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What would happen if Juliet's and Desdemona's death sentences were reprieved? In this exuberant revision of Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet, Constance Ledbelly, a dusty academic, deciphers a cryptic manuscript she believes to be the original source for the tragedies, and is transported into the plays themselves. She visits Juliet and Desdemona, has a hand in saving them from death and finds out what they are all about. In true Shakespearean spirit, Constance plunders the plays and creates something new, all the while engaging in a personal voyage of self-discovery. With an abundance of twists, fights, dances, seductions and wild surprises, the play is an absolute joy.
Goodnight Desdemona was Ann-Marie MacDonald's first solo flight as playwright, and since its premier in 1988 it has been performed continually in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Japan, and is widely studied in drama courses. Ann-Marie MacDonald lives in Toronto.
Author biography courtesy of HarperCollins.
"The only actual skill I possess is the ability to type. And yet, the only job I was ever fired from was office temp -- I lasted three hours. I waitressed years ago when I was starting out as an actor. I once spilled three Tequila Sunrises in a row on the same customer. Unaccountably, I was never fired from a waitressing job. I like to cook. My mother is Lebanese so my tastes lean toward the Mediterranean. I have beautiful partner, a baby, two dogs and a garden. After the "sturm und drang" of my early youth and art, I find domestic bliss to be the most conducive to articulating the inner storms that make for good fiction. I'm a homebody who travels a lot."
"I think good art, including good books, make the world bigger, one heart, one mind at a time. I craft stories that are meant to work on many levels, and not every reader needs to read on all those levels in order to be deeply rewarded. I respect the reader, and I empathize with their hope that, when they crack open the pages, they will be taken away. I try to reach a broad audience and invite readers to empathize across time, space, culture, race, gender -- the works."
"I believe people are capable of more empathy and insight than the nightly news would have us think. I believe we crave to see -- really see -- through one another's eyes, even when that might be frightening."
"My first love is comedy, and like most comedians, I derive my material from the dark. My job as a writer is to craft the invitation to the reader to undertake a journey, just as Virgil beckoned Dante into The Inferno and beyond. My pledge to the reader is the assurance that we will take this journey together. Hell, purgatory, heaven...a divine comedy indeed. As E. M. Forster said in Howard's End, ‘Only connect.'"
Overview
What would happen if Juliet's and Desdemona's death sentences were reprieved? In this exuberant revision of Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet, Constance Ledbelly, a dusty academic, deciphers a cryptic manuscript she believes to be the original source for the tragedies, and is transported into the plays themselves. She visits Juliet and Desdemona, has a hand in saving them from death and finds out what they are all about. In true Shakespearean spirit, Constance plunders the plays and creates something ...