Ubuntu stages ‘Othello’ in a Persian rug shop

Ubuntu Theater Project, one of the most exciting young theater companies to hit the Bay Area in the past few years, is not without ambition; it has staged shows in a church chapel and a parking garage, and one play in this year’s inaugural six-show season featured 28 cast members.

For its latest site-specific show, the company stages Shakespeare’s “Othello” in a Persian rug shop in Berkeley.

Ubuntu is staging this show now, members said in a statement, partly because the “other” that the play makes Othello into — before he even enters, he is referred to as “an old black ram” and “a Barbary horse” — still feels a little too real more than 400 years later.