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performs the cultural and political work of competing, though uneven, constituencies. By the 1840s, the impulse to situate the real “Moor” had moved toward a more genuine concern for replicating observed social realities. The whole issue of representation and power in colonial cultural formations had clearly come to a head. If “Moors” were popular on the English stage, then inevitably a production of Othello would, once again, raise the question: Can the “Moor’’ now represent the “Moor”? Can the Native be made to stage himself?

In 1848, something as yet unheard-of happened. On August 4, James Barry, as the umpteenth owner of the Sans Souci Theatre in white Calcutta and desperate to keep his theater going, ventured to cast a Native gentleman in the title role— “Baboo Bustomchurn Addy.” The Moor and the Bengali had collapsed into one for Shakespeare’s sake, for novelty’s sake, for the colony’s sake, and—in Barry’s case—for profit’s sake. Addy as Othello was not comparable to a black-faced white actor at the Chowringhee Theatre dressed as Zanga, the Moor. He was the “real” Othello. The opening performance of Barry’s Othello was, however, abruptly aborted due to the opposition of a local military commanding officer, who refused permission for his men to play extras in the production. A letter published in the Calcutta Star on August 12 describes the crowd that had gathered before the Sans Souci (Figure 2) that evening on Park Street in

Figure 2 The Chowringhee Theatre, Calcutta, destroyed by fire in 1839. The Sans Souci, where Addy performed in 1848, stood on the same site on Park Street.

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