For the first time in the College’s history, an immersive production of Shakespeare’s Othello was staged in the grand surroundings of University College Hall. Presented by Arrant Thief Productions every night between 9 and 12 November, Othello MT24 was a daring, exciting production that involved the actors moving around the audience. Many of the cast, crew and musicians were Univ students.

The director, C. Zhang (2022, English) has written an afterword.

Othello, at Univ Hall:
a small afterword

by C. Zhang

It’s central to me that our production of Othello cannot be staged in a large playhouse theatre. I want to play with the unease that comes from collapsing physical distances between action and audience. I want the performance to feel seductively – and uncomfortably – intimate. I want the audience’s personal space to feel invaded. I want them to feel the voyeurism of observing such private relationships so closely.

Performance in Univ Hall

To me, Othello is a play about intimacy. It’s about friends getting caught in each other’s love lives, in each other’s sex lives; it’s about compact spaces, voyeurism, the discomfort of feeling too close to other people’s bodies and seeing too closely into their minds. It’s about vulnerability, exposure, self-loathing – in which a group of friends are all trapped together in a lethal cycle, complex affections and hatreds overspilling as the boundaries blur.

Theatre is about boundaries. It is concerned with the limits of fantasy and verisimilitude, of spatial and emotional distances – and the extent to which those boundaries may be pushed.

We chose University College Hall as a venue for this production because it allows us to control the positions of audience seating, placing audience-members on either side of the onstage action.

To my knowledge, this is the first student theatre production to have been staged in University College Hall in over thirty years. As a result, constructing the set and the technical system has been exceptionally challenging – but we also tried our best to exploit its artistic possibilities.

Performance in Univ Hall

With its high vaulted ceiling and floors of wood, University College Hall is a gorgeous venue. Its spatial dimensions responded beautifully to our lighting system. By transforming the Hall into a site of student art, we maximized the possibilities that exist in frequently under-used spaces in University College, drawing attention to the cultural significance and history of these college spaces. I hope, with all my heart, that Othello MT24 has somehow elevated levels of artistic engagement and fulfilment all over University College, by involving both the College’s staff and students in this production – and that works of student creativity across the College will continue to burgeon.

As a director, I wanted this story to feel personal. I wanted it to feel invasive, uneasy, grounded in how the act of storytelling violates the privacies of these characters. I wanted the play to dig at the insecurities and the hearts of its viewers, to express the same savage tenderness with which it once understood me.

In Othello, Shakespeare understood the magnetism – and repulsion – that comes with intimacy. He understood the consuming rawness of close friendships. It fills me with wonder, still today, that he had the words for my insecurities when I did not.

Performance in Univ Hall

By inviting the audience into the sticky, labyrinthine space we’ve created with Othello MT24, I wish to give those words yet another tang of meaning: my own.

Othello, to me, has been a life-raft. As a text, it saw me through my most flamboyant joys and sorrows as a teenager. Of the recent year, it has also carried me through my most harrowing instances of heartbreak. The inspiration and comfort of working on this production, specifically, has brought me unnameable solace. This project encompasses profound meaning for me not merely as a creator, but as a person.

The students and staff involved in this project have been phenomenal. They made my dream come true. I love all of them for believing in me every second along the way.

To everyone who experienced the show, I hope that it has given you anywhere near half the joy it gave me.

For further reading on what inspired this production, read the director’s personal essay on the experience of making Othello, here.

Published: 19 November 2024

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