Tom Burmester had a mission statement. The Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble, founded by Burmester in 2004 after he graduated from UCLA with a master of fine arts in directing, had a “commitment to strike a balance between … the works of new playwrights and revisiting timely and important classics.”
In its almost seven-year history, however, the ensemble had only put on two Shakespeare plays, “Macbeth” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Othello,” which opened on Thursday at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica, is an effort to hold true to the ensemble’s initial theatrical intentions.
Burmester, who shared his producer title with Danika Sudik, a UCLA theater alumna, said that other forces influenced the decision to put on the play featuring the Moor of Venice.
“”˜Othello’ is a great Shakespearean tragedy … and the members of the ensemble were really chomping at the bit to do it. And it just seemed like the right path,” Burmester said, explaining that many people had approached him for the last year and a half pushing for a production of “Othello.”
As an example of classical theater, Burmester said the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble is playing “Othello” straight, meaning it is attempting to perform the play as accurately as possible.
For example, director Phillip Kelly initially put out a casting call for black and Arab actors to play Othello.
While Kelly emphasized the importance of selecting the most talented actors, the initial casting call falls in line with a standard interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
“I didn’t really want to step too far away from the traditional way of doing it. This is my first time touching upon “˜Othello,’ and I think you have to really understand “˜Othello’ as it was meant to be done before you go messing with it,” Kelly said. “I had to, for myself as an artist, do it as a period piece.”
Tradition, however, does not imply lack of innovation. Emmalinda Maclean, a UCLA theater alumna who plays Bianca, hailed the play’s aesthetic as one of the production’s greatest strengths.
“The set in particular is a really powerful metaphor throughout the play. The walls all move,” Maclean said. “It’s like 30 seconds, and all of a sudden we’re in a totally different space. I think that it’s really crazy and jarring and powerful.”
Kelly conceived the moving walls not only as a way to change scene locations, but also to set a scene’s mood and show the villainous Iago’s role in “Othello.”
“Iago is sort of leading everybody through this maze,” Kelly said. “The moving walls on stage … become different areas and different hallways and paths, some very claustrophobic and some very open for different scenes to capture different emotional feelings.”
Eric Anderson, who graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a bachelor’s in theater, plays Cassio and also served as the production’s fight choreographer.
Anderson called the Powerhouse Theatre’s small proscenium stage challenging at times, but praised both Kelly’s maze motif and the cast’s ability to pick up on difficult choreography.
“Just because of space and how it is so tight and confined and intimate, I feel that this “˜Othello’ is much more of a bedroom drama as opposed to a traditional sense of outdoor Shakespeare,” Anderson said.
To find a cast up to the task of playing characters of such epic proportions, Burmester said he values the continued connection between the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble and UCLA.
“I’m still making connections with UCLA students because once you have that connection there, if you maintain it, you can continue to mine it over and over again,” Burmester said. “That’s probably one of the reasons why it seems that there are always UCLA people in Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble productions. We’re not exclusively UCLA, but that connection is just so rich.”
Maclean said she sees networking as the most important thing from her time at UCLA and values performing alongside like-minded actors in “Othello.”
“You graduate with a degree in theater and you kind of know that you’re signing up to struggle a lot, and I just consider it such a gift to work on what I think is one of the greatest pieces of theater to ever come out of western civilization,” Maclean said.
“And it’s just so valuable to have an artistic community where you can be part of those projects that feed your soul, even if they don’t pay your bills.”