everything that's not on those forms.
That's what's so powerful and that's why the art still exists.
CONAN: Peter Sellars is our guest.
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And let's get Brian on the line.
Brian from Louis, Delaware.
BRIAN (Caller): Hi.
How are you doing, Mr. Sellars?
A pleasure to talk to you.
Mr. SELLARS: Brian, a pleasure.
Thanks for calling.
BRIAN: Hey, I'm curious.
You've mentioned removing the sign of black from the (unintelligible) character and put
in - obviously sticking in the sign of Hispanic.
I'm wondering if the sort of perceived religiosity of Hispanics, at least from some perspectives,
whether that played a motivational role in "Othello" sort of wanting to believe, or was
that a motivation?
Was that - did it ever come up in your production?
Mr. SELLARS: Oh, very much so.
And I have to say Shakespeare was so interested in Christianity and all these other spiritual
paths that were just coming to light for Europeans.
You know, the voodoo and, you know, all these incredible syncretic things.
And Shakespeare has his characters, you know, praying to all kinds of things across the
night in that play.
All kinds of spirits are invoked.
And, you know, all of us have, of course, our own little rituals everyday by which we
are hopefully influencing future reality.
For some people it's just going to Starbucks - you know, you feel better for the day and
your life is centered.
And you're going to be okay.
You know, and that sense of what is your religion, what is your spiritual practice?
How do those things mix?
Shakespeare is mentioning on almost every page witchcraft or strange invocations, bizarre,
very intense chanting, all these things appear throughout the play.
Shakespeare was interested in many, many, many spiritual paths.
And he was inviting Christianity to of course reach outside itself.
And I think with Shakespeare, the line that I love that Desdemona has at the beginning
of Act Four is, All's one.
You know, if you really believe in the kind of spiritual depth, all is one.
And the meaning of all the paths and all of the dreams in the ocean, that ocean, of course,
is what Shakespeare is writing about.
And, yes, the intense spirituality and the Catholic presence is one of the most interesting
things in Shakespeare.
Some people thought Shakespeare might have been a Catholic.
Certainly what he did see in England was the persecution of Catholics there as religious
heretics.
He saw torture, he saw all kinds of things - people enduring things because they were
Catholics and they would not recant.
So torture also plays a role in the play.
And Shakespeare shows you people willing to endure things for their deepest held beliefs.
So all of those things are definitely in the mix, Brian.
Thank you very much.
CONAN: And thanks...
BRIAN: Thank you, sir.
CONAN: All right.
The cast you've got, as I understand, dictates a rather short run in New York.
But I also gather there are plans to - for a tour.
Mr. SELLARS: Well, yes.
The big hope for us is two things, one of which is because Toni Morrison did challenge
me to do this play to begin with, Toni is now actually working on her own play to respond
to Shakespeare.
And it's going to be called "Desdemona."
And she is putting in things that Shakespeare himself could not have written about the black
community.
CONAN: Mm hmm.
Mr. SELLARS: And also giving the women a voice.
You know, for Shakespeare, the ideal woman, you know, was - you know, had all these wonderful
qualities but was also silent.
(Soundbite of laughter) Mr. SELLARS: And of course we're living in
an age where women are allowed to speak and that's really not a bad thing.
And so Toni is really going to give voice, and from particularly a feminist side, to
the women in this play and tell the stories that Shakespeare couldn't or wouldn't tell.
Meanwhile, we'll keep working on this play.
We'll come back to it across the next years.
And our big hope is that after a few years we will film this production on location,
in fact, and we will then film Toni Morrison's "Desdemona" and send them out to the high
schools with a bunch of materials around them coming from all kinds of organizations - military
organizations, organizations about women's issues, all of these things that are in the
play very, very powerfully.
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
Mr. SELLARS: And really give the next generation - the 21st century generation - these kids
who will never see the images Shakespeare was working with, give them images that are
updated for their realities, for the realities of the planet they were all hoping to shape,
and bring this play into its full relevance.
I mean, the marvelous thing about Shakespeare - again, he's a visionary - this is - these
plays have lasted through the centuries because they respond to things that every generation
is hoping for and reaching towards.
And they remain these kind of clarion calls, you know, out of the dark, to say keep heading
towards the light, keep going towards the place, the world we all want to live in, the
important thing is to imagine it and then create it.
And that active imagination is what the play really invites us all to.
I hope that this will be in every high school in America five years from today.
CONAN: Peter Sellars, thanks very much.
And good luck with that.
Mr. SELLARS: Thanks so much.
CONAN: Peter Sellars is the director of "Othello" and joined us today from the studios at WNYC
in New York.