Petaluma’s Carl Jordan teams up with SF’s African-American Shakespeare

“This is one of the most amazing texts, one of the most amazing scripts, that I’ve ever had my hands on,” says theater director Carl Jordan, of Petaluma. He is describing his relationship to William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” which he is currently directing for the African American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco. The play runs Oct. 12-27 at the Marine’s Memorial Theatre, and for the last few weeks Jordan has been commuting to the city several days a week to work with the cast, which includes his longtime friend, the acclaimed actor L. Peter Callender, playing the role of Othello. “As a director,” says Jordan, “’Othello’ is an incredible challenge. I didn’t realize how much until I started working on it. It’s got some of the most beautiful language ever written, and with something like that, you just want to do it justice.”

It’s a Sunday evening, and Jordan is relaxing at Ernie’s Tin Bar after a long afternoon in the city. At today’s rehearsal, he brought in a military expert to work with the cast on details of their performance. Though originally set in Venice and Cyprus in the mid-1500s, Jordan has elected to reimagine the play - about a group of soldiers and a plot to destroy the black general of the Venetian army - to take place in modern day Washington D.C. and on a base in Syria. The expert was on hand today to help the cast get the military specifics right.

Moving the setting up 450 years is part of Jordan’s strategy to make this “Othello” pop for today’s audiences, many of whom will be young.

“Some of the things raised in the play are even more relevant now than they were when Shakespeare wrote it,” Jordan says. “Racism is a big part of this play, of course. So is misogyny. So I decided to set it in the now, because, in my opinion, the issues and the problems and the attitudes in this play are contemporary issues, and problems and attitudes. We are having a national crisis around these issues right now. So it seems important to acknowledge that, to take this 400-plus-year-old play, is make this a modern day tale, to meet some of those issues head on.”

“Othello,” of course, is the tale of a black general who marries a white woman, Desdemona, and is then driven to jealousy by the duplicitous trickery of the villainous, Iago. It is considered one of the great tragedies in the English language. This, it turns out, is the first time African-American Shakespeare Company has staged the play.

Founded in 1994 with the intention of bringing classical theatre to a more diverse audience, African-American Shakespeare Company has won numerous awards for its productions, all while expanding opportunities for actors of color to practice their art through tackling some of the greatest stage roles ever written.

“Peter Callender is one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever seen on stage and it’s a blessing to get to work with him,” says Jordan. “He knows Shakespeare better than anyone I know. He’s done “The Tempest” with Julie Taymor. He’s wanted to play this for a long time, and I’m telling you, he’s so good in this role. It’s such an honor, such an incredible privilege, to get to work with him, and to work with an institution like African-American Shakespeare Company. Honestly, to get to work with this whole cast is an honor.”

Asked how he became involved in such a historical production, Jordan laughs.

“Peter called me up and said, ‘Carl, I’ve seen a lot of your productions, and have always wanted to work with you,’” he recalls. “He mentioned the 25th Anniversary, that they’d decided to do ‘Othello,’ and he asked me to direct it. Honestly, up until that call, I’d been thinking of taking a long break from directing. But how could I say no to L. Peter Callender? How could I say no to ‘Othello?’”

Now that he’s just a couple of weeks from opening the show, Jordan admits that “Othello” might be the hardest script he’s ever worked on. And that’s saying something, given that over the years, Jordan has directed “The Taming of the Shrew,” “A Comedy of Errors,” and a little thing called “Return to the Forbidden Planet,” which borrowed text from numerous Shakespeare plays, combined it with classic rock songs, and set the whole thing in outer space.

“A lot of people have a lot of specific expectations for this particular play,” Jordan says, in answer to a question of how he thinks people will react to the shifts in time and other little alterations he’s made to “Othello.” “It’s a 400-year-old play that has stood the tests of time, so there isn’t anything much I could do that would destroy it,” he laughs. “But like I said to the cast on our first day, I believe this play is a gift, and it should be treated with awe, and reverence and gratitude. But we should also treat it like this is the first time anyone’s produced it, like the author just finished it two days ago, and gave it to us yesterday, and now we’re doing it today.”

With that very thought in mind, Jordan adds, he and Callender and the cast have taken some of those time-honored expectations for “Othello,” and have put them in storage.

“We’re making up our own new expectations now,” he says. “Will it work? We think so, but if it doesn’t, at least you won’t be bored. At least you won’t fall asleep wishing the people doing ‘Othello’ this time weren’t too afraid to take a few chances. But for what it’s worth, I honestly think this does work. I think it’s going to be unforgettable.”