CAST
Text
TONI MORRISON
Music and Barbary
ROKIA TRAORÉ
Director
PETER SELLARS
Desdemona
TINA BENKO
N’goni
MAMAH DIABATÉ
Vocals
FATIM KOUYATÉ
Vocals
MARIE DEMBELÉ
Kora
TOUMANI KOUYATÉ
Lighting Design
JAMES F. INGALLS
Sound Design
ALEXIS GIRAUD
Sound Engineer
ANTOINE AUDIBERT
Production
Stage Manager
ANNE DECHÊNE
Assistant Stage Manager
PAMELA SALLING
Producer
DIANE J. MALECKI
This performance is approximately two hours
long and will be performed without intermission.
Desdemona was commissioned and co-produced by
Wiener Festwochen, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Cal
Performances, Berkeley California, Lincoln Centre for the
Performing Arts, New York, spielzeit’europa I Berliner
Festspiele, and Barbican, London, Arts Council London and
London 2012 Festival. The premiere performance, directed
by Peter Sellars, took place on 15 May 2011 at the Akzent
Theater in Vienna, Austria.
DESDEMONA
The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare’s
Othello is reimagined by Nobel Prize laureate
Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter
Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director
Peter Sellars.
Morrison’s response to Sellars’ 2009 production
of Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and
music between Desdemona and her African nurse
Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the
female characters, letting them speak and sing in
the fullness of their hearts.
PHOTO Mark Allan
Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words,
music and song about Shakespeare’s doomed
heroine, who speaks from the grave about the
traumas of race, class, gender, war—and the
transformative power of love.
Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic,
central, and disturbing treatments of race in
Western culture into the new realities and
potential outcomes facing a rising generation
of the 21st century.