|
 Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and American Literature and Language and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, will present a lecture entitled “Black and White and Read All Over: Othello and Modern Culture.”
Professor Garber is an eminent scholar of literature and the humanities as well as a distinguished public intellectual and shrewd cultural commentator. She is a prizewinning teacher and author of twelve books including Vested Interests, Vice Versa, Symptoms of Culture, Quotation Marks, Sex and Real Estate, and Dog Love. Her four books on Shakespeare include, most recently, Shakespeare After All, awarded the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award by Phi Beta Kappa and chosen by Newsweek as one of 2004's five best nonfiction books.
In “Othello Kabuki Style,” Shozo Sato discussed connections between Shakespeare's western text and Kabuki's eastern and Zen themes. Sato's talk was accompanied by performed scenes from his mesmerizing play, “Kabuki Othello,” which had its world premiere in the fall of 2006.
With training in fine arts, the Japanese tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and classical dance, and recipient of numerous international awards including the First Cultural Achievement Award from the Japan Society of America in 2003, Sato is Professor emeritus of the Art and Design Faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He directed Kabuki Lady Macbeth for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in Spring 2005.
 Nigerian writer, political activist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Wole Soyinka will present a talk entitled “Othello's Dominion, Immigrant Domain.” Soyinka one of the world's most eloquent interpreters of the staggering quality of human endurance.
His plays, novels, poems, essays, and memoirs draw on the astonishing beauty and tragic politics of his native country and on his own experiences of protest, imprisonment, and exile. By turns elegiac, exuberant, satirical, compassionate, witty, and outraged, Soyinka's political intensity and prodigious literary talent have earned him a reputation as the voice and face of African democracy.
Distinguished director, choreographer, and playwright David Bell showed how a single scene from Othello can be performed in strikingly different ways. Bell's work includes productions with the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and with the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., premiers on- and off-Broadway, and Irving Berlin's American Vaudeville at Northwestern. He has earned numerous awards for his work, including a nomination for the Laurence Olivier award.
 This presentation was followed by a panel discussion with Barbara Gaines, founder and director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Gaines serves on the artistic directorate of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London and has received Jeff awards for many of her impressive Chicago performances.
|
