Omar Sangare

August 4, 2002

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Arts & Entertainment

For a Polish Outsider, "Othello" Rings True

By Barbara Delatiner

Omar Sangare was born to play Othello. Not just because he is black like
Shakespeare's Moor, but also, he said, because "Othello's life is the life I have
lived; the life of the outsider."

Mr. Sangare, who plays the title role in the Arena Players production of the tragedy
opening Wednesday at the Vanderbilt Museum, is black and Polish; the first and,
he said, for the time being, the only black Polish actor.

As the son of a student from Mali who met and married a Polish woman while studying
in Poland, Mr. Sangare said he knows what it is like "to be a black in a white man's
society - like Othello." The "aloneness," he said, began when he was growing up in Stalowa Wola, where he was considered somethnig of an oddity. His father returned to Africa
shortly after his birth, and Mr. Sangare only sees him occasionally; he was
raised by his mother, who died nine years ago.

"It was an interesting experience," he said. "I always had the impression that I was
on the stage. People would look at me, this strange creature, and wait for my reaction.
So from the very beginning I am an actor, always an actor. I learned how to act on
the stage of my life, how to survive."

Survival was made easier, he said, by his letter-perfect Polish. In fact, after his
entrance examination for the Warsaw Theatre Academy one of the professors "took
me aside and told me that my Polish was the highest level of all the applicants," he
said. The professors in the theater school were concerned about "what they could do
with this strange-looking guy, what roles they could give me," he said. Nevertheless,
he was admitted. The modernists prevailed, he said, convincing the others that he represented "the new sign of nowadays."

He spent four years at the academy, where he studied with Andrzej Wajda, the Polish director who won a lifetime-achievement Oscar. Then Mr. Sangare won a scholarship
to the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England, and worked with Derek
Jacoby, Alan Rickman, Michael Kahn and Jeremy Irons. Active on stage as a member
of the popular Studio Theater in Warsaw and a regular in Polish films, Mr. Sangare
has also appeared and taught at the Edinburgh Theater Festival in 1998, and won
the best acting award for his one-man drama, "True Theater Critic," at the New York International Fringe Festival in 1997. His thriving career has brought him acclaim in
traditional Polish roles, as well as parts like Horatio in "Hamlet" and Paul in "Six
Degrees of Separation."

But there was no opportunity to fulfill his dream of playing Othello until last March,
when the Polish government sent Mr. Sangare, who is also a published poet, to
New York to participate in a program sponsored by the Poetry Society of America
called "Try to Praise the Mutilated World: An Evening in Celebration of Contemporary
Polish Poetry." While he was in the city, a friend told him about an ad in Backstage,
the theater publication, looking for an actor to play Othello. He auditioned and was immediately hired. "The others who answered the ad tended to be hip-hop actors,"
said Frederic DeFeis, the artistic director of Arena Players Repertory Theatre, who
is directing this production. "Here was a classically trained actor, and as we began
rehearsals I discovered in his portrayal a sense of internalization, of passion, that you
rarely find." Mr. DeFeis said, the actor "is doing very well with the language challenge.
The cast is impressed."

After his run in "Othello" ends, Mr. Sangare will go to Santa Barbara, Calif., to work
with the Lit Moon Theater and teach at Westmont College. But although he hopes
that his connection with this country goes on he plans to return to Poland. He wants
to continue to teach his reluctant fellow Poles "to accept differences, realize that
I am no worse or better than anybody else."