Othello (Orson Welles stage production) Desdemona - or Shakespeare, according to which newspaper you read." Othello (Orson Welles stage production) Othello was a 1951 production of William Shakespeare's play of the same name, which was produced, directed by and starring Orson Welles in his first appearance on the London stage. In 1948, Orson Welles began work on a self-financed film of "Othello", which was not completed until 1952. Filming was sporadic, and he frequently stopped the production to take on other acting jobs (including "The Third Man") to raise more funds. In 1951, Welles had completed principal photography, but was still trying to raise money
Othello on Othello. Although characters described as "moors" appear in two other Shakespeare plays ("Titus Andronicus" and "The Merchant of Venice"), such characters were a rarity in contemporary theatre, and it was unknown for them to take centre stage. There is no consensus over Othello's ethnic origin. E. A. J. Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous. "Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with terms such as 'African', 'Somali', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and