This is the night that either makes me or fordoes me quite.
-Othello, Act V Scene 1
Tonight we open Othello. Opening nights are fraught with emotions, peril, high stakes, and excitement. I'm confident what we have works based on the two preview performances yesterday. Both audiences watched with rapt attention and were immediately responsive at the conclusion of each act. I couldn't have been more pleased with the response and the performances yesterday. We got a bit tired in the second act of the second show, which is to be expected. But the robust story telling works, along with the wonderful feeling of hearing Shakespeare cleanly spoken in our very intimate space.
The most thrilling, and personally touching experience, for me yesterday was seeing the number of young people in the audience who were absolutely swept away by the story and just in awe of the experience. If we turned a few of them on to Shakespeare, we've done our job.
I've said before in these Othello Diaries that doing Shakespeare is one of my passions. It truly is. There is nothing more exciting than seeing it work and work well. It is an expensive proposition though, and one that we can't support here on any regular basis. But the proof is in those children's eyes that this works, just like it has done for generations.
We'll celebrate in grand style tonight after the opening, and next week will be about hyping the show. I've already been running the gauntlet of radio and local TV, and it is amazing the questions I get about the show. An amusing anecdote from one interview this week, came when a host wondered aloud about the length of the show. (It's running about 2:50 with intermission, so I missed my initial target by 10 minutes.) His point was that it was a turn off. I said very quickly, we'll it is shorter than a NASCAR race. Probably won't win any friends in this area with that one.
Regardless of the response at the box office (I don't anticipate great results unless word of mouth really kicks in), this will go down as one of my most treasured experiences in the theatre. We'll keep fighting the good fight, but it is really tough to break through ages of negative connotations associated with Shakespeare.
