Communique from Stephanie Shine, Artistic Director, Seattle Shakespeare Company:

“Ain’t War Grand?” We ask you ironically in our marketing for this production of Henry V.

The play itself puts forth the question and brilliantly offers the many facets of a particular war from a variety of its participants. Among my favorite lines regarding War: “I am afear’d, there are few die well, that die in battle: for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument”Williams, IV,i

I have a first cousin I am crazy about.  Timothy McCarthy is 2 years and 2 days older than I am; we grew up celebrating our birthdays together on the day in-between. Timothy is an identical twin, an honest-to-god cowboy from Durango, Colorado: frighteningly handsome, alarmingly witty, and the father of five.  I have idolized him from birth. His phone calls bring me great joy, and we share incredible amounts of laughter.

We have always been close. Our families even lived together for a few years (our moms were sisters) because my Uncle Mac, a career Marine, was fighting in Vietnam.

In March of 2003, I began rehearsal of an all-male The Taming of the Shrew. It was going to be the most exploratory, risky, production of my life to date. I had been looking forward to it for months. Yet the only thing I remember about the first week of rehearsal was that the United States invaded Iraq.

My only son Conor Mac was 12. Timothy’s only son Brandon was 14.  They were too young for war; they were safe.  We were all sure this war would not last long, and Iraq was so very far away.

Seven years have passed; I have continually read in the paper of the sons and daughters from our region who have died in this war. I have wept many mornings over their pictures. I wept for the lost promise of their young lives and the unending pain of other mothers and of fathers.

With each successive year, the gap between Conor’s and Brandon’s ages and the age of the dead soldiers has closed. Now I read of boys dying that are my son’s age, 19.  Then, last year, Timothy’s son, Brandon, enlisted in the Army. The war marches closer and closer to home.

Over New Year’s, Timothy phoned to let me know that Brandon will be deployed to Afghanistan this spring. He will have just turned 21.

One of our boys is now in danger. The war has come home.

I wonder in the next several months, how I will react when I see Timothy’s name on my phone. Will I still welcome his call by breaking into a huge grin and leaping to answer? Or will there be trepidation and even cold fear for what he might have to say? How will any of us sleep soundly knowing Brandon is out there?How will I support this boy I love and his father whom I adore?

What I mourned from a distance is now suffocatingly close. “Ain’t War Grand?”

Perhaps after sharing this play with us you will be answering that question for your self. For me, my thoughts will be with Timothy and Brandon. There is nothing grand about this fear, and I’ll be praying each day as Henry V prays “Not today O Lord, O not today.” – Henry, IV, i

The repetition of that phrase frames this scene that ends of course with Iago’s vow of double knavery against The Moor. I can watch Branagh over and over as Iago or Hamlet. He goes to so many levels, dances and descends, and always seems to be in the moment, reacting to Roderigo as his weaknesses become apparent, as the moment develops, like a true sociopath, always fixated on the objective that is buried deep, protected.

Is Iago’s love as deep as his resentment? What if Iago is not methodically calculating and he is actually confused, struggling with his own desires, making it up as he goes along? I am not what I am – what does that mean? These are some of the questions Philip Seymour Hoffman asks as he approaches Iago in the (sold out) Public Theater production of Othello opening today in New York (see video below). I am reading Othello anew, examining the angles, enjoying the language, watching the videos of Laurence Fishburne, Kenneth Branagh and Irène Jacobs from the 1995 production. How much in the text is not what it seems? 

The seed for this production of Othello was planted a number of years ago over a Princeton lunch table, when novelist Toni Morrison issued Peter Sellars a challenge. To answer this challenge, Sellars has launched a five-year project, of which this production is the first installment. Parallel to it will be the creation of a new play by Toni Morrison entitled Desdemona, which will engage, debate, and complement Shakespeare’s play.

In Morrison’s words, “The only reason Desdemona loves Othello, or so she says, is the stories he told her. She listened to these stories of his, of his travels and his adventures. Where are those stories? We need to hear those stories that are not in the play.”

The artists will return to Othello and Desdemona over several years, developing them in tandem with a view toward ultimately filming each play on location. This will create a body of work that can go into high schools across America, offering penetrating, poetic and insightful language and up-to-date images that address the challenges that lie ahead for a new generation.

Perhaps the 21st-century can respond to Shakespeare’s prescient and painful allegory with new structures and new relationships that reach toward shared understandings of simultaneous global realities, and that might reconcile the cries for justice across the sexes, across class, among nations and across cultures.

See the Public Theater YouTube channel

Barry Edelstein, with New York’s Public Theatre for more than 20 years, talks about his role in bringing Shakespeare to the park, to the stage, to modern audiences, and the history of New York’s passion for the Bard. Do we do Shakespeare better than the Brits? Ah, there’s the rub.