BLOG - Page 16 of 18 - Diversifying the Classics
21859
blog,paged,paged-16,wp-theme-stockholm,vcwb,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,select-theme-ver-2.4,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-7.8,vc_responsive
 
March 1, 2018

2018 Nuevo Siglo Drama Festival at The Chamizal National Memorial

The 2018 Nuevo Siglo Drama Festival will take place April 7-14, 2018 at The Chamizal National Memorial (El Paso, Texas).

 

This year’s festival will feature contemporary plays by Luis Valdez and Xavier Villanova as well as original versions and adaptations of classics by Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca, and Cervantes. This is a new direction for the festival, which has traditionally focused on Hispanic classical theater.

 

On Saturday, April 7, Los Actores, a company from El Paso will perform Luis Valdez’s Bernabé, a play about the personal and spiritual journey of a man who is widely believed to be crazy and suffers social marginalization in a small town in Mexico. Bernabés deep connections to his mother, the natural environment, and his Aztec ancestors accompany him on the way to the play’s dramatic conclusion.

 

On Sunday, April 8, the XIPE Colectivo Escénico of Puebla, Mexico will present Aquerón: The River of Tragedy, by Xavier Villanova. Featuring actresses Aline L. Bernal and Cinthia Pérez Navarro, and directed by Martín Balmaceda, Aquerón is an allusive and highly symbolic account of human migration from Mexico to the United States, which calls attention to questions of personal and cultural identity, social injustice, power and vulnerability.

 

Wednesday, April 11 will bring Nuevo Siglo’s first classic, Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño. Cuba’s Jazz Vilá Project, a company dedicated to encouraging youth interest in theater, will present Calderón’s timeless reflection on free will and predestination, the story of King Basilio, Segismundo—the son he has imprisoned—and the revolt that imperils a reign.

 

Another canonical favorite, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna will be performed on Thursday, April 12 by Ciudad Juárez’s Telón de Arena theater company. In the words of Telón de Arena’s Perla de la Rosa, Lope’s famous meditation on despotism, justice, and solidarity is as relevant as ever in today’s Mexico, a “betrayed motherland,” where “the voices of the characters in this mythical town echo in the depths of our hearts.”

 

Rosaura, Paula Rodríguez and Sandra Arpa’s adaptation of Calderón’s Life is a Dream told from the point of view of its main female character, will be staged on Friday, April 13. Teatro Inverso, a Madrid company that aims at preserving Hispanic classical theater through modern interpretations, sees Rosaura, not Segismundo, as the driving force for change in the story, as she asserts herself in a patriarchal society. Using modern theatrical techniques, Rodríguez and Arpa actively engage audiences in Rosaura’s fight to right the wrongs she sees around her.

 

The festival will close on Saturday, April 14 with El Merolico: Entremeses Bululuados, performances by Mexican company EFE Tres Teatro of Miguel de Cervantes’ fast-paced entremeses, or comedic interludes. Combining the figures of the “merolico,” a typically Mexican kind of charlatan street merchant, and the “bululú,” a traditional figure in Hispanic theater who performs several roles in a one-man-show, EFE Tres will transport to modern-day Mexico three of Cervantes’ short works for the stage: “El Viejo celoso,” “El retablo de las maravillas,” and “La cueva de Salamanca.”

 

For more information, please visit: https://www.nps.gov/cham/planyourvisit/2018-siglo-festival.htm.

February 27, 2018

Love’s a Bitch at UVA

 

Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching Dave Dalton’s Love’s a Bitch, an agile and very funny adaptation of Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil de las Calzas Verdes, at UVA: http://drama.virginia.edu/news/story/576

 

Dalton, an assistant professor of drama, has made a name for himself with adaptations of the classics, including a pro-wrestling-inspired version of Wagner’s Ring cycle and lively takes on Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore and Lope de Vega’s Dog in the Manger. In Love’s a Bitch, he combines freshness and humor with a keen eye for the stakes of the text.

 

Dalton pares away much of the bewildering complexity of Tirso’s play, but leaves enough of its whirlwind quality to keep the audience guessing about what will come next. From the very first scene, his adaptation has a kind of x-ray effect, peeling back the layers of the original to reveal its raw ideological and emotional core. Instead of a cross-dressed Juana relating her erotic travails to a servant, Dalton opens with a powerful scene of the runaway discovered by her father. Defying him, she forces him to give her his clothes and continues undaunted to Madrid to right her wrongs. And this is just the beginning!

 

The production’s pared-down scenery helped the audience focus on the language and characters, while the extravagant costumes, by Gweneth West, underscored the key connection between dress and identity in the play. The acting was strong across the board, with the two female leads, Mimi Robinson as Juana and Natalie Pernick as Inés, as real standouts.

 

In Dalton’s hands, the comedia is not only well served but hugely invigorated. Here’s to many more such adaptations and productions!

 

—Barbara Fuchs

December 13, 2017

A TALK ON “LOPE DE VEGA ON TELEVISION” BY ESTHER FERNÁNDEZ (RICE UNIVERSITY)

On November 28, Professor Esther Fernández of Rice University presented her research on “Lope de Vega en la televisión” in UCLA’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. As her subtitle (“del cartón piedra a la ciencia ficción”) suggests, Prof. Fernández is interested not only in how Lope-lovers have taken his plays from the stage to the screen, but in how the great playwright is being reinvented and repackaged for today’s public. Where TV audiences could once see faithful adaptations of Lope’s plays, they now see him appear as a character in inventive, modern stories about contemporary urban life, romantic intrigue, and, yes, science fiction. Behind this phenomenon, there lie important questions about the relationship between culture (and in particular literary classics) and politics, which Prof. Fernández also raises. To what extent do current efforts to popularize Golden Age literature still need to grapple with the Franco regime’s celebration of Golden Age literature? Do modern political attitudes explain the appeal of Lope de Vega relative to, say, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, who is generally constructed as conservative where Lope, the Phoenix, is associated with a bold individuality and daring independence of thought?

 

Prof. Fernández’s research is thought-provoking and full of fascinating examples from fifty years of television. We thank her for visiting us at UCLA!

 

Paul Cella.

November 20, 2017

UCLA DEPARTMENT OF THEATER PERFORMS STAGED READING OF LOPE DE VEGA’S THE WIDOW OF VALENCIA

On Wednesday, November 8th, MFA students in UCLA’s Department of Theater performed a staged reading of our translation of Lope de Vega’s The Widow of Valencia (La viuda Valenciana). The Widow and her servants, Julia and Urbán, were surrounded by a plethora of suitors, some more bumbling than others, in a comedia both daring and remarkably funny. Following his wonderful direction of A Wild Night in Toledo in 2015 and What We Owe Our Lies in 2016, Professor Michael Hackett once again led a talented cast of young actors, and delighted us (as well as the general public) with what has become the highlight of our year—a most satisfying culmination to our calendar, which begins in January with a new play and ends in the fall with this fruitful cross-campus encounter. With the input and insights of our friends in Theater, we begin each new project with more confidence in our ability to translate for performers and performance. We are grateful to the Arts Initiative Grant and the Center for 17th-and 18th-Century Studies for their support of our partnership.

 

We thank Michael Hackett and his students for a terrific show!

 

November 8, 2017

WORLD PREMIERE OF ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF WOMEN AND SERVANTS BY LOPE DE VEGA

From November 9-18, McMaster University’s School of the Arts will perform Women and Servants, a play by Spain’s great Renaissance dramatist Lope de Vega (see complete schedule and information below). Lost almost since its creation in 1613-14, and rediscovered only recently, in 2014, by Alejandro García-Reidy in Spain’s National Library, Women and Servants has never before been staged in English. Come see this witty, subversive comedy, where women and servants defy their masters—conspicuously absent from the title—as they affirm their freedom to live and love as they choose.

 

On Saturday, November 11, at 7pm, immediately before the 8pm performance, the play’s English translator, UCLA Professor Barbara Fuchs, will present “Love Knows No Master,” a discussion of the play’s challenging representations of personal autonomy, liberty in love, and the defiance of social norms. After the show, Professor Fuchs will join the cast and production team onstage for discussion.

 

Performance Schedule:

November 9 (Preview), 8pm

November 10-11, 8pm

November 15-18, 8pm

November 18, 2pm

 

Location: The Black Box

L.R. Wilson Hall

Price $20

$10 for students and seniors

 

Tickets available from Compass, or School of the Arts: (905) 525 9140 Ext. 27671

 

For more information on performances, visit: http://sota.humanities.mcmaster.ca/2017/11/01/women-and-servants/

 

For information on Barbara Fuchs’ lecture and discussion, see the poster below or visit: http://sota.humanities.mcmaster.ca/2017/11/07/love-knows-no-master-visiting-artist-lecture/

Women and Servants

October 23, 2017

Staged Reading of The Widow of Valencia

Join us on Wednesday, November 8th at 7:30PM for the staged reading of out working group’s latest translation, The Widow of Valencia.

 

 

Written by Lope de Vega between 1595 and 1599, this juicy play centers on the figure of Leonarda, a young widow, and her posse of suitors, who circle her house at all hours, hoping for a glance, a smile, or a kind gesture. Leonarda, however, is in love with Camilo, and in order to maintain the pious and reserved life that was expected of widows at the time, she devises a plan with her servants, Julia and Urbán, to lure him into her home. To add to the general sense of confusion, Lope sets the play in Valencia—one of the most vibrant and festive Spanish cities of the time—during Carnival, when amorality, chaos, and false identities were normalized and accepted.

 

Clever, compelling, and entertaining, The Widow of Valencia takes on universal themes of love, pride, and social standing, yet it remains unique in its daring portrait of intrigue and female sexuality. Directed by UCLA theater professor Michael Hackett, first year MFA students in the Acting and Directing Programs will bring Lope’s enthralling Golden Age characters to life.

The performance is free, but reservations are required. Please visit http://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/widow/

 

Jennifer L. Monti

widow poster

October 20, 2017

An Early Modern Double: The Comedy of Errors and The Force of Habit at Cal Poly Pomona

 

With unexpected reunions of long lost siblings, gender-bending explorations into nature and nurture, romantic triangles, and the constant threat of violence, Guillén de Castro’s 1610 The Force of Habit and Shakespeare’s 1594 The Comedy of Errors bear a family resemblance. On October 1st, members of the Comedia in Performance and Translation working group were fortunate enough to take in this early modern double-header at Cal Poly Pomona as part of this year’s Southern California Shakespeare Festival. Founder and artistic director of the festival Linda Bisesti arranged to follow an afternoon show of Shakespeare’s early comedy with a staged reading of the Guillén de Castro play, organized by Marta Albalá Pelegrín, Assistant Professor of Early Modern Spanish Literature at Cal Poly and working group member.

 

 

The staged reading, performed by many of the same actors from Shakespeare’s comedy, gave voice to our group’s translation, and the large, standing-room-only audience of students and the local community was able to access this rich drama in English for the first time. The actors, including Bisesti and Cal Poly Theater Department chair Bernardo Solano, immediately brought the spectators into Guillen’s complex and intriguing story of familial conflict and gender identity.

 

 

The actors who portrayed the reunited siblings, Hipólita and Félix, deserve extra applause. In Guillén’s drama, the daughter has been raised for battle and dresses in men’s clothes, while the son has been kept at home and taught embroidery. While the overbearing father, Don Pedro, attempts to force his children to adapt to traditional gender roles, Hipólita and Félix refuse—they refuse, that is, until they fall in love. These late scenes of character transition invite current audiences to wonder if the play is essentially a conservative argument for strict gender roles, or a more progressive revelation of the degree to which our gender identities are performances constructed for a social audience.

 

 

After the reading, the actors took questions onstage, where members of the working group joined them in a rich discussion of the play’s implications. The actors shared their thoughts on why they chose to portray their characters in certain ways. What an audience ultimately thinks about Guillén de Castro’s play depends in part on the violence of the protagonists’ transitions out of the gender identities of their youth, and the most troubling aspects of this early modern work were brought out by the insightful reflections of those who played its characters.

 

 

It was both illuminating and enjoyable to participate in that conversation, and the working group is grateful to the wonderful people at Cal Poly for this staged reading. These early modern Hispanic plays deserve a place on stage, and it is a delight to play a role in putting them there. Too many of them have been ignored for too long, but, as the night at Cal Poly reminded us, to retrieve and reimagine them in a new time and tongue is to find that the familiarity of their conflicts, the suspense of their stories, and the richness of their wit remain.

 

Robin Kello

October 18, 2017

TRANSLATION WORKSHOP (OCTOBER 17): PROFESSOR EDWARD “MAC” TEST (BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY) VISITS UCLA

Many thanks to Professor Mac Test for workshopping his translation of Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s La monja alférez (The Swashbuckling Nun) with us. As expected, our discussion brought together a fruitful mix of disciplinary backgrounds, including Professor Test’s expertise in contemporary Anglo- and Latin American poetry and English Renaissance literature and our own diverse interests in Golden Age letters, Early Modern Iberian and Colonial American history, and contemporary Spain and Mexico. It was also a meeting of the minds on Baroque drama. Professor Test has translated a text that, given its subject matter, would have instantly jumped to the top of our list of pending projects—a play that, like all those we have taken on, portrays extraordinary agency beyond traditional gender roles (the “swashbuckling” Guzmán shares much with Hipólita from The Force of Habit, Lisena from A Wild Night in Toledo, and Leonarda from The Widow of Valencia). Additionally, Professor Test has introduced us to a play that, like our own favorites, represents the performative nature of (gender and class) identities and the possibility (and frequent necessity) of dissimulation in modern urban life. His visit is a powerful incentive to continue our work—surely there are more (unjustly and unbelievably underappreciated) gems out there, just waiting to be translated! We hope Professor Test has also taken something away from our conversation, and we look forward to seeing his translation published soon. Thank you for visiting us, and very safe travels back to Boise.

 

Paul Cella.

October 17, 2017

A Weekend at Almagro in the Festival’s 40th Year

 

Related image

 

In 1978, three years after the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco, the city of Almagro, Spain and its corral de comedias hosted its first ever Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico. Reviving the classical theater of Spain’s Golden Age was perceived by some as problematic due to its association with Francoist notions of Spanish greatness, and was not unanimously supported. Forty years later, the festival has become a space where artists, educators, journalists, and audiences from Spain and abroad critically interrogate past and present by questioning cultural norms and exploring alternative voices and visions. The festival is a testament to the quality, vitality, and relevance of Spanish classical theater.

 

Almagro’s corral de comedias was built in 1628 and is the only extant baroque popular theater in Spain. Its rediscovery in 1953, television debut in 1967, and rebirth as the soul of the Festival in 1978 also transformed Almagro as a whole. For several centuries in the medieval and early modern periods Almagro was a center of economic and military might, but it later fell into decline. Today, nearly all of Almagro’s historic structures are in some stage of repair and revival, and several sites besides the corral are used as spaces for the festival’s theatrical productions and accompanying cultural activities. These include the medieval Palacios Maestrales (which house the Museo Nacional del Teatro), the sixteenth-century Antigua Universidad Renacentista and Plaza de Santo Domingo (Espacio Miguel Narros), the seventeenth-century Hospital de San Juan de Dios, and the nineteenth-century Teatro Municipal. The magic of the festival is partly due to the symbolic and aesthetic weight of these spaces.

 

But what does a weekend in Almagro actually look like for the average visitor? I was able to explore the city and its major sites and museums, enjoy a leisurely visit to the corral de comedias, and see four productions over two evenings, all of which were worth sharing here.

 

The adaptation La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) [vv. 105-106], whose producers include Moma Teatre and Teatros del Canal, successfully stripped Calderón de la Barca’s classic down to its “essence” (the stated goal of its dramaturgs), which is as deep, dark, and disturbing as the interdependent prisons of the play’s four protagonists: Basilio, a tortured king who imprisoned his son based on a grim prophecy; Segismundo, a prince whose only reality is a prison tower and the teachings and treachery of Clotaldo, his warden and tutor; and Rosaura, Clotaldo’s long-lost daughter, who helps Segismundo claim his throne as she reclaims her honor. Calderón’s play naturally leaves the audience with more philosophical questions than answers, and this adaptation’s pared-down cast and script, impactful makeup and wardrobe, and stark, chilling set made those questions at once more urgent and accessible.

 

Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano (The Dog in the Manger)—the story of a jealous noblewoman and her vacillating secretary maneuvering their way into marriage—was masterfully produced and performed by La Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (CNTC). A delightfully anachronistic set and wardrobe (powdered wigs, anyone?) added something new to a well-worn play, as well as another dimension to the superb, comical physicality of its seasoned actors. Slightly unsettling was the apocryphal presence of a blindfolded and bare-chested, dancing and dart-wielding allegorical figure representing Love, which proved distracting but not devastating.

 

La Joven Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (“The Young” CNTC, comprising actors under 28) took on Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna (The Sheepwell), highlighting the most sinister aspects of this hyper-canonical play, and making the audience’s collective skin crawl with distress and disgust. A town terrorized by a despotic commander eventually rebels, kills him, and then conspires to claim the murder as a collective, crying out under torture, “Fuente Ovejuna did it!” The play is often celebrated for its portrayal of group solidarity in the face of injustice, but the most powerful scenes in this production are the ones in which the townspeople abandon their friends through inaction and cowardice, or rabidly revel in death and debauchery. They seem to be poisoned, and not just by the commander’s abuses, but by the ominous presence of the Catholic Kings. Just minor characters in Lope’s play, Isabel and Ferdinand are always in the background here—literally. In costumes and makeup reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they slowly circle the stage from opposite directions, drawn to each other as if possessed, and portray nothing less than evil. In La Joven’s Fuente Ovejuna, the sickness that spreads through authoritarian violence starts at the very top, and infects everyone.

 

The Catholic Kings, frozen onstage as the audience enters for Fuente Ovejuna.

 

La Calderona, produced by Cía and Pau Pau Productions, is a two-actor—plus one DJ—hip-hop-inspired reflection on the world of the comedia and the life of one of its most (in)famous actresses, María Inés Calderón. Raps and ballads narrate the rise and fall of La Calderona—a mistress of Philip IV, the Hapsburg king who locked her in a convent after stripping her of their son—, as well the stories of other figures central to her triumphs and tragedies, including a scorned queen and a scathing priest. It took a surprisingly short amount of time for Adidas and rap battles to feel like natural spectacles in Almagro’s famed corral, a space well utilized by the actors, who at times invaded the patio and occupied the balconies.

 

What else is there for the visitor to see and experience with just a weekend in Almagro, outside of its historic buildings and churches, restaurants on the plaza, curbside craft fairs, and affiliated performances in the style of “off-Broadway” and “after-dark”? First, there is the lace—in shops, on the plaza, filling the city’s Lace Museum—, intricate, handmade, worthy-as-a-gift-to-your-grandmother kind of lace. Just ask the grandmothers sitting on benches outside of the festival venues when the first round of plays lets out around 10pm—talking with their friends, dogs playing at their feet—because that’s what they do on Friday and Saturday nights, even when the festival is not in town. Then there are the eggplants. Yes, small, pickled, pimentoed eggplants bobbing around in barrels until they’re plucked out for you to enjoy right at the stand, bent slightly forward, juice dripping at your feet. And somewhere between irreverent, tourist-kitsch and treasured local legacy is the cross of the Order of Calatrava, ubiquitous symbol of Christian conquest. You’ll find it on your bottle of pilsner beer, on every trash receptacle in the main plaza, on costumes in more than one play (including Fuente Ovejuna)—and in the same embattled consciences that look upon the statue of Diego de Almagro, a brutal but celebrated conquistador of Chile and Peru, seated on his horse at the far end of the plaza, as if guarding the National Theater Museum.

 

Go to Almagro. Sleep in a sixteenth-century lodge. Take a picture on the steps of the corral’s stage. See as many plays as possible. Eat the eggplants. But, if you can avoid it, don’t go to the party alone because the festival is just that: a celebration of the survival, renewal, and reimagining of a timeless theatrical tradition, and a communal exploration of the contradictory, violent, materialistic, and yet forever hopeful world it was born in—a world that feels so strangely familiar because it is also our own.

 

The requisite photo on the steps of the corral’s stage, which is dressed here for a performance of La Calderona.

 

For a lovely retrospective on the Festival’s 40 years, visit http://festivaldealmagro.com/descargas/libro_conmemoracion_40ediciones.pdf

 

Payton Phillips Quintanilla

October 5, 2017

PROFESSOR EDWARD “MAC” TEST (BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY) TO VISIT UCLA ON OCTOBER 17

UCLA’s working group on the comedia looks forward to an upcoming visit from Professor Edward “Mac” Test (Boise State University) on October 17. A translator, poet, and Renaissance scholar, Prof. Test has invited us to workshop his recent translation of Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s play La monja alférez (The Swashbuckling Nun), which is based on the life of Catalina de Erauso, a Basque woman who escaped from a convent, cross-dressed as a man, and fled to America, where she led a life full of adventure. We are especially excited to explore with Prof. Test our common interests in the representation of gender in Golden Age drama—a topic that has occupied us from our first translation of Guillén de Castro’s La fuerza de la costumbre (The Force of Habit) to our most recent work: Lope de Vega’s La viuda valenciana (The Widow of Valencia)—and translation methodology, including challenges particular to translating dramatic verse (into poetry or prose?), and to producing English texts that appeal to scholarly readers and modern audiences. Thank you, Professor Test, for joining us, and welcome to UCLA!