Harlem Duet CSI

Harlem Duet CSI

Bianca Nicolosi and Conner Reed

Contexts:

• Djanet Spears
• Writes to tell stories about her culture and community
• First black playwright to have her work performed at the Stratford Festival of Canada
• Born in England to Guyanese father and Jamaican mother
• Raised in England/Canada
• The play is set at the intersection of MLK and Malcolm X; it’s a dialogue between their ideals
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Focused on integration
• Non-violent protest
• Malcolm X
• Supported black supremacy
• Against the integration of blacks and whites
• Harlem Renaissance
• Cultural period in 1920s characterized by an influx of racial pride, centered in Harlem
• Developed the concept of the “New Negro”, which Othello references
• Jazz, blues, funk music
• Mixture of music and politics starting each chapter
• Culture of blues and music in black culture, particularly in Harlem, home of Jazz

Subtexts:

• Settings:
• Three Settings; 1860’s (slaves), 1820’s (Harlem Renaissance), and “present”
• Talks about how racial entrapment/dichotomies are timeless and cyclical
• The difference between black things and white things
• Canada talks about how Billie has always been averse to milk
• She resents the idea that whiteness has always defined blackness
• Othello has a complicated relationship with this duality
• On the one hand, he sees his skin as irrelevant to his experience, which Billie characterizes as “white” and he simply characterizes as “American”
• On the other, he resents his own “blackness” and passionately admits to preferring the liberation he’s afforded in being with a white woman
• Adherence to mysticism/ritual
• Early conversations between Magi and Amah discussing superstitious ways to keep a male partner (margarine on the buttocks, cooking a meal with laundry water)
• Billie and her other avatars use mysticism as a part of their basic racial identity
• Her books are made up of mystical texts juxtaposed with works about Africa and racial identity
• “Jumping the broom”
• African-Americans as entertainment
• Hottentot Venus discussion highlights the white exploitation of black people for exotic, eccentric entertainments
• Black “minstrel show” in 1920s
• Othello feels that he is

Intertexts:

• “I have a dream” speech

• Quoted by both Othello and Billie at separate points in the play
• Othello
• Relationship between Othello and Mona reflective of Othello and Desdemona
• Frequently quotes Othello directly
• Pericles
• Mona offers “He” a leading role in Shakespeare’s Pericles
• Pericles discusses the relationships between parents and children
• Family focus
• “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech by Sojourner Truth
• Quoted by name when Billie is in the early stages of poisoning Othello’s handkerchief  
• Billie’s identity as a black feminist shown here, as Truth was an early and crucial figure in the black feminist movement
• Toni Morrison’s Beloved
• Female counterparts to Othello frequently use the term “beloved”
• Book deals with ghosts of a mother’s child haunting her from the past (Billie’s abortion)
• Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fenon
• Sociological texts that discusses the colonialist aspects of internalized racism; the empirical association of “blackness” with “badness”
• Says that people lose their cultural identity by being made to feel “less”
• Billie says Othello is suffering from “corporal malediction”, which originated from the text of this book
• Alluded to in the 1920s setting where He performs in a minstrel show
• Billie breaks Othello’s mask in the modern Harlem setting
• Sybil
• Billie’s real name “Sybil,” alluding to the ancient “Sibyl’s”- greek prophetesses and mystical women
• Reference to movie Sybil where a woman is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder
• Billie refers to herself as Sybil when in most “mystical” state and about to be institutionalized