Emilia

April 25 – 27, 2025

Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre

Emilia, by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and directed by Taylor Stark (CFA’25) is a riotous, witty reclaiming of the life of an exceptional woman. Four hundred years ago, Emilia Bassano wanted her voice to be heard. It wasn’t. Could she have been the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets? What of her own poetry? Why was her story erased from history? In Malcolm’s electrifying play, Emilia and her sisters reach out across the centuries with passion, fury, laughter and song.

Emilia followed the run of DESDEMONA, a play about a handkerchief, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, was directed by Grant Sorenson (CFA’25) and ran from April 16 – 19, 2025 in Boston University’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre. As the wrongly accused and suffering wife of Shakespeare’s Othello, Desdemona has long been viewed as the “victim of circumstance.” But as Vogel demonstrates in her comic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s play, Desdemona was far from the quivering naïf we’ve all come to know.

“We are thinking of these two pieces less in repertory and more in conversation with each other since they run back-to-back rather than alternating performances,” says Sorenson, the director of Desdemona. “The two plays were selected to be produced together because of the shared themes and content between them, but they are also completely unique shows in their voices and storytelling. Ultimately, both plays speak very loudly and individually in their own right, which has been really exciting to put up next to each other and see where they overlap and where they diverge from each other.”

We worked as a group to come up with a space that feels true to both the world of Desdemona and Emilia. These conversations included both directors, both scenic designers, both production managers – you get the idea. This has been a great exercise in collaboration. We throw that word around all the time in theatre but it has been exciting to watch two lighting designers working together to create a plot that works for both of them or seeing two different costume designers take on these historically-inspired pieces in their own ways. Grant and I have been on the same page about the themes that feel important to us in these two productions since day one.

– Taylor Stark (CFA’25), Emilia, director

Cast

EMILIA 1 – Maya Bea Scott-Luib

EMILIA 2 – Dylan Brandon Mejil

EMILIA 3 – Christian Donnerson

MARY SYDNEY/MARGARET JOHNSON/HESTER – Macy McGrail

SUSAN BERTIE/MARY/BOB – Lila Grace English

LADY HELENA/LORD HOWARD/EVE – Chloé Kolbenheyer

LADY CORDELIA/FLORA – Haley Chey Lynch

LADY KATHERINE/ DESDEMONA – Ella Blumenthal

LORD HENRY CAREY/JUDITH/PRIEST – Annika Helgeson

LORD COLLINS/LADY ANNE/DAVE – Ronnie Rodriguez

LORD ALPHONSO LANIER/EMILIA (OTHELLO) – Ambria M. Benjamin

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE/MAN 2 – Josephine Goldfarb

LADY MARGARET CLIFFORD/MIDWIFE/MAN 2 – Imayah Hawkins

Program

Flip through the program book to learn more about the production.

Poster art for "Emilia" featuring a woman holding a skull and a sword surrounded by flames against a red and purple background

School of Theatre presents DESDEMONA, a play about a handkerchief, and Emilia in repertory at Booth Theatre

Produced in repertory, Desdemona retells Shakespeare’s Othello from the perspective of the play’s tragic heroine; and Emilia seeks to resurface their erased story from history.

Directors Taylor Stark and Grant Sorenson backstage at Booth Theatre

Forget “Barbenheimer.” Try “Desdemilia.”

“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.”