By Meghan Wolf, actress playing Desdemona in Othello, Denver Center Theatre Company

This week I have been exploring Desdemona’s innocence and purity, which appears as fairly extreme to our modern, feminist sensibilities. At the turn of the century, even more than when the play was written, women were exceedingly obedient, so all of my modern impulses to stand up for myself are not appropriate here. Instead, we are focusing on the intention of being loving toward Othello, through and despite his mistreatment of Desdemona. The thinking is that the more Desdemona loves Othello, the more devastating the disintegration of their love will be.

It is very counter-intuitive to literally turn the other cheek; I want to fight back! But I am enjoying investigating these unfamiliar choices and foreign states of mind. One of the reasons I became an actor was to fathom the endless variety with which individuals experience and interface with reality. To do so in a way very different from my own is a valuable learning experience.

The questions I’m asking now concern Desdemona’s relationship with her innocence and purity: “Does she feel and suppress the impulse to fight back? Is she aware of the cultural attractiveness of purity in women and if so, does she consciously (or sub-consciously) utilize it to please her husband?” My actor’s instincts tell me that any awareness of innocence would undermine it…but it’s an interesting question.

Part of my training taught me to marry my actor’s inner experience with what the character is going through moment to moment. For example: if a moment in the play makes the actor feel self-conscious, then in that moment, the character feels self-conscious too. If the character’s behavior or words in that same moment happen to convey a contradictory state (say, self-assured), then the actor can play that the character is trying to appear self-assured through the presenting feelings of self-consciousness. It may sound like a fractured cerebral process but it is actually pretty intuitive and, when it works, can produce a satisfying seamlessness between actor and character states.

On a technical note, I am working against a contraindicated physical reaction right now as well, specifically in the final scene of the play. When playing the recipient of death by smothering, the impulse is to stop breathing. But holding my breath throughout the choking would result in gasping for air once I am finally ‘dead’…which would kind of kill that illusion. Remembering to keep breathing while playing suffocation like is like patting your head and rubbing your stomach! I will have to practice this a lot.

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