Speaking Through Othello: Black Performance and the Training of Feeling

Professor Jason Allen-Paisant is at Barnard's Inn Hall on Wednesday 18 November, 6:00pm to 7:00pm, for a lecture on Black performance and Shakespeare's Othello. It's part of The Royal Society of Literature series at Gresham College, which has offered free public education since 1597.

Allen-Paisant is a poet and writer from Jamaica and Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He brings together psychoanalytic and critical theory with lived artistic practice to rethink what it means to inhabit Othello, drawing on his own Self-Portrait as Othello. He explores how the character has functioned as a symbolic demand placed on Black performance and, against traditions that presume a universal paternal order, asks what happens when that anchor is foreclosed in history.

From there, the lecture looks at how Black performance invents other ways of organising meaning — through voice, breath, sound, prayer, and what he calls a 'training of feeling'. It's a talk that sits at the intersection of academic theory and the actual work of performing, so it should hold up whether you're coming from a Shakespeare background or just an interest in how Black performance operates.

The venue itself is a bit of a find: Barnard's Inn Hall is a former Inn of Chancery with 15th-century origins, 16th-century linen-fold panelling, and the only surviving crown posts in Greater London. The lecture runs from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, it's free, and you can catch it in person or via webcast.