Jason M. Demeter,\u00a0The University of Akron<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In the night of Saturday, July 19, 1964, violence erupted in Harlem in reaction to the shooting of 15-year-old black teenager James Powell by a white, off-duty New York City police officer. What began as a peaceful protest of the incident rapidly escalated into large-scale civil unrest. Earl Coldwell, at the time a young reporter sent to the city to cover the story for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle<\/em>, remembers:<\/span><\/p>\n The rioting in Harlem came in furious bursts. Rocks and bottles sailed from tenement roofs. Molotov cocktails exploded on streets littered with broken glass. Cops fired salvo after salvo into smoky, pitch-black skies. Police cruisers, sirens wailing, roared in pursuit of hit-and-run looters.<\/span><\/p>\n Crowds lined the streets, sometimes as many as a thousand people, all of them black and screaming, jeering, ducking, dodging and \u2013 when turned on by riot-weary cops \u2013 scrambling and running.<\/span><\/p>\n The following day, the New York Times<\/em> reported that \u201cThousands of rioting Negroes raced through the center of Harlem last night and early today, shouting at policemen and white people, pulling fire alarms, breaking windows and looting stores\u201d (Montgomery 1). The upheaval would continue on a smaller scale for the next two nights, resulting in hundreds of injuries and arrests and at least one death.<\/span><\/p>\n Although riots had occurred in the district on at least two previous occasions in the twentieth century, once in 1935 and again in 1943, the coverage of the 1964 incident by the Times<\/em> was markedly washed in the anxieties of what would come to be known as the civil rights era. James W. Silver, in an article for The New York Times Magazine<\/em> on the legacy of racism in Mississippi, noted an air of reluctant inevitability regarding racial desegregation. \u201cHe knows,\u201d writes Silver of the southern segregationist, \u201cthat the time is fast running out when the country will longer tolerate this\u201d (8). Headlines from the paper on July 20, the next day, further underscore the degree to which the issue of race was a part of Manhattan\u2019s collective consciousness during that summer; \u201cJohnson Decries Terrorist Foes of Negro Rights\u201d (1), \u201cColorado Democrats Urge Segregated-Delegation Ban\u201d (52), and \u201cRace Tranquility Won in Savannah\u201d (51) were some of many racially themed stories published alongside accounts of the riots.<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to the sheer number and frequency of news stories explicitly concerned with race in July of 1964, of greater significance was the increasing rhetorical stridency, even militancy, on the part of those agitating for African American civil rights. During a speech in reaction to the riots delivered to a crowd of over 500 people, Jesse Gray, the leader of the Harlem rent strike, called for \u201c\u2018100 skilled black revolutionaries who are ready to die\u2019 to correct what he called \u2018the police brutality situation in Harlem\u2019\u201d (Griffin 16).1<\/sup> Gray\u2019s statement was greeted with enthusiastic applause. Chris Sprowal, leader of the civil rights organization CORE, proclaimed \u201cIt is time to let \u2018the man\u2019 . . . know that if he does something to us we are going to do something back\u201d (Apple 16). Charles Sanders, also of CORE, went further in his outrage, claiming that \u201c45 per cent of cops in New York are neurotic murderers\u201d (16). While race relations in New York had commonly been informed by various shades of physical and rhetorical violence, the civil unrest in Harlem, which would act as a harbinger of later riots in Newark, Detroit, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, emphasized the urgency of the city\u2019s escalating civil rights crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n It was into this tumultuous setting that two racially charged stage productions opened in New York City; both of which, while strikingly dissimilar in their origins, confronted directly the issues of black masculinity, violence, and the sexual components of racism. Both productions would engage in conspicuously parallel explorations of the institutional victimization of black males while effectively embodying the violence that occurred that summer on the streets of Upper Manhattan. Gladys Vaughn\u2019s 1964 staging of Shakespeare\u2019s Othello<\/em> for the New York<\/span><\/p>\n Shakespeare Festival in Central Park and Amiri Baraka\u2019s Dutchman<\/em>, published and performed for the first time in May of the same year, examine problems of racial identity and blackness with conspicuously analogous approaches.2<\/sup> Despite that Othello<\/em> first appeared close to 350 years before Baraka conceived of Dutchman<\/em>, both plays deal, in unflinching manners, with matters of frank and violent sexuality through the lens of racial identity.<\/span><\/p>\n Because of the striking similarities in plot between both plays and staging decisions specific to Vaughn\u2019s production of the play for Shakespeare in the Park, her Othello<\/em> yields a production largely in accord with principles outlined by Baraka in his 1964 theatrical manifesto, \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre.\u201d Despite Baraka\u2019s assertion that \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre must teach [white people] their deaths,\u201d Vaughn, herself the white daughter of a Mennonite minister, can be seen to have crafted an Othello<\/em> that was distinctly and unmistakably informed by the same turbulent energy of the civil rights movement that spawned Baraka\u2019s confrontational essay (211). This is not to suggest that Vaughn was familiar with, or consciously employed, Baraka\u2019s revolutionary principles in her directorial decisions. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the racial tensions of contemporaneous Manhattan that gave rise to Baraka\u2019s theatrical aesthetic as described in \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre\u201d and enacted in Dutchman<\/em> were also distinctly perceptible in Vaughn\u2019s Othello<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Baraka\u2019s introduction to a subsequent reprint of the essay in Liberator<\/em>, \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre\u201d was \u201coriginally commissioned by the New York Times<\/em> in December 1964, but was refused, with the statement that the editors could not understand it\u201d (4).<\/span><\/p>\n After then being similarly rejected by The Village Voice, the piece was initially published in Black Dialogue<\/em>. Consequently, though the essay was written for a racially mixed audience, it was initially available only in publications directed at the African American community. Regardless of its intended audience, Baraka\u2019s strident essay was nothing if not a provocative call for an all out aesthetic and ideological mutiny throughout the existing theatrical establishment. \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre should force change; it should be change,\u201d writes Baraka (210). From this opening rhetorical salvo, it becomes clear that the author makes little to no distinction between artistic innovation and the social upheaval of the time. Rather, theatrical and political changes are inexorably intertwined with one another.<\/span><\/p>\n As such, in \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre,\u201d Baraka calls for a mode of theatre that \u201cmust function like an incendiary pencil planted in Curtis Lemay\u2019s cap. So that when the final curtain goes down brains are splattered over the seats and the floor\u201d (212). He imagines a theatre that \u201cwill show victims so that their brothers in the audience will be better able to understand that they are the brothers of victims, and that they themselves are victims if they are blood brothers\u201d (213). Earlier in the piece, Baraka tags several of his own early plays as models, writing that<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cClay, in Dutchman<\/em>, Ray in The Toilet<\/em>, Walker in The Slave<\/em>, are all victims. In the Western sense they could be heroes\u201d (211). Thus victimization is shown as an essential characteristic of Baraka\u2019s protagonists, and the essay suggests that to eschew the explicit portrayal of such racial victimization is to deny a social reality.<\/span><\/p>\n Like Baraka\u2019s protagonists, Shakespeare\u2019s text also conflates the roles of victim and hero. Othello\u2019s heroism is remarked upon early in the play by the Duke and his council. As he is once again commissioned into military service by Venetian officials, Othello is said to be both \u201cvaliant\u201d (1.3.49) and \u201cbrave\u201d (1.3.290). He behaves in a manner indicative of supreme confidence and self-possession. In defending his marriage to Desdemona he is honest, direct, and unapologetic, claiming to the court in no uncertain terms that he \u201cwon [Brabanzio\u2019s] daughter\u201d (1.3.93). Yet despite his heroism and renowned martial acumen, Othello is, at his core, a victim. While there is considerable debate regarding the motivations and degree of Iago\u2019s treachery, it is clear that he is a prime architect of Othello\u2019s psychological breakdown.3<\/sup> To be sure, while Shakespeare would go on to explore the theme of irrational and unfounded sexual jealousy and rage with Leontes in The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em>, Othello\u2019s downfall is instigated by his deliberate manipulation and victimization at the hands of another. This is not to absolve Othello from moral culpability \u2013 his rapid, frenzied descent into a perpetrator of domestic violence never fails to horrify \u2013 merely to emphasize that, unlike Leontes, Othello\u2019s internal fire was actively stoked by Iago\u2019s duplicity. In light of his recurrent references to Othello\u2019s status as an outsider, Iago can be seen as the embodiment of his culture\u2019s internalized racism. Notice the way in which Iago, when speaking to others about Othello, refers to him generally as \u201cthe Moor\u201d and thus defines him in almost exclusively racial terms. For Iago, Othello is not seen in his role as a general, a Venetian, or even a man, but as, above all, an \u201cother.\u201d While Iago certainly had personal motives for the manipulation and deceit of Othello, one gets the sense that Othello\u2019s race made Iago all the more\u00a0 incensed by his decision to promote Cassio. In this way, the play serves as the classic Early Modern English portrayal of a black man\u2019s victimization at the hands of a white hegemony. 4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n On July 9, 1964, just ten days before the Harlem riots, Gladys Vaughn\u2019s Othello<\/em> made its debut. Vaughn\u2019s production of the play in particular, when examined in the turbulent context of the civil rights movement in Harlem, encourages a racially conscious reading. Vaughn\u2019s<\/span><\/p>\n production, produced by Joseph Papp and staring James Earl Jones as Othello and Mitchell Ryan as Iago, was met with mixed reviews, ranging from claims that this Othello<\/em> \u201cwould be a credit to the most illustrious companies\u201d (Taubman 29), to assertions that the production was \u201cthe New York Shakespeare Festival\u2019s\u2026second failure\u201d (Newsweek 49). What most critics did<\/em> agree on was that Jones\u2019s portrayal of Othello emphasized the character\u2019s vulnerability. Early in the play, before his crack up, Jones accentuated the character\u2019s naivety by portraying him as earnest and cheery. Much is made of the character\u2019s seeming innocence and propensity for smiles: \u201cThe guilelessness and gentleness of the strong man of action\u2014 are there, but\u2026he laughs and grins too much\u201d (Oliver 95).\u00a0 Another reviewer noted that, \u201cIt is easy to understand, in his smiling, guileless adoration, how complete is his contentment and how vulnerable it can become\u201d (Taubman 29). In a less kind appraisal, Jones is said to have, \u201csmiled vacuously throughout the first part, presumably in order to emphasize his anguished frowns in the second\u201d (Danziger 421).<\/span><\/p>\n There can be seen a general consensus that Jones\u2019 portrayal of Othello, especially before Iago\u2019s manipulations, possessed an innocence that sets this production apart from many previous and contemporary interpretations of the play. Indeed, when compared to another prominent production from the same year, that of John Dexter\u2019s staging which took place at the Old Vic Theatre in London and premiered in May of 1964, it becomes apparent that Vaughn\u2019s was a\u00a0 distinct conception of the character, rooted firmly in the milieu of upper Manhattan in the heart of the civil rights movement. As Ronald Bryden describes Dexter\u2019s Othello, portrayed by Laurence Olivier, it becomes apparent that his realization of the character is the antithesis of that portrayed in Vaughn\u2019s production. Olivier is described as, \u201claughing softly with a private delight\u2026dark, thick-lipped, open [and] laughing\u201d (270).\u00a0 While both productions emphasize the character\u2019s apparent mirth, Olivier\u2019s portrayal of Othello, as described by critics, is characterized by confident glee as if the he is enraptured by his own potent sexuality; the New York Othello, on the other hand, seems to smile in order to emphasize his relative innocence regarding Venetian society\u2019s fundamental racism.<\/span><\/p>\n The differences in Othello\u2019s characterization between the contemporaneous productions of the play are no more apparent than in 1.3, as Othello explains to the senate how he succeeded in wooing Desdemona. Olivier is said to have \u201cdescribed [her] encouragement smiling down on them, easy with sexual confidence\u201d (271). While much attention was given to the grins and facial expressions of the protagonist in both the London and New York productions, critics see power and confidence in Olivier\u2019s portrayal while they see naivety in Jones\u2019s. Consequently, the production for Shakespeare in the Park can be seen to have inscribed a heightened sense of Othello as a persecuted other in contrast to the Old Vic\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cSauntering\u201d Othello, with his \u201cfeet splayed apart [and] hip[s] lounging outward\u201d (270).<\/span><\/p>\n Significantly, Jones recalls that the civil rights implications of Othello<\/em> were not lost on those involved with Vaughn\u2019s 1964 production. \u201cI remember hearing producer Joe Papp say that Othello should be tough and militant. He never said angry<\/em>, but that was the popular concept of the militant black male in the sixties,\u201d writes Jones (158). Papp then, was in favor of an Othello specifically tailored to reflect the societal anger that would manifest on the streets of Harlem just days later. Jones continues: \u201cJoe wanted me to play Othello tough, to meet hostility with hostility.<\/span><\/p>\n The phrase \u2018black rage\u2019 studded so many dialogues then . . . it was a popular concept \u2013 black rage and anger. You certainly heard it political rhetoric then\u201d (158).<\/span><\/p>\n Still, despite Papp\u2019s prescriptions for an Othello that would capitalize on crude stereotypes of an emerging group of young black activists, Vaughn advocated a wholly different approach to the character. \u201cOur director\u201d writes Jones, \u201cfought very hard to keep me from imbuing Othello with contemporary hostility . . . . She kept fighting for me not to hit \u2018whitey\u2019 hard, but to overwhelm him with gentle speech\u201d (158). Reflecting on the production in a 1999 interview, Jones recalls the director conceived of Othello, \u201cnot [as] a Western black man. . . . She envisioned him as the cultured, gentle, graceful leader that historically he would have been\u201d (The Actor\u2019s Art<\/em> 149). Thus Vaughn\u2019s direction sought to avoid any crass oversimplifications that might have reduced Othello to a mere caricature \u2013 to an embodiment of contemporaneous perceptions of black anger rather than the fully-realized, intensely complex character that Shakespeare created. Instead, Vaughn\u2019s production celebrates Othello\u2019s intricacy. By championing a protagonist that had \u201cno need . . . to be defensive or physically threatening,\u201d Vaughn\u2019s conception of Othello is the antithesis of that advocated by Papp (Jones 159). \u201cI found Joe\u2019s argument tempting in those volatile days of the sixties,\u201d remembers Jones. \u201cIt would have exited the contemporary audience of blacks and liberals strutting his stuff up against \u2018whitey.\u2019. . .but I decided to try Gladys\u2019s interpretation\u201d (158).<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, by playing up Othello\u2019s quiet dignity for the first several acts, Jones would effectively underscore the degree to which his Othello was perceived by audiences as an unambiguous victim by the play\u2019s tragic conclusion. Significantly, the unambiguous, unflinching portrayal of the victimization of black men is the essential component of what Baraka would hail as Revolutionary Theatre. From his essay, it is clear that Baraka\u2019s vision of a fully realized theatre of racial confrontation hinges upon the direct depiction of the protagonist as victim. Indeed, like Othello<\/em>, Baraka\u2019s dramatic works of the time also succeed in the portrayal of the direct persecution of his black characters. Dutchman<\/em>, Baraka\u2019s one-act play which premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City on March 24, 1964, just a few months before the Harlem riots, can be seen as an intensive study of black, male victimization in which, by the end of the play, the protagonist, Clay, has been murdered on a New York subway car by Lula, a white woman. The violence of the play\u2019s climax harkens directly back to that of Othello<\/em>.\u00a0 James R. Andreas observes this, noting that \u201cDutchman<\/em> may well represent the ultimate African American revision of Othello\u201d (50). For Andreas, Dutchman effectively updates the seventeenth century play \u201cto reflect more accurately the relationship between the races that has existed throughout Western history\u201d (50). In doing so, argues Andreas, \u201cBaraka is suggesting that the true victim in the biracial sexual struggle is the black male, and he is the partner that is ritually sacrificed\u201d (50).<\/span><\/p>\n The onstage killing appears all the more unpalatable because it was committed with both tacit and active support of the other white riders on the train. Initially, the passengers seem to ignore the altercation between the characters. They are portrayed as stereotypical New Yorkers: hard-edged city dwellers too caught up in their own affairs and desensitized to the seemingly unpalatable actions of others as long as they remain unaffected. Their laissez faire<\/em> attitudes, however, turn out to be an illusion. Immediately following Lula\u2019s brutal stabbing of Clay, as he lies dead and slumped across her knees, she commands the other riders to \u201c[g]et this man off of me . . . .Open the door and throw his body out\u201d (Dutchman<\/em> 36). Naturally, they obey. In this way, Clay is quite literally a victim of a white conspiracy not only to actively oppress, but to systematically murder young black males. It is vital to one\u2019s understanding of the play to note that after Clay\u2019s murder, Lula \u201ctakes out her notebook, and makes a quick scribbling note\u201d (37). Thus the play seems to insinuate that she is casually adding another to her tally of dead black men. As another young black man enters the train and begins a conversation with the murderous Lula, Dutchman<\/em> leaves the audience with the dread implication that the cycle will repeat. As Anna Maria Chupta observes, Lula is \u201c[a] metaphor for America and for death . . . .She will continue to roam the subways because the historical mechanism is there to justify her victimization of black men\u201d (30). Thus Lula, like Iago, acts as the catalyst for violence and, in doing so, becomes the embodiment of her society\u2019s anxieties and hostilities regarding the racial other. Interestingly, Baraka adds a further layer of complexity to his play by positioning Lula as both a white sexual temptress and Clay\u2019s manipulative antagonist. \u201cIn Dutchman<\/em>,\u201d writes Jacquelyn Y. McLendon, \u201cLula is the white liberal pawn of white American patriarchy whose job it is to seduce the, na\u00efve, young, black, middle-class Clay . . . . In the simultaneity of her actions, she plays out the role of both Desdemona and Iago\u201d (123).<\/span><\/p>\n Like Dutchman<\/em>, Vaughn\u2019s Othello also ends with the death of the black male protagonist. Unlike Baraka\u2019s play, in which Clay is murdered as a result of his sexually charged relationship with a white woman, Othello ends with the death of the black protagonist by his own hands.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, the death occurs as a direct result of Othello\u2019s sexual relationship with Desdemona, a white woman. The play makes it clear that their interracial relationship is an unacceptable disruption to Venetian society. When told by Iago that \u201cyour daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs,\u201d Barabanzio is unwilling to believe that Desdemona would become sexually involved with Othello (1.1.118-119). It is significant that Iago initially reveals Othello and Desdemona\u2019s marriage to her father in unambiguously sexual terms. Iago explicitly plays upon Brabanzio\u2019s prejudices and fears of miscegenation by warning \u201cyou\u2019ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you\u2019ll have your nephews neigh to you\u201d (1.1.112-115). Rather than telling Desdemona\u2019s father of the couple\u2019s marriage directly, Iago knows that using explicitly sexual imagery and specifically invoking Brabanzio\u2019s potential biracial decedents would be particularly effective at inciting his anger at Othello.<\/span><\/p>\n Further, while comparable in their respective violent conclusions, what separates the climaxes of both works is the degree of agency given to the plays\u2019 protagonists. While Clay is a victim in the truest and most literal sense of the word, Othello is victimized more subtly as a result of Iago\u2019s mental manipulations. Nevertheless, it can be seen from Othello\u2019s self-possessed demeanor, not to mention the relatively high esteem in which he is held in at the beginning of the play, that his jealous rage was directly incited by Iago\u2019s machinations. While Shakespeare allows for slightly more ambiguity than Baraka regarding the degree of their respective protagonist\u2019s persecution, Othello is unmistakably a victim in some sense. Baraka, given the knowledge of an extra 350 years of historical black oppression, is able, perhaps compelled, to offer a less ambiguous victim. In the heat of the violence of the civil rights era, Clay doesn\u2019t need to be tricked into killing himself. He is simply and directly dispatched by the hegemony of 1960s New York.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether or not Baraka had Othello<\/em> in mind as he wrote Dutchman<\/em> can be debated. Nevertheless, it is easy to see Dutchman<\/em> as a modern retelling of Shakespeare\u2019s classic tragedy. To be sure, Baraka\u2019s The Slave<\/em>, published in the same volume as Dutchman<\/em>, invokes Othello directly. The play\u2019s protagonist, Walker, a forty year old black man in the process of leading a violent revolution across the city, asks his white ex-wife Grace\u2019s new white husband if he remembers \u201cwhen I used to play a second-rate Othello\u2026I was Othello, Grace there was Desdemona\u2026and you were Iago\u201d (57). Thus Baraka uses Shakespeare\u2019s model of an interracial love triangle to establish a literary precedent for his character’s tensions.5<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n Still, it is Baraka\u2019s Dutchman<\/em> that more closely mirrors Shakespeare. Despite the author\u2019s denial of the symbolic implications of his play, with his insistence that, \u201cit is\u2026stupid to think of the Negro boy (in Dutchman<\/em>) as all Negros, even though\u2026most white people do think of black men simply as Negros, and not as individual men\u2026the play is about one white girl and one Negro boy\u201d (187), it is obvious that Baraka is doing more than merely telling a story about two individuals. As Phillip Roth argued in his review of the production in the May 28, 1964 edition of The New York Review of Books<\/em>, \u201cI believe this play is written [for a white audience] \u2014not so that they should be moved to pity or to fear, but to humiliation and self-hatred. For that purpose, nothing but a black innocent and a white devil will do\u201d (13). What is implicit to Roth\u2019s assertion is that, for the audience to be moved to introspection and guilt, it is necessary for them to see both Lula and Clay as emblematic of white and black culture respectively. Indeed, Baraka undermines his own argument against the symbolism in his play, stating that the Revolutionary Theatre \u201cis a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dim-witted fatbellied white guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is there for them to slobber on\u201d (\u201cTheatre\u201d 212). By championing the political implications of his Revolutionary Theatre, he effectively negates his prior assertion that his play is only about one man and one woman, and not intended to be viewed symbolically.<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless of Baraka or Shakespeare\u2019s intentions, the concurrent symbolism of Dutchman<\/em> and Othello<\/em> is often hard to ignore. Both plays encourage the viewer to see their protagonists as emblematic of the racial other. Othello<\/em>, while one of many seventeenth-century plays to treat the issue of race through the portrayal of so-called blackamoors, has transcended its position as mere drama, particularly in the United States. Instead, the play often functions as a cultural touchstone \u2013 a field for directors, actors, and audiences to explore and negotiate the complexities of contemporaneous race relations in America.6<\/sup> Michael Neill makes this point, noting that Othello<\/em> \u201chas rightly come to be identified as a foundational text of modern European racial consciousness \u2013 a play that trades in constructions of human difference at once misleadingly like and confusingly unlike those twentieth-century notions to which they are nevertheless ancestral\u201d (qtd in Daileader 2). To be sure, this difference is clearly delineated in the full title of the play, identifying Othello explicitly as \u201cthe Moor of Venice.\u201d While it is apparent that most of the characters in the play accept <\/em>Othello, likely because of his established military prowess \u2013his utility \u2013 it is obvious that he will never gain full and equal entrance into Venetian society. Othello\u2019s intrinsic otherness is particularly psychically damaging in light of his apparent bravery and indispensability as a \u201cvaliant\u201d general (1.3.50). While many commend Othello\u2019s willingness to risk his life by engaging in military exploits on behalf of the Venetian aristocracy, he remains, at his core, a Moor and an outsider.<\/span><\/p>\n What marks the case of Othello as particularly tragic is that he doesn\u2019t seem to want to believe that he is barred equal access to the hegemony of early modern Venice. This is no more apparent than in third scene of the first act in which Othello earnestly defends his marriage to Desdemona in front of the Duke and his councilors. This public inquisition relies upon Brabantio\u2019s assumption that Othello, because of his otherness, could only obtain the love of the desirable Desdemona by way of \u201c\u2026 spells and medicines\u2026\u201d (1.3.62). Because Desdemona was not \u201c\u2026deficient, blind, or lame of sense \/ Sans witchcraft [she] could not [have married Othello]\u201d (1.3.64-65). Othello is forced into the humiliating position of asserting not only has masculinity, but his humanity, as he is viewed by some as one incapable of successfully wooing a white woman of noble birth without some kind of trickery. The injustice of his situation, particularly in light of his career in the military, seems lost on Othello as he sincerely tells the crowd \u201cHow [he] did thrive in this fair lady\u2019s love\u201d (1.3.125). In his earnest defense of his actions, he does not seem to question why he should have to defend his private decisions in such a public manner.<\/span><\/p>\n Like Othello, Baraka\u2019s Clay also seems to be unaware that, as a young black man, he is also marked as other by those around him. In the first act of the play, Lula teases him in reference to his early life and education:<\/span><\/p>\n LULA. I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger.<\/span> Thus Clay plays the guileless victim as adeptly as Othello, both conforming to Baraka\u2019s compulsion for the Revolutionary Theatre to present victims. The tragic climaxes of both plays are in no small part products of the portrayal of their respective protagonists as victims.\u00a0 Dutchman<\/em> and Vaughn\u2019s Othello<\/em> can both be seen to exemplify an ethos that was particular to the civil rights era. The social climate in New York in 1964 was one of turbulence and social unrest. The same atmosphere that fostered Baraka\u2019s confrontational essay seems to have influenced Vaughn\u2019s vision of Othello. Baraka response to the racial injustice he perceived on the streets on New York taunted and threatened the theatre establishment, asking \u201cWHITE BUISNESSMEN OF THE WORLD, DO YOU WANT TO SEE PEOPLE REALLY DANCING AND SINGING??? ALL OF YOU GO UP TO HARLEM AND GET YOURSELF KILLED,<\/span><\/p>\n THERE WILL DANCING AND SINGING, THEN, FOR REAL\u201d (Jones 213). In this way, Baraka forcefully asserts that contemporary theatre had a responsibility to echo and portray the violence of the Harlem riots on the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n Vaughn, with significantly less venom, managed to be confrontational in her own right. By emphasizing her Othello\u2019s naivety and latter playing up his rage, she avoids Baraka\u2019s indictment of contemporary popular theatre, a theatre that \u201clike the popular white man\u2019s novel shows tired white lives, and the problems of eating white sugar\u201d (213). Instead her protagonist, after succumbing to Iago\u2019s manipulations, exhibits \u201cjealous rages and frothing frenzy [that] have not only size but also emotional credibility\u201d (Taubman 29). By the end of the play, Vaughn\u2019s Othello succumbs to \u201ca final broken-hearted surrender to the blackness of a world where [he] cannot see or trust\u201d (\u201cOrdinary\u201d 49). As the dead bodies of both Othello and Desdemona litter the stage at the end of the play, we are reminded of Baraka\u2019s insistence that, in the Revolutionary Theater \u201cwhen the final curtain goes down brains are splattered over the seats and the floor\u201d (212). Vaughn, living in New York in 1964 during the height of the Civil Rights Era, seemed to, on some level, agree.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Notes<\/span><\/p>\n 1. In November of the previous year, Gray led what became known as the Harlem rent strike in order to protest the living conditions within a fifteen- block section of the city, during which, in addition to withholding rent, \u201cscores of residents took rats, alive and dead, to a hearing in Civil Court to dramatize the infestation of rodents in their apartment buildings\u201d (\u201cJesse Gray\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n 2. At the time of Dutchman\u2019s<\/em> premier and initial publication, the play was credited to LeRoi Jones. In 1967, Jones would change his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Fred West\u2019s \u201cIago the Psychopath\u201d offers a synopsis and discussion of several interesting critical interpretations of Iago\u2019s personality, motivations, and psychology.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. While there exists much debate regarding Othello\u2019s intended and perceived racial identity, Sylvan Barnet argues simply and persuasively that \u201cthe Elizabethans thought of Moors as black\u201d (274). See also Playthell Benjamin\u2019s \u201cDid Shakespeare Intend Othello to be Black? A Mediation on Blacks and the Bard\u201d for a larger discussion of Othello\u2019s race. Additionally, see Mythili Kaul\u2019s \u201cBackground: Black or Tawny? Stage Representations of Othello from 1604 to the Present\u201d for a detailed history of representations of Othello\u2019s race in performance.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. Interestingly, this was not the first instance of Shakespearian intertextuality within Baraka\u2019s work. Farah Jasmine Griffin has noted that, in an essay titled \u201cDark Lady of the Sonnets,\u201d first published in the liner notes to a 1962 Billie Holiday album, Baraka \u201cappropriates the Dark Lady . . . by situating her in a tradition and a social context of black American experience\u201d (314). Baraka would come back to Shakespeare by exploring the racial legacy of Othello<\/em> in his 1996 collection, Funk Lore<\/em>. In the poem, \u201cOthello Jr.\u201d Baraka draws parallels between Shakespeare\u2019s play and OJ Simpson\u2019s 1995 criminal trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Nichole Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Shakespeare\u2019s Titus Andronicus<\/em> (1592) portrays the affair between Aaron, \u201ca Moor\u201d and Tamora \u201cQueen of the Goths.\u201d See Thomas Dekker\u2019s Lust\u2019s Dominion; or the Lascivious Queen<\/em> (1600), John Webster\u2019s White Devil<\/em>(1612), and Thomas Rowley\u2019s All\u2019s Lost by Lust<\/em> (1619-20) for further early modern dramatic depictions of interracial couples.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n Andreas, James R. \u201cOthello\u2019s African American Progeny.\u201d South Atlantic\u00a0<\/em>Review<\/em> 57.4 (1992): 39-57.<\/span><\/p>\n Apple, R.W. \u201cViolence Flares Again in Harlem.\u201d New York Times<\/em> 20 Jul.\u00a01964, late ed.: A1+.<\/span><\/p>\n Baraka, Amiri. \u201cOthello Jr.\u201d Funk Lore<\/em>. Los Angeles.: Littoral, 1996. 88-92.<\/span><\/p>\n Barnet, Sylvan. \u201cOthello on Stage and Screen.\u201d Othello<\/em>. Ed. Alvin Kernan.\u00a0New York: Signet, 1986. 270-86.<\/span><\/p>\n Benjamin, Playthell. \u201cDid Shakespeare Intend Othello to Be Black? A\u00a0Meditation on Blacks and the Bard.\u201d Othello: New Essays by Black\u00a0<\/em>Writers<\/em>. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington, D.C.: Howard UP, 1997.<\/span><\/p>\n Bryden, Ronald. \u201cBryden on Olivier as Othello.\u201d Shakespeare in the\u00a0<\/em>Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism<\/em>. Ed. Stanley Wells. New York:\u00a0Oxford UP, 1997. 270-272.<\/span><\/p>\n Caldwell, Earl. \u201cThe Colony Converges.\u201d The Caldwell Journals. 2007.\u00a0The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. 29\u00a0November 2007\u00a0<http:\/\/www.maynardije.org\/news\/features\/caldwell\/Chapter9\/><\/span><\/p>\n Chupa, Anna Maria. Anne, the White Woman in Contemporary African-<\/em>American Fiction<\/em>. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.<\/span><\/p>\n Danziger, Marlies K. \u201cShakespeare in New York, 1964.\u201d Shakespeare\u00a0<\/em>Quarterly<\/em> 15 (1964): 419-422.<\/span><\/p>\n Daileader, Celia R. Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth<\/em>. Cambridge:\u00a0Cambridge UP, 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n Griffin, Farah Jasmine. \u201cBaraka\u2019s Billie Holiday as a Blues Poet of Black\u00a0Longing.\u201d African American Review<\/em> 37:2\/3 (2003): 313-320.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cJesse Gray, 64, Leader of Harlem Rent Strikes.\u201d New York Times<\/em> 5 April\u00a01998. New York Times Online. December 4, 2007\u00a0<http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/search\/query?srchst=nyt>.<\/span><\/p>\n Jones, James Earl, and Penelope Niven. Voices and Silences<\/em>. New York:\u00a0Scribners, 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n – – – Interview. The Actor\u2019s Art<\/em>. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Richard Allan\u00a0Davidson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 2001. 143-155.<\/span><\/p>\n Jones, LeRoi. Dutchman and the Slave<\/em>. New York: William Morrow and\u00a0Co, 1964.<\/span><\/p>\n – – – \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre.\u201d Home: Social Essays<\/em>. New York:\u00a0William Morrow & Co, 1966. 210-215.<\/span><\/p>\n – – – \u201cThe Revolutionary Theatre.\u201d Liberator<\/em>. July 1965: 4-6.\u00a0Kaul, Mythili. \u201cBackground: Black or Tawny? Stage Representations of\u00a0Othello from 1604 to the Present.\u201d Othello: New Essays by Black\u00a0<\/em>Writers<\/em>. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington D.C.: Howard UP, 1997. 1-19.<\/span><\/p>\n Montgomery, Paul L. and Francis X. Clines. \u201cThousands Riot in Harlem\u00a0Area; Scores are Hurt.\u201d New York Times<\/em> 19 Jul. 1964, late ed.: A1+.<\/span><\/p>\n McLendon, Jacquelyn Y. \u201c\u2018A Round Unvarnished Tale\u2019: (Mis)Reading\u00a0Othello or African American Strategies of Dissent.\u201d\u00a0 Othello: New\u00a0<\/em>Essays by Black Writers<\/em>. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington D.C.:\u00a0Howard UP, 1997. 121-37.<\/span><\/p>\n Oliver, Edith. \u201cDivorce, Moorish Style.\u201d Rev. of Othello<\/em>, dir. Gladys\u00a0Vaughn. Saturday Review<\/em> 1 Aug. 1964: 20.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOrdinary Othello.\u201d Rev. of Othello<\/em>, dir. Gladys Vaughn. Newsweek<\/em> 27 July 1964: 49.<\/span><\/p>\n Roth, Phillip. \u201cDutchman.\u201d Rev. of Dutchman<\/em>. The New York Review<\/em>. 28\u00a0May 1964: 10-13.<\/span><\/p>\n Shakespeare, William. Othello<\/em>. The Norton Shakespeare<\/em>. Ed. Steven\u00a0Greenblatt. New\u00a0 York: Norton, 1997. 2100-2174.<\/span><\/p>\n Silver, James W. \u201cMississippi Must Choose.\u201d The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>Magazine<\/em>. 19 July 1964. 8+.<\/span><\/p>\n Taubman, Howard. Rev. of Othello<\/em>, dir. Gladys Vaughn. New York Times\u00a0<\/em>15 July 1964, late ed.: 29.<\/span><\/p>\n West, Fred. \u201cIago the Psychopath.\u201d South Atlantic Bulletin 43.2 (1978):\u00a027-35.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jason M. Demeter,\u00a0The University of Akron In the night of Saturday, July 19, 1964, violence erupted in Harlem in reaction to the shooting of 15-year-old black teenager James Powell by a white, off-duty New York City police officer. What began as a peaceful protest of the incident rapidly escalated into large-scale civil unrest. Earl Coldwell, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1384,"featured_media":0,"parent":54,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-257","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1062,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/257\/revisions\/1062"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n CLAY. That\u2019s right. (Jones 19).<\/span><\/p>\n