Harlem Duet

The most basic premise of this chapter is that works that are categorized within the adaptation and/or appropriation genre are inherently political, simply by the nature of their production. In other words, it might be simpler to say that original works of literature, in the case of this discussion particularly those from the literary canon, are often products of the culture they are written within. The author cannot help but to exert their own ideological agenda upon the text, though it is a job left to the reader to locate and interpret the clues to the agenda that are left in between the lines. The development of an adaptation is an extension of that process. By reinterpreting a text, for the sake of making significant alteration to the

In the personally written introduction to her play, Sears locates and comments upon a recognizable ideological gap. In 1965, Othello was produced with a white actor, Laurence Olivier performing the role of the titular character in black face. This event is what Sears says she writes Harlem Duet in direct response to; her play is an exorcism, to purge this event from her memory. There has historically been a long tradition of white people performing Blackness on the stage and in film. Needless to say, this is problematic for so many reasons. Black people became a costume, and performances actively worked to belittle the intelligence and capability of people of African descent. White people inserting themselves into Black roles had been common practice; in the 60s black actors were simply not cast in theatrical roles. Even now, as it is socially acceptable for Black actors to be cast in the role, Othello still haunts the racial climate of the theatre as a Black man commits violent atrocity of murder against a white woman. The story itself feeds into and reinforces a cultural/racial narrative about the threat that Black men pose against white women. In the original presentation of Othello, Shakespeare wrote Othello as a Moor. This signifies some sort of Other figure, someone who is distinct from the original European audience. It is within this racial tension where Sears locates the “gap” for her adaptation to occupy. She changes the character’s names to some extent, and takes a few of them off the stage entirely. Desdemona is written as a white woman, and her name is changed to Mona, but she is never seen as completely on the stage. It removes Mona from the equation, and reorients the story to focus solely on a new character named Billie, Othello’s first wife, and a highly intelligent explicitly Black woman. The play takes place at the corner of Malcolm X and Martin