"Being Born a Girl"

Toni Morrison's Desdemona

Abstract

Desdemona is a collaboration among writer Toni Morrison, theater director Peter Sellars, and musician Rokia Traoré. Morrison's text, a series of monologues and dialogues spoken by an actress who plays Desdemona and channels various other characters, alternates with songs written and performed by Traoré, a renowned Malian singer and composer. This hybrid narrative of words and music insists upon a radical rereading of Othello as it pushes against aesthetic, generic, and ideological boundaries. Both prequel and sequel to Shakespeare's play, this work expands and re-envisions the story of his tragic heroine by imagining Desdemona's girlhood as well as her afterlife. Desdemona tells us her story from the other side of the grave, the "undiscovered country" Hamlet famously evokes. Morrison's desire to create a more significant role for Desdemona came from her sense that Shakespeare's tragic heroine has been given insufficient attention, particularly in performances, a neglect that can be located in the critical tradition as well. Morrison's reconstruction of Desdemona as a young girl is a rich lyrical narrative in itself, but as a creative appropriation it explicitly positions itself in dialogue with Shakespeare's articulation of Desdemona and with a tradition of critical and performative interpretations of her character.