Plot

A celebrated actor struggles to distinguish his own life from that of his most recent stage role, Othello.

Anthony John is an actor whose life is strongly influenced by the characters he plays. When he's playing comedy, he's the most enjoyable person in the world, but when he's playing drama, he's impossible to be around. it's terrible to be around him. That's why his wife Brita divorced him: although she loves him and still works with him, she couldn't stand to live with him anymore. So when Anthony has the role of Othello, he devotes himself entirely to the part, but it soon overwhelms him; with each day, Othello's murderous jealousy fills his mind more and more.—Leon Wolters <wolters@strw.LeidenUniv.nl>

The successful middle-aged Broadway actor Anthony "Tony" John is a dedicated, lonely professional who still loves his former wife Brita. After portraying Othello for almost two years, Tony has a breakdown, losing his sense of reality and confusing his identity with that of his character. One night he meets waitress Pat Kroll in a distant bar and spends the night with the easy woman. He proposes to Brita but she refuses to remarry him, and he goes into a fit of jealousy against their friend Bill. He then visits Pat at night, where he lives the situation of Othello killing Desdemona. The police arrest a suspect, but Bill wants to prove that Tony is responsible for the murder.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil