Desdemona at Roslyn Packer Theatre

Sydney Festival launches its 40th celebrating a great work of art, with two Festival alumni Peter Sellars and Rokia Traoré.

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer songwriter Rokia Traoré and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars, featuring actress Tina Benko.

Desdemona is the most fiery angel in Shakespeare's creation­--a radiant and radical woman of independence, courage, and love. Toni Morrison reveals secrets in Othello that will change forever our reading of the play.

In a time outside of time we discover the other African in Shakespeare's play - Barbary, the maid who raised Desdemona on African stories and songs, embodied by Rokia Traoré.

As women's voices fill the night air, we are in an intimate, theatrical séance. Words and music move across continents and centuries, connecting Elizabethan England to the Courts of Timbuktu to the future of the human race on this earth.

Authors

• Paula Vogel