for the sake of a little strange

Tonight, I was fortunate to be one of the forty in attendance.
This time, that number referred to the maximum capacity allowed in the Black Box in Jenkins Hall.
The small space is reserved for the Masquers' more experimental ventures into the thespian world. Some are comedic, some are dramatic, and all are quite intense.
"Theatre-in-your-face" experiences, if you will, much like all of the productions of the Savannah Stage Company.
Tonight, the Masquers offered up "Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief", a fairly recent Shakespeare-inspired one-act.
For a starting point, recall the tragedy Othello.
Now, consider that as the backdrop and enlarge the roles of three women: Desdemona, the general's beloved wife; Emelia, her maidservant; and Bianca, the harlot the wife has befriended.
The first, in the titular role, is portrayed as a very loose woman, with an itch that must be scratched, no matter the cost.
A woman who first was attracted to the Moor because of his skin color.
That was strange to her, and strange was her drug.
After her marriage to the Moor, she continued her search for strange, befriending Bianca, a woman of like ilk, at the local bordello.
She even took that woman's place one Tuesday night, "working" her shift in a darkened room... unknowingly being bedded by her maidservant's husband, a bitter man, jealous of a younger rival's promotion in the army of Desdemona's husband.
The maidservant is convinced by her husband to steal Desdemona's handkerchief, a gift of love Othello had bestowed upon his wife.
The one-act play opens with Emilia snatching the strawberry-embroidered "snot rag" off a table and stuffing it into her bosom.
And then the trouble truly begins, as the three women discover the web that has trapped them all.

The troupe utilized an interesting technique to control the tension, perhaps for the actors as well as the audience. The play was offered as a series of small vignettes played to a camera, with a huge screen behind the staging area to show the action from the lens' objective frame of reference. In between the vignettes, the actresses would relax out of the characters for a few moments, talking casually to each other.
In one sense, the technique allowed an easing of the emotional build-up during the scenes.
But the impact of the horrific ending, when Desdemona and Emilia realize Iago's betrayal of them both, cannot be softened.

Intense.

Tomorrow, I will attend "Henry V", a history lesson from Shakespeare, as interpreted by Savannah Shakes.
Even with its themes of warfare and swordfights, I suspect it will be lighter fare than that my senses dined upon tonight.