SOURCE: Dolan, Jill. “Paula Vogel's Desdemona (A Play about a Handkerchief).” in Amazon All Stars: 13 Lesbian Plays, edited by Rosemary Keefe Curb, pp. 437-40. New York: Applause, 1996.

In the following essay, Dolan contrasts Shakespeare's Othello and Vogel's Desdemona.

Desdemona (a play about a handkerchief) continues in playwright Paula Vogel's tradition of resisting theatrical and social pieties. She turns conventions upside down and on their heads to see what falls out of their pockets, pushing them aside, offstage, before she'll ever allow them to resume what others have considered their “rightful” place in an ideological or literary hierarchy. There's always something askew in a Vogel play, something deliciously not quite right, which requires a spectator or reader to change her perspective, to give up any assumption of comfortable viewing or reading ground, and to go along for a refreshing change of performance pace, style, and scenery.

For example, Baltimore...