Friday morning...

after a "rigorous" Thursday. First: down to the public to participate in the lottery for tickets to Othello. I got one (actually so did most of the people who participated) then a long walk around the east village and soho, until I met the former Friends graduating senior and now my friend Camilo. We found a great coffee house on MacDougal and had a long and interesting talk while having a great cup of cappacino. Other places like that on the street as well---still a kind of mock-bohemian feel to the street. That is where in 1963, summer, I took my first acting classes with Gene Frankel. A long time ago, yet I remember them very vividly. How hungry I was for recognition then! Returned that fall to Hopkins as the President of the theater group there called the Barnstormers, filled with "method" visions. Now it is less then a year to the next reunion for the class of 64. Will anyone remember? Should they?  Well, enough of this, let's move on to Othello at the park last evening.
 It is an amazing play---so powerful, so insightful Why did Shakespeare go all the way with the destructiveness of jealousy,when, in an earlier and a later play, Much Ado About Nothing and the Winger's Tale respectively, he brought back the wronged woman, so that there could be at least some reconciliation.It is a descent into hell. That you can get just from the language. The production, for all of its problems, illustrated the play. The Othello looked a bit young and unwarrior like for the role, but the actor, Chikwuji, always gives one hundred percent and his passion really carried things through. The Desdemona was amazing in her final scenes, the Emilia, albeit with an english accent through most of the play that annoyed me, was very strong in her final confrontation with Othello.
Iago was well played by the skillful Corey Stoll. I think the most interesting scene in the play came just before the first act break---the encounter between Othello and Iago---the two actors played beautifully off each other---the only time in the play where I felt Iago was living through a moment that he was not in control of. Again, amazed by the play's power. Want to read a few scholarly visions of the piece---trying to understand its religious vision and also why is the word "heaven" used so frequently. What does it all mean in terms of the context of the time it was written in?
   When I leave this library I will go to Friends for the final assembly. It begins at 12:30. Important for me to say goodbye for the summer  to the many upper school students that I know. After that.../
Not sure if I can handle a movie today...will report tomorrow.