An Ethiopian actor who paid for Iago’s sin

The late Laureate Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin was the leading Amharic Shakespeare translator and his translation of Othello has been a popular item in the Addis Ababa theatrical repertoire.In the article, “Shakespeare in Ethiopia”, Prof.Richard Pankhurst relates the public’s reaction to the theatre, particularly to that of the deceitful Iago, played by Surafel Gashaw.

Othello was staged at Addis Ababa’s city Hall Theatre in 1980, a full seventeen years after its previous performance.The play was directed with considerable expertise by Abate Mekuria, who had begun his career at the Creative Arts Center before studying drama in Britain.A fine producer, he spent no less than half a year on the production-twice as long in fact as Tsegaye on the orginal translation.Accompanying music composed by Tefera Abune Wold, a student of the Armenian musician Nerses Nalbandian, added appreciably to production.The wedding scene, with its traditional dancing and the old-style ululation of the womenfolk, was in particular much praised.Abebe Balcha, a graduate of the Addis Ababa University’s Faculty of Law, played the part of Othello, and Hadis Ezkias, the first of three successive Desdemona.

The play was presented largely, but not entirely, in Ethiopian dress.No attempt was made to depict Othello as ethnically different from the rest of the cast.On the contrary, because of possible political sensitivities on this point, several lines referring to his race were actually expunged.

Tsegaye’s new Othello was performed twice a week, on Sunday afternoons for the general public and on a weekday for political groups;the play ran for close on a year and a quarter, or a total of 104 performances and was seen by an audience of over 100,000, a record for Africa.Persons of all ages flocked to attend, many of whom had never in fact previously seen a play.The theatre was full after  week, with long queues often stretching across the neighboring square beyond the Menilek statue.On the first afternoon a thousand people for whom there were no seats had to be returned away, and three to five hundred a day on later occasions.The box office netted around 400,000 Ethiopian Birr, that is $200,000.

The Ethiopian Herlad observed that ,”The tension of the spectators before Othello kills Desdemona and the dead silence that reigned after her murder were vivid testimonies of the emotional involvement of the audience”.

Warm admiration for the play was also voiced by a visiting Austrian actor, Karl Bohm, who was likewise much struck by the intensity of the public’s reaction.”This was the first time in the past ten years,” he observed ,”that I saw such audience-actor rapport.”He found it, he added, “a completely new experience that was extremely exciting,” and made him ” feel the theatre anew again”.

One of the most striking consequences of the public’s lack of exposure to the theatre was that many of the audience felt personally involved in the tragedy and reacted passionately to it.Surafel Gashaw, who played the deceitful Iago, suffered greatly as a result.He later recalled that many persons in the audience suffered visibly for Othello and audibly expressed thier fear and concern for Desdemona.Some wept;others walked out of the theatre before the play was over, while a few found the pain so great that they hurled shoes or insults at Iago.On one occasion he noticed a large, indignant woman in the auditorium, and , immediately afterward, a shoe flying at him which hit him on his knee.At the end of the performance Surafel saw another woman taking aim to throw a shoe at him.Unable to escape either backward or sideways, he advanced toward her, whereupon she screamed, “The devil is coming at me!” Later, when Iago was welcomed by unsuspecting Othello, she became so incensed that she spat aloud:”Tfoo!” and continued to do so throughout the rest of the play.

On yet another occasion a woman in the audience created so much fuss that the actor playing the part of Othello angrily demanded to know who had dared to disturb the peace at such a critical moment, whereupon she jumped up, and shouted, “it’s Iago!” Then, realizing that she had forgotten herself, she resumed her seat in confusion.She later got up and sat down several times, but when Othello was about to strangle Desdemona, she could stand it no longer and went to the edge of the stage and buried her head in her arm.”I would not have been surprised,” Surafel recalled, “if, as I took the curtain call, she had taken out a pistol and fired at me.” The unfortunate player had to pay for
Iago’s sins even outiside the theatre, for people often paid him the negative compliment of cursing or insulting him when he passed them in the street.