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Desdemona Pascal Victor CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Wednesday, October 26, 2011, 8pm Thursday, October 27, 2011, 8pm Friday, October 28, 2011, 8pm Saturday, October 29, 2011, 8pm Zellerbach Playhouse Desdemona Pascal Victor Written by Toni Morrison Music by Rokia Traoré Directed by Peter Sellars United States Premiere Desdemona was commissioned and is co-produced by Cal Performances; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna; Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York; Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH—spielzeit’europa/Berliner Festspiele; and Barbican, London (with the support of Arts Council London and London 2012 Festival). These performances are made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Deborah and Bob Van Nest and Rockridge Market Hall. Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. CAL PERFORMANCES 5 CAST DIRECTOR’S NOTE his evening is a literary and musical Tcollaboration between Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré, moving across continents, shared histories, imagined “other worlds” and the permanently open-ended poetry of William Shakespeare’s Othello. In Act I, Shakespeare has Othello tell the Venetian Senate that he and Desdemona fell in love as he told her stories—stories of his youth as a child soldier, stories of suffering, reversal, privation, salvation, transformation and hu- man generosity. Stories of “other worlds.” Toni Morrison wanted to write those stories. Late in Act IV, Shakespeare has Desdemona sing her famous “Willow Song.” She learned this song, she tells Emilia, from her nurse, Barbary, who died singing it, of a broken heart. In these few lines, Shakespeare offers a powerful image: in Shakespeare’s England, “Barbary” meant “Africa.” Courageous, loving, independent- minded Desdemona was raised by an African woman, growing up with African stories and Pascal Victor learning African songs. Shakespeare did not know any Africans. Desdemona Today, at the outset of the 21st century, Africa is very present in the world, and our shared worlds CAST have greater proximity and interpenetration than even Shakespeare could have imagined in Toni Morrison author his “Globe.” “Barbary” is one of Shakespeare’s Peter Sellars director powerful and enigmatic “missing women”—he did not write for her, possibly because he could Rokia Traoré composer, Barbary not write for her. Tonight, we meet her, and Tina Benko Desdemona Desdemona meets her again. Four hundred years later, Toni Morrison Mamah Diabaté n’goni and Rokia Traoré can respond to Shakespeare’s Fatim Kouyaté singer Othello, offering some missing pieces and wider Bintou Soumbounou singer perspectives. The women now have the scope to Kadiatou Sangaré singer speak their minds and their hearts, and Africa is Mamadyba Camara kora real, not just imagined. The women speak to us from the other side of the grave, older now, no James F. Ingalls lighting designer longer teenagers. In African traditions, the dead Alexis Giraud sound designer are quite undead and very present, and for them, as Toni Morrison says, the past and the future Diane J. Malecki producer are the same. In a time outside of time that illu- Anne Dechêne production stage manager minates and infuses the present, Des-demon-a confronts her “demons,” reconciling the past Janet Takami assistant stage manager and now, no longer alone, preparing a future. This program is approximately two hours long and will be performed without intermission. Peter Sellars 6 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 7 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES Mr. Sellars. “Desdemona is one example of us be- It is Desdemona’s prior familiarity with this ing partners in commissioning a major new con- African heritage, so Desdemona suggests, that tribution to the repertoire,” Mr. Tarnopolsky allows her to recognize Othello’s own history told me. Relevance has been one of five core val- Of moving accidents by flood and field, ues championed by him since he took the helm Of hair-breadth scapes i’ th’ imminent of Berkeley’s leading arts organization in 2009. deadly breach, “The performing arts,” he emphasized, “really Of being taken by the insolent foe can shine a light on the world around us.” And sold to slavery, of my redemption This project aims to rescue from obscurity thence.... Othello, 1.3.135–38 “Barbary,” the character whose “Willow Song” (adapted by Shakespeare from a popular English Mr. Sellars proposed the collaboration with tune) rises to Desdemona’s memory as a pre- Rokia Traoré, he told me, because the project monition of her imminent death. Up to now, “required a voice of an African woman to speak attentive readers have only known Barbary as as an African woman and to sing as an African Desdemona’s mother’s “maid.” Invented by woman. Rokia was the logical choice because Shakespeare, she is missing from his Italian Rokia is a completely extraordinary figure.” It source, Giraldi Cinthio’s novella Un capitano was important to him as well as to Ms. Morrison moro (“A Moorish Captain”) (1565), which may that Africa no longer be “ventriloquized” by hearken back to an historical incident of murder Shakespeare, nor even by Ms. Morrison, for in Venice in 1508. But scholars have long rec- that matter. In Desdemona, finally, the voice of ognized that Barbary’s name recalls Iago’s de- “Barbary”—Africa—is…African. Pascal Victor scription of Othello as a “Barbary horse”—one Ms. Morrison gives her Barbary a real of several equivocal references to Africa in the African name (Sa’ran, or “joy”) to challenge the Reviving Desdemona and Barbary conversation with Ms. Traoré. Having written text. Mr. Sellars explained to me why this term concept—implicit in the name of “Desdemona” about Ms. Morrison’s relationship to music, mattered to Shakespeare: “Two high diplomats (“misery”)—that culturally assigned identities My mother had a maid call’d Barbary: I was intrigued by this new work combining from the Barbary Coast came to London in fix our doom. Barbary is performed by world She was in love, and he she loved proved mad music with dramatic dialogue. Previously, I in- 1600 to meet with Queen Elizabeth. And it was music sensation Rokia Traoré and Desdemona And did forsake her: she had a song of “Willow,” terviewed Ms. Morrison concerning her opera the first time Londoners saw Africans of high by American actress Tina Benko. Originally An old thing ’twas, but it express’d her fortune, libretto for Margaret Garner (2005), which re- degree, and that was widely commented on in from Mali, Ms. Traoré sings (in her native And she died singing it. That song tonight visits the historic case of a fugitive slave whose the British press at the time. So for Shakespeare Bambara and some French) her own songs Will not go from my mind; I have much to do, untold story she first imagined in her Pulitzer to use the term ‘Barbary’ in 1603 was extremely together with music she revises from the an- But to go hang my head all at one side, Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987). I recently vivid.” In those same years, the Queen sought cient griot tradition in which she is schooled. And sing it like poor Barbary. had the opportunity to talk with two members to banish low-placed “Blackamoors” from her The only exception is a one set of lyrics that Othello, 4.3.26–33 of the team that helped bring her Shakespearean realm, and there was public outcry about the Ms. Morrison penned for her in response to the project to fruition: Peter Sellars and Matías enslavement of British sailors by “Barbary” pi- “Willow Song.” Ms. Traoré accompanies herself lways ready to break new artistic ground, Tarnopolsky, who directs Cal Performances. rates. These anxieties complicated the English on acoustic guitar with her small band of tra- ANobel Laureate Toni Morrison has part- I present a glimpse of those conversations in fascination with various dark-skinned peoples ditional string players (the n’goni and kora) and nered with two like-minded innovators— what follows. known from a popular travel literature, which three backup singers. American theater/opera director Peter Sellars Many crises of modern life find a voice in informed Shakespeare’s play, as Mr. Sellars and Built on the backbone of Ms. Morrison’s in- and African singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré— Desdemona, whether the physical and spiritual I also discussed. cisive script, the piece took shape through the to create Desdemona, a provocative reimagining battering of women, the exploitation of child Mr. Sellars’s colleague, Avery Willis, sug- fluid rapport between the writer and composer, of Othello’s tragic representation of the lega- soldiers, dislocations caused by slavery, hunger gested to Ms. Morrison that, by calling the who share compatible artistic values. The art of cies of gender, race and class domination. The and poverty, or racism’s legacy for interpersonal maid “Barbary,” Shakespeare allows us to imag- both women is ambitious yet also personal and Desdemona project grew out of Mr. Sellars’s distrust and cultural alienation. The relevance ine Barbary as herself African, and her songs to intensely lyrical, as they seek to engage us in the dialogue with Ms. Morrison about Othello—to of such themes together with the promise of Desdemona as a medium transmitting another complex issues that engage them. Mr. Sellars which he initially responded by mounting a new artistic excellence originally led the Director history. The idea that Barbary was not just her called the result a “specifically charged feminine production in Vienna for the Vienna Festival of Cal Performances to commit his support to mother’s maid, but also Desdemona’s own nurse, space.... They create a space in their image that in 2009, and she by developing her script in the project two years ago during a meeting with was the creative seed for the Desdemona project.
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