Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief

By Paula Vogel, produced with permission from Dramatists' Play Service

Dougherty Arts Center, Austin, January 2008

The City Theatre, Austin, July 2008

As the wrongly accused and suffering wife of Shakespeare’s tragic Moor, Othello, Desdemona has long been viewed as the “victim of circumstance.”  But as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel demonstrates in her comic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s play—aligning tongue-in-cheek humor while raising serious questions as to the role of women throughout the ages—Desdemona was far from the quivering lady we’ve all come to know. 

Having slept with Othello’s entire encampment, Desdemona revels in her bawdy tales of conquest.  Her foils and rapt listeners are the other integral and re-imagined women of this Shakespeare tragedy: Emilia, Desdemona’s servant and the wife of Iago, and Bianca, now a majestic whore of Cyprus.  The reluctantly loyal Emilia pesters Desdemona about a military promotion for her husband.  Her motive, however, is that he leave her a wealthy widow, preferably sooner than later.  Bianca, now a street-wise, yet painfully naive prostitute, visits Desdemona thinking she is a very good friend and fellow hooker (at least one night a week).  Bianca thinks the worst when she soon discovers that Desdemona knows intimate details of the life of her lover, Cassio.  Though Desdemona has never been intimate with Cassio, her life is soon in danger when her husband, Othello, also suspects her of infidelity.

The show was directed by Bridget Farias and featured Jessica Brooks-Allen as Desdemona, Molly McKee as Bianca, and Rory Roberts as Emilia.

The Austin-American Statesman named it a Top Pick and a Weekend Best Bet.

At the City Theatre's Summer Acts! Play Festival, Molly McKee took home the Best Actress Award.

"Desdemona is a play that faces, with clear and dangerous precision, the various roles that three very different women want to play, are needing to fulfill, or are often forced to pretend.  This is a play about women . . . what we want, what we do not want, and what we need.  Desdemona is the central female in Shakespeare's Othello.  In this modern tale of Desdemona, we see her as more than a struggling ingenue, we see a woman trying to find herself while living on display like a beautiful caged animal in her husband's palace.  Did she really deserve death?" ~Bridget Farias, Director