Othello: The Remix

Overview

After wowing thousands in Chicago, London, Edinburgh and Sydney, this urban take on Othello is coming to the Auckland Arts Festival 2015. America’s leading re-interpreters of Shakespeare, Chicago’s Q Brothers have toured internationally with their critically acclaimed shows Funk It Up About Nothin’ (their version of Much Ado About Nothing), an adaptation of A Comedy of Errors, and A Mad-Summer Night’s Dream (no points for guessing what that was an adaption of).

The siblings plan to eventually create hip hop translations of all of Shakespeare's works, saying that while they “treat the work with respect and we think he was a genius… our philosophy is, you want to live on as an art form 500 years later, you can't do it the same way.” They believe that Shakespeare himself would probably be doing similar things with his own work, were he alive today.

Remaining true to Shakespeare’s famous tragic story of betrayal, tragedy and self-doubt, Othello: The Remix tells the tale of MC Othello who gets out of the ghetto and sees enormous musical success, making it quickly to the top. He wins the respect of the music industry, the adulation of fans and the heart of the beautiful singer Desdemona. However, hip-hop purist Iago has something more sinister planned for Othello than a mere rap battle, and MC Othello’s world quickly begins to crumble.