INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

In the wake of all of the disgusting allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against so many powerful men in the entertainment and music industries (to say nothing of our representatives in Congress and so-called president), I feel compelled to say something about how these revelations have affected my life. Granted I have been a musician for all of my life, and there were the occasional college professors who thought that they could pressure me to come to their homes to "discuss" my grade. Then there was the total stranger who followed me on the street in Philadelphia, and decided to follow me into the vestibule of an apartment house and feel me up (until I thought to scream). And then there was the man in Prague who gave me the wrong directions so that I ended up in an isolated wooded area, where he followed me and put his hands on me (until I fought him off).

It isn’t often that April and I get to sit in the audience for a performance of an entire Shakespeare play, but the opportunity presented itself when the No Man’s Land Theatre Company invited us to attend a performance of Othello in early November. They aren’t kidding when they say No Man’s Land; the production had an all-female cast! Director Emily Messana was quoted in an interview which was printed in the program as stating, “We came up with wanting to do ‘Othello’ and were gonna do it through the New School, but there were a few complications with that. So we thought, ‘Let’s just make a theater company of our own!’” So we made our way to the Alchemical Theatre Laboratory on West 14 th Street in Manhattan on Saturday, November 4 th to witness this unique theatrical experience. Director Emily Messana At first we were struck by how entire sets were constructed using movable wooden boxes. All cast members would pick up boxes and move them where they needed to be. The ...