New Canon’s second production of its fourth season brings even greater depth to 'Othello.'

For the production of Othello at the Forest Theater in Carmel, director Lisa Gaye Dixon returns to Monterey County after directing the soul-stirring performative memoir Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill last year. The play stars Jonathan Bangs as the titular character, New Canon Theatre Co.’s artistic director, J. Matthew Gordon, as Iago and Sarah Dunnavant plays Desdemona, the love interest of Othello. But this time, Dixon widens the play’s aperture to showcase the complexity of the female roles in the story.

“What I want to do with the production is to center and give agency to the women,” Dixon says. None of the script has been changed, but she hopes to layer and reveal more complexity in the lives of the three women in the play: Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca. To do this without changing any parts of Othello’s story, Dixon plans to use music and movements to give the female characters clear moments on stage to reveal their wants and desires. Much of her artistic vision stems from her own lived experiences.

“I was a large African-American woman and there wasn’t a lot of theater for women like me,” Dixon says. “But I did do Shakespeare, and one of the wonderful things I discovered is that most of his women are quite complex.”

Desdemona is traditionally played by a young ingénue in the story, but to pull out more complexity, Dixon cast veteran actress Dunnavant, who calls her character “courageous.”

“[Desdemona] is a person that is motivated by love,” Dunnavant says. “She is looking for ways to express that no matter what, and portraying the power that comes from having the strength of the kind of love she has is what is so compelling to me.”

Dunnavant’s role is to make the love between her and Othello believable to the audience – and she wields that agency as her paramour’s equal. “Desdemona has this steel core – an inner strength that is covered with velvet,” Dunnavant explains.

Dixon’s key direction to Dunnavant is to hold onto the recognition that “everyone has a life as interesting, complex and deep as you have,” she says. The heart-wrenching part is that those lives end.

OTHELLO is performed 7:30pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 6:30pm Sundays, June 12-29. Forest Theater, Santa Rita and Mountain View, Carmel. $60; $50/seniors, teachers, military; $27/community access tickets; $19/students. 275-1441, newcanontheatre.org.