Presentations othello

Group 1 — Rewriting Race (Performance)

Choose one scene (1.3 or 5.2) and compare two performances of Othello: Olivier (1965) vs Fishburne (1995). How does performance redefine the meaning of race in the play? Compare vocal style, physicality, staging. Is race portrayed as essence, stereotype, or construction. Is Othello's portrayal about race as we see it today, or is about exoticism or the stranger?

Group 2 — Marriage, Power, and Sexual Suspicion (Chaucer)

Compare scenes from Othello (3.3 and 5.2) to Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue. Discuss: What's the role of the wife? Property? Sovereign subject? Sexual threat? Focus on “sovereignty” vs. male control and differences between the Wife of Bath and Desdemona and Emilia.

Group 3 — Parody (Upstart Crow)

Watch the episode of the series Upstart Crow about Othello. How does the series transform Othello into comedy — and what does that transformation reveal about how we understand Shakespeare today? Discuss one key scene and compare it to the Shakespeare text.

Download the 📼 episode here and open it with VLC (free, open source) to enable subtitles.

Group 4 — Iago's motives

Compare two performances of Othello and answer: how legible are Iago’s true motives in this production? Iago gives us multiple explanations: professional resentment, sexual jealousy, racial hostility, general delight in manipulation. Yet the text never stabilizes one explanation. What does each production make us believe is the real issue?

1. A smiling villain.
2. The latent homosexual.
3. The devil’s emissary.
4. The playwright (i.e. creator of events and observer, who conducts the outcome).
5. The melodramatic machiavel.

Group 5 — Translation as Rewriting

Compare one key scene (e.g., 3.3 or 5.2) in two Portuguese translations. Choose two key passages and do a close reading comparison. Discuss: does translation domesticate, elevate, or neutralize rhetoric? What is gained and what is lost? Tip: focus on metaphors (e.g., "green-eyed monster")