The Untitled Othello Project is back at Sacred Heart University. This project is a residency that has been periodically coming to campus since the fall of 2021. Participants collaborate through workshops and table readings as part of an active learning laboratory. These participants include students, faculty and professional actors.
The focus is on Shakespeare’s work, “Othello,” discussing the ethics of the show and its deep themes, performing it with professional actors and scholars reckoning with the play’s racist and misogynist tropes.
According to the univeristy’s website, “Othello” is the story of a black man, a general in Venice, who marries a white woman, Desdemona. Othello’s right-hand man, Iago, seeks to undermine the general by smearing him with racist remarks and inciting him into a jealous rage over Desdemona’s imagined adultery, set on by Iago. Studying this play with the ensemble, students can interrogate Iago’s racism and see how it is embedded in every character in the play.
“Not only are we writing a play, we are building a play. We are trying to find a deeper level of humanity from each character in our play,” said Keith Cobb, actor and director.
During these seminars, each actor acts out a different character from the play while members sitting around the room participate. The actors then develop their character based on the questions they are receiving.

Source: Rebecca Weinberg, Staff Photographer and Writer
It is not just a play, the character development builds as the members ask more questions and as the show goes on. The actors are able to put a modern twist on characters in the original play.
“I’ve learned we shouldn’t write things off as being a product of their time because you can’t really advance society that way, and it is important to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while,” said junior Wren Campise, who is involved with the project.
The actors physically tap into their character each time they come up and talk, and there is a lot of development from the original play to the modern world.
“As a female, I think it’s important that we look at this old text through a modern lens because there are not a lot of female characters in the original play, and I like that they are giving more character depth to Desdemona,” said Campise. “Shakespeare is something that is not part of our time, and it is important to contextualize his play in a modern way.”
The project shows Shakespeare’s original work while also combining real world modern day problems and acting out how these characters would feel with these problems.
“I brought the Untitled Othello Project to Sacred Heart back in 2021. I called Keith when I was teaching Shakespeare, and he suggested we give this project a shot,” said Emily Bryan, a professor in the English department at Sacred Heart. “The project is like a humanities study, in a way, it analyzes how humans behave and embodies humanity studies.”
Originally the project was created as a way to talk about tough conversations.
“Coming together and reading together was important to students, artists and faculty. When we all come in the room and have a common thing to talk about we aren’t so divided. A lot of conversations in the world are brought into the room,” said Bryan.