[Leica] Photographing Othello -- is this a trap? (warning: contains images)

[kyle cassidy on the LUG]

Leica M9, 35mm Summilux

http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/805499.html

So ... how do you do a poster for Othello? There have been posters for Othello for four hundred years. After Curio Theatre asked me to work on this I looked at a lot of them. Most of the contemporary posters for the play feature some aspect of Othello strangling Desdemona (spoilers, it happens) -- lots of hands on throats. And the way I look at it, Othello can either be a play about Othello, or it can be a play about Iago, but it's never a play about Desdemona -- though she always gets a lot of face time on the posters. It worried me going in that I might fall into a visual rut, so I was actually a bit relieved when the scheduling wouldn't allow Desdemona to be there for the shoot (I had to do it late at night). 

I wanted to focus on, two things, one the military aspect and two the part of the play that exists before everything blows up, the very beginning when two warriors return from battle and I imagined going in "what if I was some photographer sent out to do a hero magazine cover for two dudes who just beat the Turkish navy? I wouldn't know the backstory, I wouldn't know that Iago's got all this plotting going on that he's just been passed over for promotion, I'd just be like "stand here and look heroic" and then it's up to the actor (in this case the very capable Brian McCaann, to tell the subtitles of his character through his body language -- so you learn who Iago is through Brian's complex subtitles, and you learn who Othello is by Steve Wright's body language and how he decides what Othello would do and not through me going "alright, let's strangle someone”. 


Kyle