Booking and details
Dates Sat, Jan 27, 2024, 2pm
Tickets Festival pass - $35; All-access pass - $75
Duration 30-minute talk; 90-minute open rehearsal
Shakespeare and Stereotypes: 1pm
Before Six Othellos begins, Carol Mejia LaPerle (Wright State University) moderates a 30-minute discussion with Carla Della Gatta (University of Maryland) and Kaja Dunn (Carnegie Mellon University) on the legacy of stereotypes in Shakespeare’s works, looking at how his texts simultaneously challenge and support harmful perceptions and how we wrestle with these questions when examining these plays today. A 30-minute intermission will follow the conversation.
Six Othellos: 2pm
Using Act 3, Scene 3 from Othello, Dr. John “Ray” Proctor of Tulane University invites us into an investigation and examination of “traditional” casting and the spectacle-text through performance by inviting six actors of differing gender identities and races.
Actors and audience members will discuss how casting practices and modes of contemporary performance impact, alter, complicate and enhance the relationship between audience’s interpretation and perception and the performance-text.
Students receive free admission with valid ID, 30 minutes before event start time. General admission seating is available for this open rehearsal on a first-come, first-serve basis after festival pass holders are seated.
Who’s Who
Dr. John Ray Proctor III
Dr. Proctor (Playwright, Director) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Tulane University, Department of Theatre. He holds a BA in English (Webster University), an MFA in Acting (West Virginia University), and a Ph. D. in Theatre Research (University of Wisconsin Madison). He has played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (The Organic Theatre), Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Arizona Repertory Theatre), Othello (The Greenbriar), Airline Highway and Father Come Home from the Wars (Southern Rep). He Directed Into the Woods (Summer Lyric Theatre), Derek Walcott’s Pantomime (Crescent City Stage), and Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind (Tulane University). In September 2022 his essay Romeo and Juliet at an HBCU was published in the essay collection Romeo and Juliet, Adaptation, and the Arts: ‘Cut Him Out in Little Stars’ (The Arden Shakespeare). In January of 2023 his essay Reconsidering and Recasting was published in Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity (Bloomsbury Press). His primary research examines the intersection of race, casting, and the peculiarities and specifics of Identity-Conscious casting practices, particularly in Shakespeare.
Regina Aquino
Regina Aquino (Othello, et al.) Folger Theatre: Our Verse in Time to Come, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Nell Gwynn. Theater Alliance: The Events (Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress), Brownsville Song (B-side for Trey); Round House Theatre: We’re Gonna Die; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Describe The Night, The Arsonists; Studio Theatre: Vietgone, Red Light Winter, Dog Sees God (Helen Hayes Award nomination), Polaroid Stories; Olney Theatre Center: Tiger Style!. Broadway: Lincoln Center & Kennedy Center TYA: Where Words Once Were; International: Actor’s Actors Inc. Manila: Our Country’s Good.
Andreá Bellamore
Andreá Bellamore (Othello, et al.) is a national actress originally from the soulful city of New Orleans. She is a graduate of the Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts -BFA Acting Conservatory. Her recent theater credits include: Letitia (U/s Clyde) in Cylde’s (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Marianne Angelle in The Revolutionists (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Adriana in A Comedy of Errors (American Shakespeare Center), National Tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Frankenstein (Aquila Theatre), National Tour of The Grapes of Wrath, Cymbeline and Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (American Shakespeare Center), A Christmas Carol (American Shakespeare Center), Julius Caesar and As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe in London), An Octoroon, A Dream Play, Five Times in One Night (Rutgers Theatre Company), Our Warrior Chorus (Aquila Theatre), Twelfth Night (Stages on the Sound), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Mile Square Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Classic Theatre of Maryland). She gives all thanks to God, her family and her Husband for all of their consistent love and support! AndreaBellamore.com IG: @andreabellamore–
Tsaitami Duchicela
Bio to come.
Kimberly Gilbert
Kimberly Gilbert (Othello, et al.) was last seen at The Folger as Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale (2018.) In the DC Theatreverse she has also frequented the stages of Ford’s Theatre, Round House, Theater J, Studio, The Kennedy Center, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Olney, and is a company member of both Taffety Punk and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Regionally, she has played at Penumbra, Syracuse Stage, Portland Center Stage, Denver Center, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and The Adirondack Theatre Festival. In 2015 she won the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance of the title character in David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette. She earned her MFA with the inaugural class of The Academy at Shakespeare Theatre Company and has been a proud Union member since 2001. She can be seen next on stage as Volumnia in Coriolanus at Avant Bard.
Tom Story
Bio to come.
Related blog post
Q&A with Dr. John "Ray" Proctor III
Learn more about what to expect for The Reading Room Festival’s “interactive interrogation” of Shakespeare’s Othello, Act III, scene iii, at Folger Theatre.