L.A. Women’s Shakespeare presents an Othello for the times

by Christopher Cappiello

When Lisa Wolpe, artistic director of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, pitched her idea for a tight, nine-actor production of Othello to the folks at Pasadena’s Theatre@Boston Court last September, she couldn’t have known how perfectly timed the winter 2008 production would be. With the country at war and the race for the Democratic presidential nomination inspiring a nationwide dialogue on issues of race and gender, a play about a black general operating in a white world — with all the characters played by women — has layers of resonance that it wouldn’t have had six months ago.

Wolpe is directing the production as well as taking on the role of Iago, Othello’s lieutenant who gets passed over for promotion and turns his bitterness into vengeful action with tragic consequences.

“I think he’s disenfranchised,” Wolpe says simply, when asked about what some scholars call Iago’s “motiveless malignity.”

“I think that it’s not unlike the 120 veterans a week that are commiting suicide in this country [according to a CBS News report based on 2005 statistics]. You make a life of service and feel unrecognized, and that the support promised to you is not there,” she says.

Iago has a series of delicious soliloquies delivered directly to the audience as he hatches his plot to exact revenge on Othello. “There’s nothing he can do to prove his intelligence and his sense of deserving other than to turn to the audience and say, ‘You see my situation—I have to triumph here. And if I have to do it in a subterranean way, I will,’” Wolpe explains. “And I think that’s interesting, because women do that all the time. They back stab and gossip and they pull each other under water in these subterranean ways that I think occur because they don’t have direct access to power.”

Giving women the opportunity to play Shakespeare’s great male roles—and experience that access to power, and what Wolpe describes as the “direct speech” of men—is something her company has been doing for 15 years. For the title role in Othello, a part that requires extremes of emotion, including homicidal rage, Wolpe taps the considerable talents of Fran Bennett, a veteran of stage, film and television.

“Fran has a commanding authority. She loves language. She has a beautifully developed voice. She has a nobility of spirit, an elegance of mind and a very strong theatrical commitment,” Wolpe says with admiration.

When asked if playing Othello’s jealous rage—inspired, essentially, by a misunderstanding about a handkerchief—is a near impossibility for an actor, Wolpe says, “I think that’s what any advanced actor wants: an impossible task. I think that’s what’s appealing to both of us in approaching these roles.”

As for directing and starring, “It’s exhausting, I’m not going to lie about it,” Wolpe says with a laugh. “I am very fully used right now.” But creating opportunities for herself and her all-female company is what drives her, feeds her and, ultimately, gives her the greatest satisfaction.

“It’s really good to know what you’re passionate about and to have a play that makes your heart feel full. That’s life-affirming for me,” she says. “More than anything else, you want to feel like you’re delivering your gifts to the community. And at this point, after 15 years, we definitely have some loyal fans and some friends and some witnesses to the growth of things. And that’s really cool.”

Othello runs Feb. 23-March 23 at the Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. For more information, visit www.bostoncourt.org.