Conviction by Amanda Lance

world of dancers, singers, and actors; a universe unto itself where everyone very much wanted to be noticed. I sat in the most random seat in the most random aisle I could manage while Melinda and her group went backstage. I took out a copy of D’entre les morts though I could hardly read a single page. I saw some of the theater groupies listening to something I once heard Melinda call Swedish death metal while repainting old patchwork scenery. The director of the theater department, the green-haired guy and a few others were doing something on the scaffolding above, and an older woman, dressed eccentrically, was waddling around Melinda and the other actors, mumbling to herself with mounds of purple cloth. She didn’t seem to care whether she bumped into anyone or not. Most of the students onstage however, didn’t notice, and those who did weren’t bothered by her at all. I figured out after a minute that the small groups they collected in were being supervised by professors in the department.
    I strained my ears to listen. I quickly gathered that Melinda worked with a student everyone called Carter. I didn’t know the girl playing Desdemona, but it was easy to see by the way the stagehands and The Clown sneered that she might be something of a prima donna.
    “Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?”
    Melinda’s voice perked up above Desdemona. And I had to hand it to her—her obsessive practice was starting to show. 
    “I know not, madam.”
    “Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse
    Full of crusadoes. And but my noble Moor
    Is true of mind and made of no such baseness
    As jealous creatures are, it were enough
    To put him to ill thinking.”
    The lights went out and apologies were shouted from above before they came back on. I saw one of the supervising professors swallow something from a pill cartridge before telling everyone to continue.
    “ Is he not jealous?”
    “Who, he? I think the sun where he was born
    Drew all such humors from him.”
    “Look where he comes.”
    Melinda left the scene, leaving her marked piece of painters’ tape on the stage and returning to the wings. The scene continued without her.
    I hadn’t read Othello since I was a kid. Mom always said the best way to start Shakespeare was with his tragedies because they were the most interesting. When Robbie and I had the chicken pox we got through Hamlet , Romeo and Juliet , and about halfway through Othello before Robbie was ready to poke his eyes out just to have an excuse to get out of it. Later on, he had to read them for high school English anyway, so it didn’t make any difference, but Mom waited another year or two before letting me dive into Shakespeare’s comedies, histories, and more perverse tragedies; having to stop every two seconds to explain the contexts to me.
    Though I was never a big fan of the tragedies, I’d have to say Othello is one of my favorites. There’s just enough political backdrop and themes of social reform to go with the drama; a good balance. And while Othello himself was a prideful idiot (as most tragic heroes are) at least there was some substance there. The lovers in question actually get to know each other before getting married and the affection Othello and Desdemona have for one another seem genuine. But then I always had to wonder if she just married the guy to piss off her father. And there is that perpetual logic that if Othello was really in love with Desdemona he wouldn’t have killed her no matter what she did or didn’t do. But once I really start thinking about it, I have to remind myself about the correlation between love and jealousy. The theme of madness.
    The stagehand mouthed, ‘ Enter Othello,’ and waved a neon clipboard like a music conductor, but Carter was already there without so much as a script. 
    “ I will not leave him now till ah Cassio
    Be called to him. um—How is ’t with you, my lord?”
    “Well, my good lady,” Othello called off to the side as