INTERVIEW: Keith Hamilton Cobb’s new show provides an overture to ‘Othello’
Photo: Keith Hamilton Cobb is the playwright of the new show Nine Moons, an overture to Shakespeare’s Othello. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Off Off PR with permission.
Keith Hamilton Cobb, the celebrated actor and writer, has explored William Shakespeare’s Othello in a few different projects. His acclaimed play American Moor deals with the challenges of an actor portraying the Bard’s title role, and he also heads The Untitled Othello Project, which is currently in residence at Sacred Heart University.
Now Cobb is set to premiere Nine Moons, which is billed as an “overture” to Othello. Performances begin tonight, May 30, and continue through June 15 at Theater for the New City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Helping Cobb with this particular play is director Jessica Burr and a four-actor ensemble.
In Cobb’s new play, the characters of Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Brabantio gather in Venice to talk about secrets, relationships and passion, according to press notes. The impetus for writing the play is to transform “archetypes” into “dimensional characters,” Cobb stated.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Cobb in order to learn more about the new show. The writer also serves as director of Project Untitled, a company evolving socially just processes of analysis and inquiry at the intersection of humanities education and theater-making, according to his official biography. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
For those looking to take in a performance of Nine Moons, what can they expect?
Nine Moons is a play born of the collaboration of two theater-making organizations, Blessed Unrest Theatre Company, a physical theater company based in New York City, and The Untitled Othello Project, a hybrid educational outreach and theater-making project that began at Sacred Heart University in 2021. What audiences can expect to see is a theater piece that examines four of the main characters (Othello, Desdemona, Brabantio and Cassio) whose interactions spark the flame that burns as Shakespeare’s play, Othello.
Is the piece a commentary on Othello? Does it work as a prequel or sequel?
The piece is not so much a commentary on Othello as it is an exploration of humanity. We wanted to understand what sorts of human circumstances and behaviors would conspire to create the human tragedy of Shakespeare’s play. We call it “An Overture” to Shakespeare’s Othello because it seemed to us more than a prologue or a prelude. It is an intense focus on the recurring human themes that run through the Tragedy of Othello.
You have explored Othello before. What do you find interesting about this Shakespearean play? What do you find problematic about it?
I, as a large African American actor whose training brought me to a love of reading and performing Shakespeare, have had to “explore” Othello since I was 20 years old because when people learned that I was an actor, the first response from any who knew Shakespeare would be, “You’ll make a great Othello!” This, of course, although intended as a compliment, more often is not one, though a discussion of that would not fit within this interview.
I do explore the issue at length in my play American Moor, published by Methuen Drama. What is most interesting to me about the play is, in fact, what is problematic about it. Shakespeare’s Othello is a play that has remained popular to audiences over 400 years, and it remains so to American theater makers and their audiences, despite the fact that it is an extremely flawed piece, rife with unevolved anti-Black ideation, and so is nearly impossible to present as plausible. (Note the most recent Broadway production that broke all box office records despite uniformly negative reviews.). That’s interesting!
What has it been like working with director Jessica Burr?
Jessica Burr is the artistic director of Blessed Unrest Theatre Company. Her company creates physical theater, a form based in bodies and movement. My work is more text-based with sensibilities that tend towards contemporary realism. They are two forms that can augment and enhance one another to great effect, but finding the way to that perfect melding of very diverse disciplines is no easy task. For those of us making theater in New York who are not blessed with Broadway producer dollars and support, there is never enough time and money to collaborate as efficiently or as effectively as we would like. So, it’s an adventure that Jessica and I share. The results of that collaboration — people will need to come judge for themselves.
How has Sacred Heart University supported your work?
Sacred Heart University’s College of Arts and Sciences has provided a multi-year laboratory for our creative ensembles to work with educators and their students across disciplines as we have mined Shakespeare’s play for new depth and contemporary relevance. They have exposed us to their students … in ways that enhance both education and theater-making, and allowed us to evolve a form of equitable collaborative creativity that we do not see anywhere else in either education or American theater.
What’s next for Nine Moons after this New York City engagement?
The work of The Untitled Othello Project is really an open-ended consideration and examination. Nine Moons is the first fruits of that ongoing work that we have stopped to share with audiences at-large. In the spirit of that ongoing work, I would say that Nine Moons is also a work in progress. We will have this moment of communion with our audiences and hopefully return to the laboratory with what we have learned from the experience. We have a nearly completed rendition of Shakespeare’s Othello that we have been crafting for several years at Sacred Heart, and it too is a work waiting to have something more made of it, in the classroom or on the stage. Both the Untitled Othello text and Nine Moons, and the processes of human collaboration that made them, await the next opportunity to bring the public into our perpetual exploration.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Nine Moons, written by Keith Hamilton Cobb, plays May 30 to June 15 at Theater for the New City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
