several articles on Shakespeare in performance, and she has reviewed numerous productions for Shakespeare Quarterly and Shakespeare Bulletin.

The Bard's most intimate of family tragedies, Othello is about the terrible force of love and the breakdown of a man who seems to have everything-power, position, and passion-only to find his world decimated by the intense mind games played upon him by his ensign. Prescient in its searing social commentary of prejudice, betrayal, and jealousy, Shakespeare's thunderous drama explores who we trust and the price we pay for choosing wrong.

Director Jessica Kubzansky notes, that "For me, Othello is a story about the terrible power of love when it is thwarted. For all its broader social and political messages, this play is also a small, deeply personal story about two men who have battled together, have had each other's backs, and have been brothers through the wars together. It is not until one feels passed over by the other for some well-deserved recognition that a bitter sense of betrayal leads him down a path that turns devotion to destruction."

She continues, "Othello talks about having loved 'not wisely but too well,' and while it may on the surface appear as though he is talking about his wife, Desdemona, he could just as easily be talking about the man he loved and trusted who, in the end, has profoundly betrayed him."

Kubzansky will transfer the action of this drama to a contemporary political and military setting that is analogous to Renaissance Venice and Cyprus. The production will, however, keep the original and beautiful language of William Shakespeare, illustrating the timelessness of Shakespeare's themes.

"Because the play has never felt more immediate, I set the play in 2019 within the modern military, which reflects our world today, where there are both a multiplicity of ethnicities and many more women in power roles than there might have been in 1603," explains Kubzansky.

Jessica Kubzansky's timely production will speak to audiences today, making the play highly accessible to a global audience and engaging to those who will encounter Othello for the very first time.

Tickets for Othello start at $25 and are available at anoisewithin.org, by phone at 626-356-3121, and at the box office located at 3352 East Foothill Blvd. in Pasadena, Calif.

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