The Martlet

Othello may be a werewolf amidst vampires in the Big Ideas club production that ran in Vertigo last week, but the crew doesn’t want any association with Twilight.

Director Jesse Cooper said he’s drawn from such influences as Underwold, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and even The Crow — but inevitably, the show will be compared to the Nancy Meyers saga.

“We’re going in a very different direction; we’ve got a gothic-melodrama vibe happening,” said Cooper.

In his vision of the play, Othello is a vital, exotic character who has the life sucked out of him by the soulless vampires that surround him.

The show starred Ryan Levis, who is currently running for chairperson of the UVSS, as the namesake of the show.

The production, which ran from Feb. 27 to March 2, initially garnered controversy. Some were concerned Levis would be performing in blackface.

“We never even considered blackface. I mean, we experimented with henna and stuff, but we would never go the whole way,” Levis said.

Levis believes the story of Othello is one of Shakespeare’s greatest works, but isn’t performed often enough.

He said there was a degree of risk in bringing him to the stage, but that the mandate of the Big Ideas club is to unite artists and business students and to combine creation and commerce.

Andrew Wade played Iago, while Emelia Hellman played Othello’s wife, Desdemona. The 11-person cast was mostly made up of UVic and Camosun theatre students.

Levis said the role is the most challenging of his career to date, and said the fact that the show overlapped with his UVSS campaign was a “happy accident.” The response to the play has been encouraging, with approximately 40-70 people showing up for each night of the show.

Cooper, who has experience directing dinner theatre in the Kamloops area, was excited to tackle a student Shakespeare production. He was especially pleased to use Vertigo’s space, as it gave him an opportunity to work with an unorthodox stage.

As for the supernatural content, Cooper thinks it’s justified by the text.

“There’s a line in Act I, scene 3 where Othello is accused of witchcraft. So you have this supernatural reference right off the top — the idea of monsters and magic,” he said.

The two-and-a-half-hour long production will raise proceeds for the Victoria Shakespeare Society’s summer theatre program.