Othello BM Journals - WGeary

 Wynn Geary,

Friday May 3^rd 2013 

E Band

 #1

IAGO:

(Iago sits on the side of the stage, his feet dangling off the stage. He has a perplexed look on his face.) “I have rubbed this young quat almost to the sense,” (He brings his arms up to his face while he is saying his line and makes a face, acting as though he is popping a pimple.) “And he grows angry. Now,” (He imitates a mad Othello.) “whether he kill Cassio” He takes out a wooded dagger and acts as if Othello has just stabbed him) “Or Cassio him,” (He turns the dagger around and acts as if he is stabbing Othello) “or each do kill the other,” (He pretends to stab Othello and then acts as if he is dying as well) “Every way makes my gain.” (He smiles widely to the audience. Then suddenly, it fades.) “Live Roderigo, He calls me to a restitution large Of gold and jewels that I bobbed from him As gifts to Desdemona.” (A look of greed/plotting crosses his face) “It must not be.” (He twirls the dagger in his hands) “If Cassio do remain He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly.” (He puts his fingers up to his head to look like the devil, and makes a sad face) “And besides, the Moor May unfold me to him—there stand I in much peril.”  (He stops twirling the knife and grasps it with both hands and points it up.) “No, he must die.” (Pause) “But so, I hear him coming.” (He stands up and scampers into a hiding place).

#2

Emilia appears in Act 2, scene 1, Act 3 scenes 3 and 4, Act 4, scenes 2 and 3, and Act 5 scenes 1 and 2. In the beginning o the play, she not only observes, but is an instrumental pawn in Iago’s plan to “dethrone” Othello. She gives Iago Desdemona’s handkerchief. Secondhand, I feel like Emilia is somewhat out of the loop in the play, She doesn’t realize how absolutely insane Iago is until like the last scene. I think that Emilia being “out of the loop” explains a lot about her “motivations”. She really doesn’t fully get what’s going on, and for anyone that’s out of the loop, not just her, that can lead to uneducated decisions being made. I think that essentially, Emilia being out of the loop shows that her actions are neither right nor are they wrong, they are simply uneducated and while they still are critical in the progression of the story, they don’t have either a positive or negative motivation behind them. If we zoom in on one of her scenes in particular, in act 3 scene 3 she picks up Desdemona’s handkerchief and gives it to Iago, if you focus on only this scene, her actions only become increasingly more disjointed.  

#3 

Iago: 

When Iago was a boy, he grew up in a small house in a northern Italian town called Padova. His father was a metalsmith for the army; his mother, a stay at home mom who kept watch of Iago and his brother and sister. Iago and his siblings spent their days in the woods and meadows just outside of town; Iago (being the youngest) always had to be the villain in any games they played. Some say that the oppression of his siblings lead to Iago becoming coldhearted and jealous, explaining to an extent his becoming twisted and doing the awful things he did later in life. As a teenager, Iago studied and he spent more time with books than girls - and as a result had few relationships. 

That all changed when (to the excitement of his father) he joined the army and moved to Venice. He met a girl there, also from a small town. Iago and Emilia braved the city of Venice and soon found themselves in love. Even after they were married, Iago’s jealousy showed, he would become angry with Emilia when he saw her talking to men, even in the market. After years of living together in Venice, As Iago moved up in the army ranks, he and Emilia moved to Cyprus, where “Othello” takes place. 

#4

There isn’t a whole lot we could do with our scene, yes, 2 people die, but we just didn’t feel like we had tons of control over the way that it happened. A couple of the things that I (Iago) do are, run onto the stage panting a little bit, yelling a couple of curse words, and then doing a little choreographed stabbing of Emilia. My plan is to make a cardboard dagger, it’d be great if I could find a legitimate looking dagger, but I don’t think that’s possible given the amount of time. I also have a cool puffy white button down shirt that I think will be the perfect thing to wear during the performance. I think that the main thing that makes our group’s performance stand out is that we have the finale. Everyone except for Iago dies and I think it’s the only scene where almost everyone ends the scene lying on the floor. In terms of things that our group has planned out, the biggest thing is the stabbing, we have a little choreographed thing and it seems to run smoothly in rehearsal so, fingers crossed it goes well tomorrow. 

 #5

“I told him what I thought, and told no more than what he found was apt and true.” This is a line that brings the audience up to speed on what has happened and brings Emilia up to speed as well so that she finally realizes all of what’s been going on. In rehearsal I spoke this line with a partially guilty tone, although I’d realized that Iago isn’t guilty at all, so I  to switch it to more of a sly tone. I was really surprised at how great everybody’s performance was, last minute I felt like I totally had to step it up. I messed up once because I thought I had one more line before it was my cue. I had to fumble with my script to deliver my last line. Otherwise, I think our presentation went really well. We all remembered our lines for the most part and our choreographed stabbing went really well. I was a little lost at the end because no one clapped and we had to announce that the scene was over, but other than that I think it was great. 

I’m proud of remembering my lines, honestly, if I had one more day with my script I wouldn’t have needed it at all. There are more things that I wished I had done then hand’t done, I think we could have been more creative with our skit for sure. I think that it would have been awesome to have a full on long rehearsal before the real performance so that we could have noted what other groups were doing and had time to make some minor edits to our own skits. I know this is a really simple answer, but watching the full play all the way through made me have a fuller understanding of the play. Being able to sit down and see the entire story of the play all in one sitting opposed to reading the book, stoping and leaving parts of the story disjointed and rough. This really connected the story completely and shed light on parts of the play that may not have made sense when reading the book.