Othello (Play)

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    Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal to Lead Broadway ‘Othello’

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    Kenny Leon will direct a starry revival of Shakespeare’s tragedy in the spring of 2025.Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a Broadway production of “Othello” next year, setting up what is sure to be one of the hottest tickets of the 2024-2025 theater season.Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for directing a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” that starred Washington, will direct the production — the 22nd Broadway staging of “Othello” since 1751, according to the Internet Broadway Database. Leon also directed Washington’s Tony-winning performance in a 2010 production of “Fences.”Washington, an enormously successful film actor with two Academy Awards, for “Glory” and “Training Day,” has starred in five previous Broadway plays, most recently a 2018 revival of “The Iceman Cometh.”Gyllenhaal, also best known for his film career (“Brokeback Mountain,” the upcoming “Road House” remake), has starred in three previous Broadway shows, most recently a 2019 monologue called “A Life,” which was paired with “Sea Wall” for an evening of one-acts.In “Othello,” one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, Washington, 69, will play the title character, a general driven mad by jealousy. Gyllenhaal, 43, will play Iago, the story’s villain, who persuades Othello to question his wife’s fidelity. The role of Othello’s wife, Desdemona, has not yet been cast.The revival will be produced by Brian Anthony Moreland (“The Wiz”); the show is scheduled to open in the spring of 2025 at an unspecified Shubert Theater.The last Broadway production of “Othello” was in 1982, and starred James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago. More

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      With an ‘Othello’ of His Own, Clint Dyer Comes Full Circle

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      LONDON — When Clint Dyer was an aspiring actor in the mid-1980s, he made his first visit to the National Theater, the revered London playhouse whose productions are a showcase for the great and good of British drama. “I’d never seen a stage that size,” Dyer recalled recently. “I’d never seen actors of that level. What a thing! How inspiring!”But when Dyer walked out of the auditorium after the show, he saw something that changed his mood instantly, he said: On a wall was a large photograph from a 1960s production of “Othello,” with the actor Laurence Olivier in the title role — in blackface. The sight “broke my heart,” Dyer said.Dyer, who is Black, said he grabbed a pen and wrote the words “Shame on you” in the whites of Olivier’s eyes.Almost four decades later, Britain’s theatrical landscape has changed radically. Last year, Dyer, 54, was named as the National Theater’s deputy artistic director — a position that makes him arguably the most high-profile person of color in British theater. On Wednesday, he premieres his own production of “Othello” at the playhouse.“It’s such a strange feeling that I’m in this building, directing the play that broke my heart,” Dyer said in an interview. “The beauty of that circle is almost overwhelming.”As the deputy artistic director of the National Theater, Dyer is arguably the most high-profile person of color in British theater.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesThe National Theater rarely stages the lengthy “Othello,” but previous productions have been landmark events. Those include John Dexter’s 1964 production with Laurence Olivier (so revered that photographs from the show were still on display two decades later), Sam Mendes’s 1997 staging featuring David Harewood in the lead and Nicholas Hytner’s acclaimed 2013 production starring Adrian Lester as Shakespeare’s tragic hero, a Moor who murders his wife Desdemona after he is tricked into believing that she is having an affair.Dyer’s “Othello” — which sets the play in an arena populated by black-shirted thugs who seethe whenever Othello (Giles Terera) goes near his white wife (Rosy McEwen) — is highly anticipated, especially given that Dyer is the first Black director to tackle the play at the theater.During a recent rehearsal break, the director said he was hoping to do something new in this show. “As a Black man, I’ve always found productions problematic,” he said, adding that most directors play down the issue of race and focus on male jealousy, even when a Black actor takes the lead role. “The irony is,” Dyer said, “the way we’ve been performing ‘Othello’ has in some ways highlighted our racism more than the actual play.”Rosy McEwen as Desdemona and Giles Terera as Othello in the production by the National Theater, where Dyer is the first Black director to tackle the Shakespearean tragedy.Myah JeffersTo some theatergoers, Dyer’s rise to the heart of Britain’s theatrical establishment may appear swift. He was little known here until a play he directed and co-wrote, “Death of England,” opened in February 2020, just a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered London’s playhouses. The play, about a working-class man coping with his conflicting feelings for his deceased father, was a critical hit for the National Theater.Yet for almost two decades, Dyer had been toiling away in London’s theater land. Born in 1968, he was brought up in Upton Park, a poor district of East London. His mother was a nurse, and his father worked at a Ford car factory. He wanted to be a soccer player, he said, but after acting in a school play, older schoolmates encouraged him to attend Saturday morning workshops at the Theater Royal Stratford East. Soon, he was acting in a play directed by Mike Leigh, and theater administrators pushed him to try his hand at writing and directing, too.In 2004, Philip Hedley, the theater’s artistic director at the time, asked Dyer to direct his first production, “The Big Life,” about four immigrants to Britain from the Caribbean who take a vow to avoid women and wine, but swiftly break it. Based on Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” the musical transferred to the West End, though Dyer struggled to get directing work afterward.Hedley said that race was “the only reason” Dyer’s career didn’t take off at the time. If he had been white, “he’d have been the hot property,” Hedley said. Dyer said he restarted his career by taking acting gigs, and writing and directing plays on the side. It was 15 years before he directed in the West End again, with “Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical.” He is now developing a Muhammad Ali musical for Broadway.“It’s such a strange feeling that I’m in this building, directing the play that broke my heart,” said Dyer. “The beauty of that circle is almost overwhelming.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesThere is curiosity in Britain’s theater world not just about Dyer’s “Othello,” but also about his plans as the National Theater’s deputy director. Dominic Cooke, a former artistic director of the Royal Court who is one of the National’s associate artists, said Dyer was chosen for the role partly because of his “really strong take on the politics of race.”The theater has long set targets to increase diversity on its stages, including one for 25 percent of performers to be people of color. (Last season it surpassed most of its objectives, with nonwhite artists making up 36 percent of its performers.) Dyer said “targets are valuable,” but it shouldn’t just fall to casting directors to increase diversity onstage. “We should really be going to writers,” Dyer said, adding that he wanted to ask playwrights to consider the diversity of their characters from the moment they began working on a play.Writers “should be doing the work to actually go out and learn about different cultures, different people and find the vernaculars that they speak in,” Dyer said.For all that focus on race, Dyer said his main responsibility as the National Theater’s deputy director was nothing to do with diversity, but simply “to sell tickets” — and that started with his “Othello.” For an artist of his generation, it felt like “a big deal” that a Black director was staging the play there, he said, but younger people might not see it as significant.That didn’t bother him, he said. “I’m glad they don’t think this is a big deal, as I do,” Dyer added. “Because they shouldn’t. It should be bloody normal.” More

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      A Rare ‘Othello’ Puts the Spotlight on Race

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      With a Black-led production of Shakespeare’s play, an Austrian theater hopes to jump-start a conversation about racism and the need for diversity on the country’s stages.ST. PÖLTEN, Austria — “Speak of me as I am,” Othello urges in the wrenching final scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Yet for centuries, those words — a plea for accurate representation — were spoken, by and large, by white actors.Nicholas Monu, who stars in a new production of “Othello,” running through Dec. 4 at the Landestheater Niederösterreich here, is pretty sure that he is only the second Black performer to play the role in Austrian theater history. The last time was nearly 170 years ago, in 1853, when the pioneering African-American actor Ira Aldridge held Viennese audiences spellbound as the Moor of Venice.As directed by the young Black British director Rikki Henry, this new “Othello” breaks ground in a country where artists of color remain a rarity onstage.The majority of Austria’s population of around nine million is white and was born here, although the percentage of foreigners and people with migration backgrounds has been rising steadily in recent years. Like its larger and more ethnically varied neighbor Germany, Austria has a robust system of state-funded theaters that employ full-time acting ensembles; these, like the country at large, are overwhelmingly white.From left: Michael Scherff, Tim Breyvogel, Laura Laufenberg, Nicholas Monu, Marthe Lola Deutschmann, and Tilman Rose in “Othello” at the Landestheater Niederösterreich.Alexi PelekanosWith its new “Othello,” the Landestheater is jump-starting a conversation about racism in Austrian society and the need for diversity on the country’s stages. According to the theater, there has never been a German-language production of “Othello” with both a Black director and star before, and it seems significant that the first is taking place not in a major cultural metropolis, but in St. Pölten, a small city 40 miles outside Vienna.“It’s often said that innovation comes from the provinces,” Marie Rötzer, the Landestheater’s artistic director since 2016, said in an interview. Recently, her playhouse has been punching above its weight, with productions including a stellar 2019 staging of the Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek’s allegory of the Trump presidency, “Am Königsweg,” and a 2020 “Hamlet” that was Henry’s house debut, and which won a Netroy, the prestigious Austrian theater award.“With this ‘Othello,’ we’re addressing wounds,” said the Landestheater’s director, Marie Rötzer. “The wounds of racism, hostility towards refugees, xenophobia and the isolationism that you often find in Austria.” David Payr for The New York TimesAlthough Shakespeare has long been venerated in the German-speaking world, “Othello” is a comparative rarity on its theater programs.“Normally, nobody here wants to touch it,” said Tim Breyvogel, the German actor who plays Iago, in an interview after a recent matinee performance. In the wrong hands, he said, an “Othello” production can legitimize stereotypes about Black men. And then there’s the issue of casting, he added: Even in Austria, most theaters now realize that presenting the title role in blackface was unacceptable.Rötzer said she knew her theater’s “Othello” must have a Black actor in the title role. After Henry’s success with “Hamlet,” she approached him about directing the show. Henry and Monu’s experiences as Black men helped the theater to “develop an awareness about how to treat topics that are part of the Black community,” she said.“With this ‘Othello,’ we’re addressing wounds: the wounds of racism, hostility towards refugees, xenophobia and the isolationism that you often find in Austria,” Rötzer said.Henry, 33, said in an interview that it was “a challenge to try to work out what the story would now tell in Austria — because, of course, race relations are different in Austria than they are in England.”Monu, left, and Tim Breyvogel, playing Iago. The production is set in the world of professional boxing.Alexi PelekanosHis strikingly contemporary production is set in the world of professional boxing, where Othello is a heavyweight prizefighter. “My idea was of someone who was incredibly lonely and someone who was isolated,” Henry said.That sense of exclusion and alienation, the director said, was something that everyone, regardless of their skin color, could relate to. The boxing frame also helped to motivate Iago’s machinations and reveal the character’s racism, he added. “Iago’s manipulations and reasonings became more alive, because boxing is so competitive and relies on intrigue,” Henry said.The Black Lives Matter movement was heating up as he worked on the show last year, but Henry said he was careful not to take the production in an overtly political direction. “We didn’t want to say to the audience, ‘You’re racist!’” Henry said. “Theater isn’t supposed to be accusing anyone. It’s supposed to be supporting and maybe ennobling them in some way.”Rikki Henry, the production’s British director, said it was “a challenge to try to work out what the story would now tell in Austria,” adding, “race relations are different in Austria than they are in England.”Michael Obex“Maybe it just sparks some interesting questions that you haven’t asked before, like, ‘How do I treat that brown person who delivers my mail every morning?’” he added.Monu, 56, who was born in Nigeria but lives in Salzburg, Austria, said that racism in Austrian society largely lay beneath the surface. “People don’t give it a lot of thought. There hasn’t been that journey that America has been forced to make, because of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. — or that Germany has been forced to make, because of the Second World War,” he said.“It’s not an aggressive form of racism,” he added. “You’re just not taken seriously or not seen as on quite the same level as a human being.”Monu, who began his acting career in England, is a former ensemble member of two of the most significant theaters in the German-speaking world: the Schaubühne in Berlin and the Burgtheater in Vienna. Yet despite having benefited from the ensemble system, he said it would need updating if it hoped to reflect the increasingly multiethnic reality of Europe today.Europe’s ensemble system, in which theaters have a troupe of permanent actors, was “a fantastic system, designed for brothers like this,” said Monu, right, referring to Breyvogel, left.David Payr for The New York Times“It’s a fantastic system, designed for brothers like this,” he said, gesturing toward Breyvogel, who sat next to him during the interview, “to be able to go from here to Berlin to Vienna, and be able to fit straight in, because the system is pretty much the same everywhere.”In order for things to change, Austrian theater administrators and audiences will need to become more familiar with seeing actors of color and hearing different accents onstage, Monu said. He saw some encouraging signs, he added: When he joined the Burgtheater in the early 2000s, he was the only Black actor in the ensemble; today, there are three.“If you’re going to be truly diverse, then you’ve got to open up your doors towards people who don’t sound like you, look like you,” Monu said. “Sometimes the journey’s going to be unpleasant or uncomfortable.”Monu said he hoped that this “Othello” might inspire local audiences take that journey. “I can try my best to touch as many people as I can, just by saying, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m the first Black guy you’ve ever seen onstage — and speaking German.’” More

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      A Blackface ‘Othello’ Shocks, and a Professor Steps Back From Class

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      Students objected after the composer Bright Sheng showed the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s “Othello” to his class at the University of Michigan.It was supposed to be an opportunity for music students at the University of Michigan to learn about the process of adapting a classic literary text into an opera from one of the music school’s most celebrated professors, the composer Bright Sheng.But at the first class meeting of this fall’s undergraduate composition seminar, when Professor Sheng hit play on the 1965 film of Shakespeare’s “Othello” starring Laurence Olivier, it quickly became a lesson in something else entirely.Students said they sat in stunned silence as Olivier appeared onscreen in thickly painted blackface makeup. Even before class ended 90 minutes later, group chat messages were flying, along with at least one email of complaint to the department reporting that many students were “incredibly offended both by this video and by the lack of explanation as to why this was selected for our class.”Within hours, Professor Sheng had sent a terse email issuing the first of what would be two apologies. Then, after weeks of emails, open letters and canceled classes, it was announced on Oct. 1 that Professor Sheng — a two-time Pulitzer finalist and winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant — was voluntarily stepping back from the class entirely, in order to allow for a “positive learning environment.”The incident might have remained just the latest flash point at a music program that has been roiled in recent years by a series of charges of misconduct by star professors. But a day before Professor Sheng stepped down, a long, scathing Medium post by a student in the class rippled across Twitter before getting picked up in Newsweek, Fox News, The Daily Mail and beyond, entangling one of the nation’s leading music schools in the supercharged national debate over race, academic freedom and free speech.To some observers, it’s a case of campus “cancel culture” run amok, with overzealous students refusing to accept an apology — with the added twist that the Chinese-born Professor Sheng was a survivor of the Cultural Revolution, during which the Red Guards had seized the family piano.To others, the incident is symbolic of an arrogant academic and artistic old guard and of the deeply embedded anti-Black racism in classical music, a field that has been slow to abandon performance traditions featuring blackface and other racialized makeup.The Olivier “Othello,” from 1965, was controversial even when it was new; the critic Bosley Crowther expressed shock in The New York Times that the actor “plays Othello in blackface.” Warner BrothersIn an email to The New York Times, Professor Sheng, 66, reiterated his apology. “From the bottom of my heart, I would like to say that I am terribly sorry,” he said.“Of course, facing criticism for my misjudgment as a professor here is nothing like the experience that many Chinese professors faced during the Cultural Revolution,” he wrote. “But it feels uncomfortable that we live in an era where people can attempt to destroy the career and reputation of others with public denunciation. I am not too old to learn, and this mistake has taught me much.”Professor Sheng, who joined the Michigan faculty in 1995 and holds the title Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor, the highest rank on the faculty, was born in 1955 in Shanghai. As a teenager during the Cultural Revolution, to avoid being sent to a farm to be “re-educated,” he auditioned for an officially sanctioned folk music ensemble, and was sent to Qinghai province, a remote area near the Tibetan border, according to a university biography.After the universities reopened in 1976, he got a degree in composition from Shanghai University, and in 1982, he moved to the United States, eventually earning a doctorate at Columbia University.His work, which includes an acclaimed 2016 opera based on the 18th-century Chinese literary classic “Dream of the Red Chamber,” blends elements of Eastern and Western music. “When someone asks me if I consider myself a Chinese or American composer, I say, in the most humble way, ‘100 percent both,’” he said earlier this year.The Olivier film was controversial even when it was new. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Bosley Crowther expressed shock that Olivier “plays Othello in blackface,” noting his “wig of kinky black hair,” his lips “smeared and thickened with a startling raspberry red” and his exaggerated accent, which he described as reminiscent of “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” (To “the sensitive American viewer,” Crowther wrote, Olivier looked like someone in a “minstrel show.”)Professor Sheng, in his emailed response to questions from The Times, said that the purpose of the class had been to show how Verdi had adapted Shakespeare’s play into an opera, and that he had chosen the Olivier film simply because it was “one of the most faithful to Shakespeare.” He also said that he had not seen the makeup as an attempt to mock Black people, but as part of a long tradition — one that has persisted in opera — which he said valued the “music quality of the singers” over physical resemblance.“Of course, times have changed, and I made a mistake in showing this film,” he said. “That was insensitive of me, and I am very sorry.”But to the students — for some, it was their very first class at the university — it was simply a shock. “I was stunned,” Olivia Cook, a freshman, told The Michigan Daily, adding that the classroom was “supposed to be a safe space.”Bright Sheng’s work includes an acclaimed 2016 opera based on the 18th-century Chinese literary classic “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which was performed at the San Francisco Opera in 2016.Jason Henry for The New York TimesA week after the video was shown, Professor Sheng signed on to a letter from six of the composition department’s seven professors, which described the incident as “disappointing and harmful to individual students in many different ways, and destructive to our community.” He also sent another, longer, apology, saying that since the incident, “I did more research and learning on the issue and realized that the depth of racism was, and still is, a dangerous part of American culture.”Professor Sheng also cited discrimination he had faced as an Asian American and listed various Black musicians he had mentored or supported, as well as his daughter’s experience performing with Kanye West. “I hope you can accept my apology and see that I do not discriminate,” he wrote.That apology provoked fresh outrage. In an open letter to the dean, a group of 33 undergraduate and graduate students and nine staff and faculty members (whose names were not made public) called on the school to remove Professor Sheng from the class, calling his apology “inflammatory” and referring to an unspecified “pattern of harmful behavior in the classroom” which had left students feeling “unsafe and uncomfortable.”(“In retrospect,” Professor Sheng wrote in his email to The Times, “I should have apologized for my mistake without qualification.”).css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}On Sept. 30, a senior in the class, Sammy Sussman, posted the long Medium essay, outlining what he saw as Professor Sheng’s “disregard for students” (which, he wrote, included walking out in the middle of Mr. Sussman’s audition for the program several years earlier). Mr. Sussman, who in 2018 was the first to report allegations of sexual misconduct against another music faculty member, Stephen Shipps, also linked the case to what he said was a broader failure of the university and the classical music industry to hold prominent figures to account.After Mr. Sussman posted a link to the essay on Twitter, it was retweeted by another composition professor, Kristin Kuster, who cited the need for “conversations about pedagogical racism and pedagogical abuse,” and tagged a number of musicians, as well as the Pulitzer Prize board and the MacArthur Foundation. (Both Mr. Sussman and Professor Kuster declined to comment on the record.)Some accused the students, and the school, of overreacting. In an article in Reason, Robby Soave, an editor at the magazine, argued that Professor Sheng’s apology “ought to have been more than sufficient” and argued that he now deserves an apology himself.“The University of Michigan is a public institution at which students and professors deserve free speech and expression rights,” he wrote. “It is a violation of the university’s cherished principles of academic freedom to punish Sheng for the choices he makes in the classroom. Screening a racially problematic film in an educational setting is neither a racist act nor an endorsement of racism.”A spokesman for the university, Kim Broekhuizen, confirmed that the incident had been referred to the university’s Office of Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX for investigation, but emphasized that Professor Sheng had stepped down from the class voluntarily, was still teaching individual studios, and was scheduled to teach next semester.“We do not shy away from addressing racism or any other difficult topic with our students,” Ms. Broekhuizen said in an email to The Times. But “in this particular instance, the appropriate context or historical perspective was not provided and the professor has acknowledged that.”Some scholars who teach blackface traditions questioned the quickness of some to denounce the students, or to mock their insistence on contextualization as a demand for “trigger warnings.”“Gen Z is unbelievably right on when they say, ‘If you’re not going to give us the context, we shouldn’t have to watch it,’” said Ayanna Thompson, a Shakespeare scholar at Arizona State University who has written extensively on Shakespeare and race.Professor Thompson, the author of the recent book “Blackface” and a trustee of the Royal Shakespeare Company, declined to comment on the details of Professor Sheng’s case. But she said that when it comes to “Othello” and blackface minstrelsy, the connections aren’t incidental, but absolutely fundamental.Contrary to widespread belief, she said, blackface wasn’t an American invention, but sprang from older European performance traditions going back to the Middle Ages. And it was at an 1833 performance of “Othello” featuring a blacked-up actor that T.D. Rice, the white American performer seen as the father of minstrelsy, claimed to have been inspired to get up at intermission and put on blackface to perform “Jump Jim Crow” for the first time.“Whenever you’re teaching Shakespeare, period, the history of performing race should be part of the discussion,” Professor Thompson said. “Everyone has a responsibility to give the full history.” More