Billie, a young graduate student in Harlem, deals with her husband Othello leaving her for a white woman named Mona.
[1] The play moves through time to show Billie and Othello's relationship (or an analogue thereof) being torn apart by racial tensions at a Southern US cotton plantation in 1860, and in Harlem in 1928 and the present.
Billie lives in a walkup at the intersection of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Harlem, NY.
Billie is supported by her landlady and by Amah, her sister-in-law (her brother Andrew's wife), while she writes and lives as a shut-in.
She ignores the ringing phone, believing it to be Othello - Amah suggests it may be Billie's estranged father, Canada.
He and Billie begin to divide their books and dive into a conversation on race relations and how cultural pressures impacted their marriage.
He returns with her pot, and with news: he is reneging on his promise to pay for one of her graduate school courses, and he and Mona are engaged.
Billie concocts a potion and pours it over Othello's handkerchief, but before she can enact her plan, Magi interrupts with news of a visitor.
He claims he will never wear Blackface on stage, and says he is of Ira Aldridge stock, a great Black actor.
Then he reveals that his White lover Mona is giving him the opportunity to play Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Elizabeth Gruber highlights the role of Mona as an access point to the white world and culture.
[4] This play also reasserts the existence of an African culture remaining among slaves descendants with the choice of its location, Harlem.
The stage directions often reference strong symbols of African-American culture and history while ancient African customs permeate the play through Billie's interest in Voodoo.
Harlem, as a significant and symbolic location, is portrayed historically, politically and musically through the recurrence of African-American jazz music cues and audio recordings throughout the piece, including pieces from: The play also engages in the recent concern for the construction of a Canadian-ness, embodied by Billie's father, Canada.
According to Louise Harrington, the play relates to the movement of emancipation from English literature by adapting Shakespeare in a more political and contemporary way.
The first centered on an inconsistency in statements that Othello makes in reference to the origin of Desdemona's handkerchief (a major plot point in Shakespeare's play).
In act three, scene four, Othello declares: ...That handkerchief did an Egyptian to my mother give; she was a charmer, and could almost read the thoughts of people.
However in the last act of Shakespeare's work, as we approach the climax of the play, Othello supplies a completely different account of the strawberry spotted cloth, referring to it as: ...An antique token my father gave my mother.
Using linear and non-linear narrative structures, the play embraces discernible blues qualities that assert tendencies of "antiphonal structures" (that is call and response), repetition, syncopation, fragmentation, solos, polyrhythmic improvisation, percussive melodies, hollers, scatting, ring shouts, and cyclicality.
[6][7][8] Sears directed a production of the play in 2002 at Blue Heron Arts Centre in New York City.
[10] Harlem Duet was performed in the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto from September 18 to October 28 as part of their 2018-2019 season.
The Crane Creations Theatre Company led a Play Date event of Harlem Duet in January, 2022.
Theatre artists held conversations about the themes, style, form, and related current world issues to the play.