The Royal Shakespeare Company has cast Sharon D Clarke as a black lesbian Othello in a futuristic reimagining of the play which is being billed as projecting the 400-year-old story through “an urgent new lens”.
Clarke, who is a three-time Olivier winner and has starred in West End and Broadway productions, brought the project to the RSC with the twist that Othello would be depicted as a black lesbian general married to a younger Desdemona.
The actor said the production would recall her Olivier-winning performance in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which recast the Jewish Loman family as African American. “Everything was ramped up,” she said of the casting change.
“The American dream became so visceral because you could see the American dream and the impossibilities of it for that family. I’m hoping now through this lens with Othello, you will have to see things differently.”
Clarke added: “She is predominantly in a male environment, so how does she deal with that on a day-to-day basis? How does she keep her dignity and her strength and her power and her womanhood on display?”
The RSC’s production will be set in the future, to avoid “the whole camouflage” thing, said Clarke, with a 15-year age gap between Othello and Desdemona.
The RSC has made theatrical history with previous Othello productions in the UK: Hugh Quarshie became the first black actor to play Iago at the RSC in 2015. But Clarke isn’t the first black British woman to play Othello as a lesbian.
Gemma Bodinetz’s 2018 production at Liverpool’s Everyman cast Bridgerton star Golda Rosheuvel as the tragic general. At the time, Bodinetz said it was a bold attempt to “make the play feel electric again”.
Monique Touko will be directing the RSC production which looks at Othello through the lens of misogynoir; the term coined by gay black feminist American academic Moya Bailey, who defined it as “the particular brand of hatred directed at black women”.
Clarke said she would channel her own experiences of being an out lesbian, such as being told by family that if you are gay, “you’re never going to work, you’re never going to get family and never going to fall in love”.
“I’m going to incorporate that within her,” said Clarke. “She is the strong leader, but those vulnerabilities are still going to be there.”
The production is part of an expanded 2026-27 season at the RSC, which has undergone a difficult 18 months with increased costs leading to a decision to cut its workforce by 11% in order to avoid what its joint artistic director Daniel Evans called a “perilous situation”.
Former National Theatre artistic director Rufus Norris makes his RSC directorial debut with a premiere of Brock’s Mill, from RSC writer in residence Stewart Pringle.
Two more productions have also been announced: a touring version of Blanche McIntyre’s the Merry Wives of Windsor, and an early years adaptation of David Litchfield’s children’s book The Bear and the Piano.
The RSC has also appointed Grammy, Olivier and Tony award winner Martin Lowe as music associate, while Paula Stephens joins as head of voice and Emily Burns, Ryan Day and Elizabeth Freestone all become associate directors at the company.
“We want to ensure that as many people as possible feel welcome at the RSC through the stories we choose to tell,” said Evans and his joint artistic director , Tamara Harvey. They added that “re-examining 400-year-old texts through an urgent new lens” was part of that.
