Forget “Barbenheimer.” Try “Desdemilia.”
CFA plays "DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief" and "Emilia" take on women and Shakespeare on the same set at the Booth Theatre
Arabella Benjamin (CFA’25) as Desdemona (left) and Lana Breheney (CFA’25) as Emilia in CFA’s DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief, which runs at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre April 16 to 19.
Forget “Barbenheimer.” Try “Desdemilia.”
CFA plays DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief and Emilia take on women and Shakespeare on the same set at the Booth Theatre
This article was originally published in BU Today on April 16, 2025. By Joel Brown. Photos by Cydney Scott
EXCERPT
The word of the month at the College of Fine Arts School of Theatre is “Desdemilia.”
It’s a portmanteau combining the titles DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief, and Emilia, the school’s spring productions at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre. The two plays are linked by connections to Shakespeare and an exploration of women’s roles—and they even share a set.
“Everyone on both of the teams has been working together on the vision of this since last November,” says Taylor Stark (CFA’25), who directs Emilia. “Some of the first conversations we had were about themes that feel like they’re overlapping in the two stories, so we could start to build a space that felt like it would work for both stories.”
Left: Arabella M. Benjamin (CFA’25) as Desdemona (top) and Lana Breheney (CFA’25) as Emilia in CFA’s DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief, on stage this weekend at the Booth Theatre. Right: Lana Breheney (CFA’25) plays Emilia in CFA’s DESDEMONA,
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“We’re trying to find more ways of making connections between the pieces that we do,” says Kirsten Greenidge, a CFA associate professor and director of the School of Theatre. “We’re helping those conversations to happen for audiences and also for students.”
The two productions feature all-female casts, following the all-male production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi earlier this month at Studio One. “What the plays are asking for in terms of how you present them is very different,” says Sorenson, like Stark a student in the MFA directing program. DESDEMONA has a cast of 3 and takes place over the course of one day in one location; Emilia has a cast of 13 and takes place over many years in multiple locations.
“My play really is about three women who are very isolated in a very masculine world,” Sorenson says. “They’re on this island, very far away from Venice, which is where they are from. So actually, having a very large space felt like it isolated these three bodies on stage really effectively and in a helpful way for the storytelling.”
A Vogel devotee, Sorenson arranged a zoom call with the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright for the cast.
Directors Taylor Stark (CFA’25) (left), of Emilia, and Grant Sorenson (CFA’25), of DESDEMONA a play about a handkerchief, on the set the two shows will share.
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“I think in the plan for next year, there will be some connection points like that as well. And it’s fun to throw more things in front of the students, right?” says Greenidge, an award-winning playwright. “As a student, you might find it rather challenging. I hope that that is part of the education here for both BFAs and MFAs, that it’s a challenge that they have the tools to be able to handle.”