SHAKESPEARE

Synopsis

Video posted to YouTube in 2011. A white male actor sits before a mirror and is blacked up by a male make-up artist; the process is repeated on a white female actor. The two actors are then seated together and the man rejects her embrace. When they leave the make-up artists smiles in a sinister way and shows his hand and arms (which are covered in the black pancake) to the camera. There is a close-up shot of the Arden edition of Othello, Verdi’s Otello is used as a score throughout.

Medium

Video

Recording date

2011

Duration

5 mins

Additional Details

Production type

Other

Plays

Coriolanus; Othello

Keywords

race relations; Othello (character)

Notes

Notes

Accessed 9/2016.

Reviews

Discussed in Stephen O’Neill’s Shakespeare and YouTube: New Media Forms of the Bard (London: Bloomsbury, 2015) p. 140-1, 143 p. O’Neill suggests the make-up artist is the Iago figure.

Related

Name

Theatre on Film and Tape (TOFT)

Email

toft@nypl.org

Web

http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa/theatre-film-and-tape-archive External site opens in new window

Phone

+ 1 (212) 870-1642

Fax

(212) 8701868

Address

Billy Rose Theatre Collection
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York,New York
10023-7498
USA