Abstract
Abstract
French
This essay is a comparative study of Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of barbarity as performed in Cheek by Jowl’s 2004 stage production of Othello and Ivan Mladenov’s film adaptation of the play (2008), set in a Bulgarian prison and featuring inmates cast according to crime. The two productions share a minimalist aesthetic at odds with the play’s spectacular qualities. The theatre production incites an acute discomfort with narratives of barbarity imposed upon the manipulated bodies of the play’s Others; in the film, criminal ‘barbarians’ are cinematically aestheticized and ennobled through their Shakespearean roles, imbuing with dignity their own self-narratives.
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