Its about 12:00 and my phone starts ringing, its Will. “What could he possibly want right now”, I think to myself, as I’m about to head to my room and go to bed. Begrudgingly, I answer and immediately I know that I’m not going to bed any time soon. The crazy news I received from Will was that he somehow managed to get into the Othello cast party and was currently hanging out with everyone we had seen on stage the night prior. I was with Charlie at the time so as soon as I was off the phone we started our walk over to the theater. When we got there Will was waiting outside, he said a quick word to the bouncer type figure standing at the door and them somehow we went up to the party.
Once we were inside the party, I immediately started recognizing people that had been in the play the night before. This was a really cool experience because to me I had only seen them as their characters in Othello and not as who they really were. Many of the actors personalities in real life matched up, in some way or another, with their on stage personas. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, who played Cassio, definitely had some of the character he was playing shining through in his personality. He was very outgoing and absolutely killed it on the dance floor, acting exactly as I would’ve expected Cassio. One exception to this general trend, however, was Hugh Quarshie, who played Othello. In person he had a very calm cool ere about him, a classic movie star in a sense. This really threw me off at first; it’s so easy to see someone acting and assume that’s how they act in real life but I was very impressed that he could alter his personality so greatly to fit the role.
Realizing how different most of the actors were from the characters they played gave me some insight into how talented these people are. Looking back on this I can’t help but wonder; whether its their performance on stage has some of their real personality present, or rather their off stage personalities are impacted by the character they have been playing for the past few months. I realize this is a classic the chicken or the egg scenario that I may never know the answer to but I found it to be an interesting thought.
Me Charlie and the illustrious Mr. Quarshie
