Predictably, a student production of Othello was scrapped last week at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario—because a white girl was to play the lead. Othello the Moor, the ill-fated hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy, is a black man in the text and, since the middle of the last century at least, on the stage as well.

Director Maggie Purdon, a student, told the Canadian National Post her intention was a feminist adaptation of sorts, “It would be more of an issue of sexuality, and the issue would be that Othello’s sexuality makes him an outsider.” But in a Facebook post on Thursday, just four weeks from her opening night, Purdon called the whole thing off and broadly apologized for her casting choice, “a problematic decision that caused people within this community to feel oppressed, and for that we are greatly sorry.”