Pjäsen handlar om den svarte stjärnskådespelaren Ira Aldridge och hans svenska älskarinna skådespelerskan Amanda von Brandt som kommer till Stockholm på 1850-talet för att spela Shakespeares Othello.SVART OTHELLO är 2010 översatt till engelska av Ann-Charlotte Harvey, San Diego. Den engelska titeln på pjäsen är BLACK OTHELLO. Amerikansk producent är Marita Gochman, New York. Actors' Studio i New York anordnar under ett par veckor i mars 2011 en workshop med pjäsen.
I en tidigare version, översatt av Verne Moberg, har pjäsen i november 2008 givits som staged reading vid Columbia University, NYC.
BLACK OTHELLO - SVART OTHELLO
Denna historia från 1857 handlar om två skådespelares olika roller på scenen och i verkligheten, deras lögner och hemligheter och deras längtan efter att bli älskade för det de inte är.
I centrum står ett omaka par – den svarte stjärnskådespelaren Ira Aldridge från London, medelsålders, klok, luttrad av livet, och den kvinna han just har träffat och förälskat sig i, den unga skådespelerskan Amanda ”von” Brandt. Ira Aldridge utger sig för att vara prins från Senegal – i själva verket är han son till en pastor i New York. Han har som sjuttonåring rymt hemifrån, men känner solidaritet med sin svarta uppväxtmiljö och har en dröm om att komma tillbaka till New York som den store skådespelare han är.
Ira har kommit till Kungl. Teatern i Stockholm för att spela Shakespeares Othello. Han ser till att Amanda - ”Mrs. Aldridge” - får Desdemonas roll i stället för skådespelerskan mademoiselle Jacobson, som under protest degraderas till kammartjänarinna. Teaterdirektören - som själv är skådespelare och gör Jagos roll i Othelloföreställningen - känner dock igen Amanda som döljer hemligheter i sitt förflutna.
På teatern pågår repetitionerna av Othello som i sig rymmer komplikationer – även om Ira är sin tids mest framgångsrike skådespelare möts han av rasfördomar. Dessutom dyker en man upp på teatern och vill komma till tals med Amanda. Ira blir alltmer svartsjuk och misstänksam mot Amanda. Hon ljuger alldeles uppenbart för honom... Till råga på allt kan hon inte Desdemonas roll!
När Iras och Amandas förhållande bryts tar mademoiselle Jacobson tillbaka Desdemonas roll i Othelloföreställningen. Amandas liv ställs på sin spets. Men allt går inte som väntat...
In this story any resemblance to historical persons is intentional:
Ira Aldridge (1807-1867), “The African Roscius,” next to Edmund Kean the greatest Shakespeare actor of his day. While claiming to be of royal African blood, “Prince de Senegal,” Aldridge was born in New York, the son of Daniel Aldridge, a hay merchant and preacher, and his wife Luranah. While attending the African Free School in New York 1820-24, he made his stage debut at the African Company in 1822. At age seventeen, he accompanied the British actor James Wallack to England. His first London engagement was at the Royal Coburg Theatre (The Old Vic), where he played Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam or A Slave's Revenge. He studied to be a clergyman at Glasgow University in 1825 and married Margaret Gill. Beginning in 1827 he performed in numerous plays in Britain. Among the first were the title roles in King Lear and Othello. Others included the black slave Mungo in The Padlock, a popular comedy with musical interludes.
Aldridge was praised for his Othello by none other than Edmund Kean and in 1833 he was invited to perform the role at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden in London. Half the audience loved him and the other half booed him with racial slurs. The production was immediately cancelled. Aldridge continued to perform in the lesser houses of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Despite his excellent reputation and great popularity, he continued to be ignored by the major London theatres.
Madge Robertson, who played Aldridge's Desdemona in London, describes his acting style thus: “[Mr. Aldridge] used to take Desdemona out of bed by her hair, and drag her round the stage before he smothered her… I remember very distinctly this dragging of Desdemona about by the hair was considered so brutal that it was loudly hissed.”
Aldridge first toured Continental Europe in 1852, with successes in Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Richard III in Germany and Hungary. In the 1850’s and -60’s he undertook several extensive tours, performing in many of the capitals of Europe, including Stockholm in 1857. An 1858 tour took him to Serbia and Russia, where his modern acting style was highly appreciated. He mastered Russian well enough to perform roles in that language.
Aldridge was said to be the best paid actor of his time. When his first wife died, he married Amanda von Brandt. He became a British citizen in 1863 and died on tour in Poland in 1867.
Amanda von Brandt (1833-1915), actually Amanda Brandt, was the foster daughter of the blacksmith Olof Brandt (not Baron Olof von Brandt, as still officially alleged) in a small Swedish town. As a servant girl of sixteen she came to Stockholm, where she was given singing lessons at the Opera. In 1851 she took lodgings with Captain Johan Jacob von Scheven on the recommendation of his neighbor Theodor Lilja, a former police agent now possibly working for the secret police. She was involved in the case against the great Swedish poet Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, who was accused of having cheated von Scheven out of money, forging a signature, and trying to poison von Scheven. Both Amanda and Lilja testified against Almqvist in the police interrogation, but Almqvist was neither sentenced nor acquitted in the trial that followed a year later. Amanda, evidently provided with money and a letter of introduction, moved to Copenhagen, where she trained to become an opera singer at Denmark’s Royal Theatre. She added a “von” to her name, and “Baroness” Amanda von Brandt was touring with a German opera company when she met the black star actor Ira Aldridge. Amanda and Ira had two children before his first wife died in 1865. After Amanda and Ira were married they had two more children, the last one—born after Ira’s death—dying in infancy. All their children were musically talented. The daughter Luranah became an opera singer, the son Ira Fredric a pianist and composer, and the daughter Amanda Ira, a notable opera singer, teacher, and composer.
Amanda von Brandt lived for almost fifty years as a well-to-do widow outside London.
The Crown Prince, the future king Karl XV of Sweden (1826-1872), kept up a relentless campaign against the liberal press in Sweden around 1851. Some scholars see the prosecution of Almqvist as the result of a plot against the liberal Aftonbladet (“The Evening Sheet”), at that time Sweden’s largest newspaper, whose most influential writer was the author Almqvist. Whether Almqvist was the victim of a royal plot or a total psychopath who tried to swindle and murder his old benefactor von Scheven, the Crown Prince cleverly exploited the situation to encourage a witch hunt of Aftonbladet, its editor—and Almqvist. He succeeded all too well—a mere six weeks after Almqvist’s escape from Sweden the paper was sold to a conservative buyer.
