Philly Fringe 2024: Zaina Yasmin Dana’s Othello (vs the Military Industrial Complex)

Dana reimagines Othello as a young Palestinian man who turns his back on his community and joins the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after seeing his father murder his mother and vowing to be different. This premise was a bit implausible to me, but taking this as fact, it sets up the play to explore pressing questions in the context of the ongoing conflict. Unfortunately, these bold choices don’t quite pay off, though the piece has potential for further development.

A modern Othello mixture

Dana, who also directs, pulls quotes from Othello, quotes from IDF soldiers, and adds new scenes where characters speak to the context of the 2014 war and ongoing conflict. The mix of Shakespearian English and contemporary English was a bit jarring and confusing at times. Othello (Qais Dana) is called both a Moore and an Arab. Desdemona (Maddy Gillespie) has a monologue about misogyny, direct quotes from Othello, and a monologue about her father’s defense of the IDF.

A complete rewriting of Othello in contemporary English would be a much more ambitious undertaking, but it would be more cohesive. Staging where actors sometimes have their backs to the audience adds to the confusion; this makes it harder to hear what they were saying in the already acoustically challenging, echoing space.

Strong performances help keep the play engaging. A crafty and engaging Iago (Jackson Purdy) and humorous Emilia (Kaitlyn Zion) are standouts. Drug-fueled EDM dance parties, with original compositions by Fouad Dakwar and choreography by Leila Delicious, are a fun twist as a place where Iago deploys his tactics.

Urgent questions

In my opinion, the most effective modern adaptations of Shakespeare keep the play’s emotional core and conflict while adding their own twist. But in this case, the most compelling pieces of the play are the asides, mostly from Iago, discussing troubling details about the IDF, such as former soldiers going to India and using hard drugs as a coping mechanism after their service is done. A reading of Dana’s father’s account of his own abduction, torture, and forced confession was also powerful. However, none of these moments are part of the play’s plot: its basis in Othello feels almost incidental, with the show’s main ambition apparently being to educate audiences about the plight of Palestinians.

Iago, as narrator, asks us at the end: What was the point? Why did this director use Othello? Did the audience get what we came for? These were also on my mind. The show approaches many central questions but doesn’t fully address them. What are the conditions that create organizations like Hamas? What inner turmoil and barriers to assimilation do Palestinians face in trying to fit into the IDF? Is Othello’s main issue not racism, but misogyny? How does the military industrial complex work to indoctrinate and numb soldiers to the atrocities they carry out? What shape must a story take to interest Western audiences in Palestinian stories?

Major potential

Stories humanizing Palestinians while highlighting the urgency of action against the ongoing mass murder of Palestinians are important. The most effective moments of this show leaned into this. There is a lot of potential here: further workshopping and refining the focus would increase the power and impact of this piece. I would be excited to see new iterations of this passionate, earnest, and ambitious project.