Toni Morrison adds twist to 'Desdemona' PartII..continued...

Toni Morrison adds twist to 'Desdemona': Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning author of "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon," can mount a compelling argument. Sellars, well known for his radical reinterpretations of classic plays and operas, took up the challenge and mounted a production of Shakespeare's tragedy in New York in 2009. The set was full of TV monitors, and much of the action took place in bed. The reviews were harsh. But Morrison was intrigued enough to continue the conversation. And Sellars, once again, was game. The result is an entirely new theatrical work, "Desdemona, " with a script by Morrison, direction by Sellars and music by the Malian composer and singer Rokia Traoré. Cal Performances mounts the U.S. premiere next week at Zellerbach Playhouse. Morrison's text opens with these blunt lines: "My name is Desdemona. The word, Desdemona, means misery. It means ill-fated. It means doomed." The heroine, like the other characters in the piece, is dead.

Oppressed voices ring out in Toni Morrison's 'Desdemona' | The Journal News | LoHud.com | LoHud.com

Oppressed voices ring out in Toni Morrison's 'Desdemona' The Journal News LoHud.com LoHud.com:

Toni Morrison Written by Jenny Barchfield The Associated Press Filed Under Life&Leisure She's but a throwaway mention in Shakespeare's "Othello," a one-line reference buried in Act IV of the dense and dark tale of passion and betrayal. But Barbary — the African nurse who raised Othello's ill-fated wife, Desdemona — is at the very center, the beating heart, of Toni Morrison's bold re-imagining of the tragedy. With "Desdemona," a play that opened earlier this month at the Theatre Nanterre-Amandiers in a Paris suburb before traveling to San Francisco and New York, the Nobel laureate probes the hidden suffering and obscured oppression woven into Shakespeare's tale. Directed by California-born Peter Sellars, "Desdemona" is a dialogue between the title character and Barbary