The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Taking the Moor to Hong Kong

12:22 AM

Actually, it is Othello (Cui Xinyu), Desdemona (Li Jing) and Emilia (Liang Xingyi) in Act V, Scene II, of Shakespeare's "Othello, the Moor of Venice," that the new English Language Drama Program of Beijing Foreign Studies University will take to the stage at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in late May, 2007. Yes, we made the Finals of the 3rd annual Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong! All of those seemingly endless 7-day weeks from late October until mid January paid off.

I have long wanted the opportunity to take Laurence Olivier's definitive 1965 'traditional' modern interpretation of Othello to what I believe is its next emotionally, theatrically logical expression; one that is considered heretical by many. In sum, I wanted to take it to a higher level of both enraged lethality and tenderly romantic ambiguity: the polar extremes between pure love and mind-breaking sexual jealousy. In my almost 35-year history with the play, the ubiquitously perceived, absolutely unequivocal murderous resolve of Othello's "It is the cause" invocation in the bed chamber death scene--the thrice deadly climax of what I believe is Shakespeare's greatest play--has never been narratively or emotionally logical to me.

Othello, though giddy in love for the first time in his 50-some years of soldierly life, is not stupid. He does become progressively mentally unbalanced the more he envisions a pornographic nightmare beyond his ken in his mind's green eye--not unlike an ever faster runaway freight train high-balling over five acts--but never stupid. As vulnerable as he is to Iago's machinations to convince him that his teenaged bride is making "the beast with the two backs" under young Cassio--due in parts to Othello's and Desdemona's great disparity in age, class and race--he is still a General, a very good one.

Othello knows he has promoted Cassio over Iago; he understands soldiers' gripes and fancies of revenge against superiors when passed over. Othello also knows it is rumored that he had cuckolded Iago with Emilia some years before; he surely knows that Iago believes the rumor and is perhaps one of the reasons he bypasses the expected, internally logical choice of Iago for the military promotion instead of Cassio.

Othello had to have had doubts. Always. I felt it as an actor, but I was too young to prove it to a director; I recognized it as a writer; I knew it as a director.

"Honest, honest Iago" is so often voiced by Othello and others I have come to think of it as the Bard testing our affection for his admonition that one can "protest too much" to be believed. Entirely, that is; undoubtedly Othello is virtually certain that Desdemona is guilty and must die "else she'll betray more men," but that 'virtually' is by no subconscious or conscious means total. How can it be? From Shakespeare's words we know the soul-altering depth of Othello's love for Desdemona; it is my opinion that Shakespeare also wrote his greatest 'love story' with "Othello." Where else in the canon is sexual love--not lust, not courtly love, not puppy love, not royal love--so completely the plot? Singular. There are no subplots in "Othello"; there is no humor in "Othello," not one line of it. As said, it is a runaway train en route to a horrific crash from beginning to end.

I believe that up to the very last millisecond Othello has hellishly maddening, ping-ponging obsessive urges between murdering Desdemona for her imagined adultery, and saying to hell with it all and making love to her then and there on the "wedding sheets," which have not yet been used for their purpose in the week-old marriage. Consequently, we staged the scene with moments of true romantic tenderness, even two very loving embraces, along with undulating peaks of fury and violence. However, even in the seconds before he finally places the pillow over her face, in our production Othello stops and lets Desdemona pray while he is equivocal one last time.

We even have Othello carry the dead Desdemona in his arms from the white-on-white sanctity of the killing-bed to the apron of the stage and lay her gently on the floor, in effect 'giving her' to the audience while he does his "Now, how dost thou look now" soliloquy. One would think it not logical or seemly to place such a treasure upon the 'ground'; but, because it is Shakespeare, who knew the power of 'direct address' upon an audience, it works. Even more so when Othello soon dies from his self-inflicted wound stretched out along the apron in an extension of the line with Desdemona's body, their faces over-lapping, and their lips almost touching--with Emilia's body extending the line further still, but upstage a pace, adding a richly layered tableau before the stage goes to black.

We took big risks creatively, although staying faithful to the standard MIT script, and period. And we did not lose. In truth, at the moment, I am far more relieved than I am excited at making the finals. I would have had to dig a very deep hole and get into it still shoveling if the DVD of our live performance had not been chosen as one of the 12 finalists.

But I am exceedingly proud of our student actors; they astonished me. As mentioned, I have a long relationship with "Othello"--as a play, not as a piece of literature--and have had occasion to think about it extensively over the years. I had a dream of how I would like to do the show if I ever again got the opportunity. Little did I know I would get that opportunity in China with Chinese student actors performing English--Elizabethan English in iambic pentameter, no less--as a second language!

It takes years for native English speaking actors to learn how to perform Shakespeare; most whom try are never successful at it. These Chinese university students did it in about two-and-a-half months! And they did it in such a way that my spine would tingle even during rehearsals. They were fearless, intuitive and trusting, which allowed us to realize my long goal of staging a different "Othello."

But I have not a clue if we will stage a winning "Othello" in Hong Kong in late May. I know our student actors are polished enough to win it all; but I do not know if my self-indulgent staging convictions are good and true enough to win in Hong Kong, or anywhere else for that matter.

I will keep you informed during the process.

P.S. While a festive week-long trip to Hong Kong is reward aplenty for most Mainland Chinese university students, I failed to mention the award for winning it all in Hong Kong. The three actors of the winning scene receive a trip to London and the full Shakespeare tour this summer; the director gets to tag along.

12:22 AM / Editor / permalink 4 comments

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

If You Are a Thinker, Not Just a Reactionary of Any Stripe, Then You Must Read This

7:30 PM

I don't know about you, but I think a lot about god and religion in all their forms. I read a lot about god and religion, too. I also write a great deal about them, occasionally in these pages; but at length in the books I am currently working on and then some. It comes with being born of strong-willed parents whose lives were too often ripped to the bone by their great division in these matters.

There is reason why so much thought on humankind's essence has been the incubator for the overwhelming majority of its literature, art, philosophy and, yes, science--from cave drawings to black holes to "Underworld." Because it is at the fundamental causal level of why we do so much of what we do so differently from one another, yet also why we very often do it alike in so many ways that it is surprising, and confusing.

Science and Religion? Is the twain meeting? Is it possible? Below is an excerpt from an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine you need to read.

Darwin's God

Stars No. 1207," 1996 by David Stephenson/Julie Saul Gallery
Heavenbound A scientific exploration of how we have come to believe in God.
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism's cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist's personal religious view does not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and surprising this debate has become.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this in "The Descent of Man." "A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies," he wrote, "seems to be universal." According to anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features -- belief in a noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to change the course of human events -- are found in virtually every culture on earth.

This is certainly true in the United States. About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God -- that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from "distant" to "benevolent."

When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success. In many ways, it's an exercise in post-hoc hypothesizing: what would have been the advantage, when the human species first evolved, for an individual who happened to have a mutation that led to, say, a smaller jaw, a bigger forehead, a better thumb? How about certain behavioral traits, like a tendency for risk-taking or for kindness?

Atran saw such questions as a puzzle when applied to religion. So many aspects of religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world. Wouldn't this be a liability in the survival-of-the-fittest competition? To Atran, religious belief requires taking "what is materially false to be true" and "what is materially true to be false." One example of this is the belief that even after someone dies and the body demonstrably disintegrates, that person will still exist, will still be able to laugh and cry, to feel pain and joy. This confusion "does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy," Atran wrote in "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion" in 2002. "Imagine another animal that took injury for health or big for small or fast for slow or dead for alive. It's unlikely that such a species could survive." He began to look for a sideways explanation: if religious belief was not adaptive, perhaps it was associated with something else that was.

The New York Times Magazine

7:30 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Just a thought...

7:25 PM

The first artist created god; the first leader gave him purpose.

"Fear of death is an undercurrent of belief. The spirits of dead ancestors, ghosts, immortal deities, heaven and hell, the everlasting soul: the notion of spiritual existence after death is at the heart of almost every religion. According to some adaptationists, this is part of religion's role, to help humans deal with the grim certainty of death. Believing in God and the afterlife, they say, is how we make sense of the brevity of our time on earth, how we give meaning to this brutish and short existence. Religion can offer solace to the bereaved and comfort to the frightened."

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, The New York Times Magazine

7:25 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Did Ya Hear the One About the Famous Hollywood Screenwriter Who Went Fishing In New Zealand...?

3:04 PM

David Sheffield is so much more than a friend. He is that to be sure; even though in the 40 years we've been friends we've spent barely more than a decade-and-a-half of them in the same city at the same time. But they were great years. There were the years we were theatre majors together at the University of Southern Mississippi in the late 60's and early 70's; and the last decade of the 20th Century when we were together in Los Angeles before I came to China in 2002, with other times in between. In truth, and in short, I cherish David not only as a very special friend; I cherish David as the best story-teller going. Simply put, David Sheffield is the most original wordsmith I know. But enough shop-talk that will only embarrass him and perhaps lose you for not recognizing one of the Billion-Dollar White Boys Behind Eddie Murphy!

David and my fellow life-time Biloxian, Reed Guice--he and his family are Gulf Coast royalty--had a 'Lord of the Rings' New Zealand moment (inside Hollywood allusion) with a pretty awesome pair of indigenous monsters. You see, David loves to fish. I mean, he really loves to fish--anytime and pretty much anywhere, most particularly fly fishing--about as much as he enjoys making folks laugh or think.

The only things I miss about the States besides baseball and real cable TV are family and friends; David is both. (Along with his twin brother Buddy Sheffield, with whom we can almost swap first names and this post would read much the same; mostly only the titles and types of works written & produced by would change. Of course, Buddy is also a world-class builder and carpenter; he designed and built much of the later interior renovations of Bosco's Italian Restaurant in Biloxi--now gone with Katrina. And that reminds me to note that both are passionate and uniquely inspired chefs.)

Below are a few words from David that came with the photograph above--which I assume was taken by Reed, but I can't prove it.

Hello, everyone

Having a fine time fly fishing on the South Island of New Zealand where
I caught a wild brown trout weighing 11 1/4 pounds, a new record on the
Grey River. Two hours later my fishing buddy Reed Guice caught a brown
that weighed 12 3/4 pounds. Both fish released unharmed. Anglers
celebrated with a pint of Monteiths.

Love to all,

David Sheffield