Image courtesy of The Berkshire Eagle
On October 1st, Skidmore College had its first live performance in the JKB Theater in over a year and a half: Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey, performed by Debra Ann Byrd. Byrd (who uses she/they pronouns) is an actor, director, and founder of both the Harlem Shakespeare Festival and Take Wing And Soar Productions. Her education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Marymount Manhattan College and acting training at Shakespeare & Company, the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab, and the Arts Leadership Institute at Columbia University and Teachers College. She has received numerous awards including the 2016 NAACP Shirley Farmer Woman of Excellence Award and the 2009 LPTW Lucille Lortel Award.
In her one person performance, viewers were able to experience the memoir of Debra Ann Byrd performed and written by her, and directed by Tina Packer, director and Founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company Shakespeare Festival. Before watching Byrd’s performance, I had never been to a one actor show that lasted over an hour and a half. I was extremely skeptical about how it would be presented and how someone could sustain interest and energy from the audience for such an extended amount of time. However, Byrd proved my doubts to be wrong, as I remained glued and attentive to the performance and story she brought to us!
The memoir was packed with emotions and themes about love, longing, exploration, and perseverance in the accounts of her life; William Shakespeare’s Othello is tied to Byrd as both a metaphor and a literal event that occurred in her life journey. Othello is a story about a Black male general who falls in love with a white woman in Venice, Italy, and their subsequent romantic downfall. Utilizing impactful, hard hitting lines and questions that stuck with me, Byrd conveyed an overwhelming amount of themes that encompassed a relatable journey of cementing one’s own legacy and making an impact in our physical world that is greater than oneself.
Debra Ann Byrd’s memoir began with discussing stories of her ancestry, and the experiences of her ancestors being brought to America through slave ships. She discussed her childhood, as an Afro-Latina girl in Harlem, New York, including her upbringing, with some of her brightest moments and curiosities, to some of her darker moments. We hear about her mix of cultures, being Puerto Rican and Black. She talks about her Indigenous descent and her feeling two-spirited as a child, her connection to her faith, and the church. She brought us into her life in New York City as an adult, with a sick daughter and herself as a mother experiencing depression. Eventually we see her through her conversations with God, get out of a low time and pursue theater as she had always wanted. Byrd was able to build her own legacy and still is in the theater, having achieved her numerous awards and initiatives.
“If I get up from here I have to be excellent. I cannot be ordinary or plain,” Byrd expressed to God. Here in the show, she showcased how vulnerable she was at this point of time with tragedy looming in her life based on her daughter’s declining health. She was advised by her friend that she must not give up on herself. She responded with the quote above, which I felt was indicative of human existence. Especially in western culture, there are sentiments of wanting to leave a mark on the world and do something that lives beyond yourself, that can help or be appreciated by others. This is the point in which she asked herself, “Can the theater help me make a change?”
“What happens to a dream deferred?,” Byrd wondered. As a Black woman, she’s encountered many biases and has had to be mindful of what it has meant being an actor in the classics, which has been and still is traditionally performed by white people. Byrd has dealt with certain obstacles in the classics such as being told that she should stick to August Wilson’s productions; which were productions created by August Wilson, an American playwright that is credited for showcasing African American experiences to theater. She was told after all her years of classical learning that she doesn’t fit the mold to perform in the classics. We are often told that our dreams may not be practical enough because of the competitiveness of the industries or its lack of lucrative profit; because of Byrd’s intersectional identity of being a black woman in the competitive field of performing arts, she was discriminated against as people like her were not largely represented in the classics, thus her dream was “deferred.” Thankfully she persevered and started up her own theater company called “Take Wing and Soar,” and performed her own plays whilst helping young actors of color to get training and opportunities.
“What is gender anyway?” Byrd questioned. This question is becoming prominent in our current climate. We are unpacking our gendered assumptions and norms. We acknowledge that sexuality and gender are things that can be fluid and everchange beyond the binary and heteronormative rhetoric surrounding us. Byrd, in their story, encounters gender in a couple of ways. Their story flashes the audience back into their childhood as we visualize her home life and childhood upbringing, explaining how they had to conform but felt two spirited in their gender identity, connected to their Indigenous descent from a very young age.
When they first saw Othello performed, they knew that they had to perform it themself. They chose to produce an all woman, multi-racial casted play of Othello. With this, they chose a route of what many would call “method acting,” by studying men and the ways in which they interacted; they cut their hair shorter and felt comfortable in a more masculine presentation of themself. They felt dismayed by the ways in which the public started to treat them in terms of this expression. While questioning their gender, they also questioned their sexuality. While going through this process, they said, “I thought I was becoming Othello, but it turns out that I was becoming undone.” Byrd explained that they became “clear,” presumably clear from those socialized notions from birth. In Becoming Othello, they were undoing race, gender, and sexuality that held them down in their journey. Becoming Othello lead to self reflection.
Image courtesy of StateraArts
“There can be no reconciliation without the truth,” Byrd boldly claimed. Throughout the show, many triggering and tragic events were discussed, whether it be Byrd experiencing the calling of her ancestors who were enslaved, her encounters with people who hurt her, or the systemic forces in our world that not only made her life difficult at times but all of ours in some aspect. The audience is challenged to make a change and come together at the culmination of the show. Byrd argues that we must address these injustices within ourselves and each other to be able to change the world and create things that bring us closer to that change.
There have been many racial controversies received from audiences and fans of theater and Shakespeare alike about Othello. This show being tied to Othello was initially intriguing to me due to some of the racial associations with the show, making me assume that the show would have some elements in criticism of Othello. Although, in the talk-back with Byrd, we learned that their interpretation of the play was less critical and more in favor of the love story itself and how love affects us. Byrd’s perspective is alive in their own piece, one could say, as they took us on a journey of self discovery in the motivation of love (for theater, for their daughter, and for themself).
In awe, the audience watched as Byrd recited hours of memorized lines, sang notes, and moved with a lasting vivacity, compelling the audience to both hear and see their story as it unfolded. I think that many people left the theater having related to the story so much, seeing in Byrd their own insecurities and life struggles that have held them down; however, Byrd’s live performance gave the lasting impression that we are able to turn things around and trust in the process of their own journeys.