ABSTRACT
The Market Theatre production of Othello was a significant event in the history of South African theatre. It was the most high-profile professional William Shakespeare production in the Transvaal for decades not to be presented by the state-sponsored Performing Arts Council. The success of the Market Othello may largely be attributed to its effectiveness in furnishing images that satisfied the liberal Johannesburg spectators'. No matter what justification the racism of Iago might seem to provide for Othello's actions in Acts 4 and 5, any representation by a black man of the narrative in the form determined by Shakespeare traps the actor into performing a ritualized enactment of the infidel's regression to barbarism as the figuration of the most fearful colonialist fantasy. Given the many derogatory references to Othello's 'blackness' by Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio, it is astonishing that the play's potential racism in performance has not been a major focus of critical attention in the twentieth-century theatre.
