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Abstract
This article tells the story of what happened when a feminist researcher tried to get her play, Othello on Trial, performed in London. A sanitised version of that story can be found elsewhere. This is the warts and all version written to highlight issues arising from the production that are of potential interest to feminist academics thinking about ways of gaining traction for their research outside the academy. For it is an essential part of the story that the politics of production and performance were to become inextricably entwined with the politics of the play, that is, with the whole question of the politics of voice – or ‘voice potential’ as Shakespeare’s Iago puts it in Othello – that the Othello Theatre in Education project is designed to address.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Professor Rosemary Hunter and Professor Eric Heinze for supporting this project; to Jessie Hohmann for inviting me to write a photo-journal article for the Queen Mary Human Rights Review; and to Sarah Ferber for her typically astute comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Notes
1 Adrian Howe, ‘Othello on Trial — Engaging the “Extra-Academic Outside World”’ (2015) 2(1) Queen Mary Human Rights Review 133.
2 Iago warns Othello about Brabantio ‘voice potential’, eliciting Othello’s reply that he would ‘out-tongue his complaints’: Othello 1.2.13-19 In A.J. Honigmann (ed) The Arden Shakespeare: Othello (Arden Series 1997). See the incisive Bourdieu-inflected analysis of ‘voice potential’ in Lynne Magnusson, ‘Voice Potential’: Language and Symbolic Capital in Othello’ in C.M.S. Alexander (ed) Shakespeare and Language (Cambridge University Press 2004). One reviewer suggests emphasising that ‘potential’ means ‘potent’ not ‘possible’.
3 Edward Said, ‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community’ in Hal Foster (ed) The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Bay Press 1983) 135 at 149. I discuss my plan to develop a public engagement project based on my research on provocation by infidelity cases in ‘Mastering Emotions or Still Losing Control? — Seeking Public Engagement with Sexual Infidelity Homicide’ (2013) 21(2) Feminist Legal Studies 141. My interest in dramaturgy dates back to ‘The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatising Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth Century New York City’ (1990) 3rd Series XLVII William and Mary Quarterly 57.
4 Adrian Howe, Sex, Violence and Crime ─ Foucault and the ‘Man’ Question (Routledge-Cavendish 2008).
5 My engagement with the operation of provocation defences in Australia can be traced back to ‘Provoking Comment: The Question of Gender Bias in the Provocation Defence — A Victorian Case Study’ in Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns (eds) Australian Women: New Feminist Perspectives (Oxford University Press 1994) 225; ‘Provocation in Crisis—Law’s Passion at the Crossroads? New Directions for Feminist Strategists’ (2004) 21 Australian Feminist Law Journal 55; ‘Provoking Polemic: Provoked Killings and the Ethical Paradoxes of the Postmodern Feminist Condition’ (2002) 10 Feminist Legal Studies 39 through to ‘Parker v R — Judgment’ in Heather Douglas, Francesca Bartlett, Trish Luker and Rosemary Hunter (eds) Australian Feminist Judgments: Righting and Rewriting Law (Hart Publishing 2014) 234. For English cases see, for example, ‘Fatal Love’ (2014) 2(1) Griffith Journal of Law and Human Dignity 4.
6 Adrian Howe, ‘Mastering Emotions or Still Losing Control? — Seeking Public Engagement with Sexual Infidelity Homicide’ (2013) 21(2) Feminist Legal Studies 141 at 164 discussing Smart’s method and her foundational text, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989).
7 See eg Eric Heinze, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in Early Modernity: The “Cosmopolitan” and the “Provincial” in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline’ (2009) 18(3) Social & Legal Studies 373; ‘“Were it not Against our Laws”: Oppression and Resistance in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors’ (2009) 29 Legal Studies 230 and ‘Heir, Celebrity, Martyr, Monster: Legal and Political Legitimacy in Shakespeare and Beyond’ (2009) 20 Law and Critique 79. My academic debt to Heinze is first registered in Adrian Howe, ‘A Right to Passions? Compassion’s Sexed Asymmetry and a Minor Comedy of Errors’ (2012) 23(2) Law and Critique 83. See also my review of his book, ‘The Concept of Injustice by Eric Heinze’ (2014) 34(4) Legal Studies 736.
8 Catherine Belsey, Why Shakespeare (Palgrave Macmillan 2007) 5-8.
9 See Richard Wilson, ‘Ship of Fools: Foucault and the Shakespeareans’ 2013 94 (7) English Studies 773.
10 Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lecture at the Collège de France 1975-1976 (Allen Lane 2003) 174.
11 See my discussion of the ‘lively warrant’ in ‘“Red Mist” Homicide — Sexual Infidelity and the English Law of Murder (Glossing Titus Andronicus)’ (2013) 3 Legal Studies 407.
12 See Adrian Howe, ‘Enduring Fictions of Possession — Sexual Infidelity and Homicidal Rage in Shakespeare and Late Modernity (glossing Othello)’ (2012) 21 Griffith Law Review 772.
13 Quoted in Robert Verkaik, ‘Judge Backs Infidelity Defence for Killers’ The Independent 7 November 2008 <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/judge-backs-infidelity-defence-for-killers-998207.html?action=Popup> (last accessed 29 October 2016).
14 See, for example, my discussion of Karen Ingala Smith’s ground-breaking ‘Counting Dead Women’ campaign in Howe ‘Fatal Love’ above n 5.
15 Marjorie Garber, The Use and Abuse of Literature (Anchor Books 2012) 167.
16 Quoted in Bernard Keane, ‘Turnbull on Domestic Violence: More Funding, A Cultural Shift to Respect’ Crikey (online) 24 September 2015. <https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/09/24/turnbull-on-domestic-violence-more-funding-a-cultural-shift-to-respect/> (last accessed 1 September 2016)
17 Her line is now in the script with this addition for anyone still missing the point: ‘It might be their home’. With thanks to the Fintona Grammar school students who gave me such valuable feedback after attending a Melbourne performance. Risk assessment information identifying risk factors related to the play’s subject matter was sent to the London schools that had expressed interest in attending the performance.
18 R v Mawgridge (1706) Kel 119.
19 Certainly the play would work well in those North American states which have extreme emotional distress defences. The play will be accompanied by learning material that includes more detailed information about the well-researched problem of provocation by infidelity defences across all anglophone jurisdictions and legislative initiatives to combat it including, of course, the Victorian reform abolishing provocation as a defence to murder for which I have long advocated, for example in ‘Reforming Provocation (More or Less)’ (1999) 12 Australian Feminist Law Journal 127.
20 Michael Bristol, ‘Charivari and the Comedy of Abjection in Othello’ (1990) 21 Renaissance Drama 3 at 12.
21 The grant application was submitted with Professors Rosemary Hunter and Eric Heinze. Rosemary secured the additional funds from the Law School.
22 Adrian Howe, ‘Dramatising Intimate Femicide: Petitions, Plays, Public Engagement (with a Shakespearean Gloss)’ (2014) 26 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 276.
23 My increasing disillusion with academic audiences is registered in ‘Every Time You Said “Penis”: (Men’s) Violence, Victim Advocacy and Impermissible Speech’ (2010) 64 Australian Feminist Studies 209.
24 Harriet Harman quoted in Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Harman and Law Lord Clash over Wife Killers’ The Guardian 9 November 2008 <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/nov/09/harriet-harman-defence-of-provocation> (last accessed 29 October 2016).
25 See, for example, Adrian Howe, ‘White Western Feminism Meets International Law: Challenges/Complicity, Erasures/Encounters’ (1995) 4 Australian Feminist Law Journal 63; ‘New Policies for Battered Women: Negotiating the Local and the Global in Blair’s Britain’ (2006) 34(3) Policy and Politics 407; ‘Addressing Child Sexual Assault in Australian Aboriginal Communities: The Politics of White Voice’ (2009) 30 Australian Feminist Law Journal 41; ‘R v Wunungmurra: “Culture” as Usual in the Courts’ (2009) 30 Australian Feminist Law Journal 163.
26 William Shakespeare, Macbeth 2.3.83 in Stephen Greenblatt and others (eds) The Norton Shakespeare (WW Norton and Co 2008).
27 Othello above n 2 at 3.3.454.
28 A view shared by some Shakespeare scholars, for example, Ewan Fernie who asserts that ‘we must never forget that he has killed his wife’ before adding ‘but he is also a spiritual hero’ in Shame in Shakespeare (Routledge 2002) 171.
29 If in fact he did not speak for all the students, my sympathies to any student who may have felt corralled into taking a stand against my work, thus missing a chance to perform it.
30 Othello’s final speech has attracted considerable commentary about the Moor’s internalised racism. See, for example, Walter Cohen, ‘Othello’ in Greenblatt and others above n 26 at 2116.
31 Marked as a middle-aged Australian, I felt the weight of ageism and colonialism in this remark. The music was composed by Mark Morand, a classically trained Australian guitarist and composer who works across ska, reggae, Latin, jazz, acid, country, and alt. The music he composed for Othello on Trial’s prelude is a digital re-rendering of a reading of the play in which the metadata of the characters’ voices and rhythm, pitch, and intonation is captured, assigned to an instrument, and re-born as chamber music.
32 Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling (University of California Press 1983).
33 Said above note 3 at 146-150.
34 David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge 1981) 3.
35 See Howe, ‘White Western Feminism’ above n 25 and Howe, Sex, Violence and Crime above note 4 at 154-164.
36 Bernice Johnson Reagon, ‘Coalition Politics: Turning the Century’ in Barbara Smith (ed) Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table: Women of Colour Press 1983) 357.
37 As above at 367.
38 Mick Hume, ‘What’s New About No Platform Mania?’ Spiked 8 October 2015 <http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/whats-new-about-no-platform-mania/17526#.WBTX14WcGUk> (last accessed 29 October 2016).
39 Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel were condemned for expressing transphobic opinions that, it was alleged, made the university an unsafe space for LGBT students: Ewan Palmer, ‘Transphobic Feminist Julie Bindel Banned from Manchester Student Union Talk on Free Speech’ International Business Times 6 October 2015; Zoe Williams, ‘Silencing Germaine Greer Will Let Prejudice Against Trans People Flourish’ The Guardian 25 October 2015 <http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/feminist-julie-bindel-banned-manchester-student-union-talk-free-speech-1522670> (last accessed 29 October 2016).
40 Reagon above n 36 at 368.
41 Photographs of the new cast in rehearsal are reproduced in Howe above n 1.
42 The network’s website is hosted by its partner organisation, The London Centre for Social Studies: <http://socialstudies.org.uk/projects/detail/18424/Femicide-Research-Network>.
43 With thanks to Clarissa O’Callaghan, a Fighting Femicide conference delegate and head of Freshfields’ pro bono department.
44 With thanks to Theresa O’Sullivan, the teacher at St Angela’s Ursuline School who arranged for Ruby to participate and to Ruby for her outstanding performance. Thanks too to Rufus Graham for reprising the judge’s role which he had played in a rehearsed reading of the play in November 2014.
45 I discuss SBS’s work, pivotal in putting the under-policing of violence against black and ethnic minority women on the political agenda in Britain, in Howe, Sex, Violence and Crime above note 4 at 198–204.
47 Simon Bayly, ‘Theatre and the Public: Badiou, Rancière, Virno’ (2009) 157 Radical Philosophy 20 at 22.
48 As above at 26.
49 I wish to thank the reviewers for their stimulating comments. For an overview of recent developments see my blog on the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions website: https://historiesofemotion.com/2016/07/14/othello-on-trial-or-the-tragedy-of-desdemona-the-wife-a-theatre-in-education-project/.
50 Hugh Quarshie, ‘Second Thoughts About Othello’ quoted in James Earl Jones, ‘The Sun God’ in Susannah Carson (ed) Living with Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors and Directors’ (Vintage Books 2013) 104 at 130. While Jones disagreed with Quarshie, a black actor and director I approached to be involved in my project in London declined on the same grounds as Quarshie. In his view, Othello was such an utterly unacceptable racist stereotype that Othello was unreclaimable in any adaptation, even one painting him white.
51 As above at 131.
52 See, for example, the special edition, ‘A New Scholarly Song: Reading Early Modern Race’ (2016) 67(1) Shakespeare Quarterly.
53 Toni Morrison, Desdemona (Oberon Books 2012).
54 Peter Sellars, ‘Foreword’, as above at 9. Another imaginative approach is that taken in Roberto Cavosi’s play, La Colpa di Otello which combines the characters of Iago and Othello in one actor. This strategy evades the colour question as Cavosi conceded in a seminar on his play held at the Italian Cultural Institute in London on 19 September 2016.
55 Ayanna Thompson and Laura Turchi, Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach (Bloomsbury 2016) at 7 and 18. One of the frames they suggest for reading Othello is ‘losing control’, precisely the frame deployed by the defence lawyer in my play (at 62).
56 As above at 70-71.
57 Othello above note 2 at 5.2.194.
58 As above at 4.1.197.