Translating the World's First Don Juan Play (El Burlador De Sevilla
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Don Juan Plays the USA: Translating the World's First Don Juan Play (El Burlador de Sevilla and Tan Largo Me Lo Fiais) for Twenty-First Century Performances in the United States Benjamin Bridges Gunter Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE AND DANCE DON JUAN PLAYS THE USA: TRANSLATING THE WORLD’S FIRST DON JUAN PLAY (EL BURLADOR DE SEVILLA AND TAN LARGO ME LO FIAIS) FOR TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PERFORMANCES IN THE UNITED STATES By BENJAMIN BRIDGES GUNTER A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in the College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2005 Copyright © 2005 Benjamin Bridges Gunter All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Benjamin Bridges Gunter defended on November 17, 2005. ___________________________ Carrie E. Sandahl Professor Directing Dissertation ___________________________ David H. Darst Outside Committee Member ___________________________ Stuart E. Baker Committee Member ___________________________ Laura Edmondson Committee Member Approved: ___________________________ Sally E. McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii to the dramaturg resident in you, the reader, as you wrestle with these pages and their implications for the stage iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS One way of describing the role of a dramaturg is as a “mediator” who forges connections between “a body of texts” and “those who use them to make theatrical performances, including actors, directors, designers, theater staffs, as well as the community at large” (Proehl 134-35). To my lasting benefit, I’ve gotten to learn the role of mediating between the world’s first Don Juan play and 21st-century US stagecraft from two enormously talented women of the theater: Jean Graham-Jones and Carrie Sandahl. Jean Graham-Jones made this project possible. She taught me how to assemble, absorb, analyze, and distill a “body of texts” that can revolutionize the process of translating Seville’s Burlador out of Renaissance Spanish and into contemporary US practice. Jean’s expert introduction to the art of re-producing Spanish stagecraft for performance in English (witness her elegant translation of Ricardo Monti’s Visit) inspired me to imagine a thoroughly American Don Juan in the first place. Before she left Florida State for CUNY, Jean Graham-Jones had guided me through the translation history that made it clear that Don Juan Plays the USA has things of value to say to theater people who are not aficionados of Golden Age drama. Carrie Sandahl made this project accessible to that larger audience. Taking over where Jean left off, Carrie trained me in speaking to “the community at large.” Her patient re-readings and expert proddings carried my work through a metamorphosis, from mammoth translation history to streamlined study of representative translation problems. Through the last rewrite on the last day, Carrie Sandahl championed clear expression of clear ideas, so the widest possible audience could find clear and pressing reasons to make friends with this clearly stageworthy play. Like Carrie and Jean, many other people have been indispensable for bringing Don Juan Plays the USA to fruition. Like Jean, participants in the Bainbridge College theater “labs” and members of the dramaturgy workshops at Bainbridge Little Theatre and Quincy Music Theatre taught me new ways of seeing production potential in bodies of iv text. Dramaturgs at Mid-America Theater Conferences (especially Tom King), dramaturgs in meetings of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (especially Geoff Proehl), dramaturgs online with the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (especially Susan Jonas), and dramaturgs at home (especially Michael Zelenak and Stuart Baker) have widened my view of this play, and of the process of re-producing drama cross-culturally. I am particularly grateful to the casts and crews of two Don Juan premieres in Toronto – Derek Walcott’s Joker of Seville (Hart House Theatre, 1980; especially Naomi Hunter and Leslie Barcza) and Michael Kidd’s Don Juan: Ladykiller of Seville (Poculi Ludique Societas, 2004; especially Julie Florio and Katrina Guy) – for sharing memories, insights, and production materials. A Dissertation Research Grant from Florida State University, generous support for attending conferences and special meetings from Bainbridge College, many Conference Presentation Grants from the FSU Congress of Graduate Students, and funding from the FSU School of Theatre helped me take advantage of opportunities to master this “body of texts.” Like Carrie, members of my writing group (especially Leah Lowe, Caleb Boyd, Gretchen Case, John Fletcher, Alan Sikes, and Juan Matos) helped me find persuasive ways of sharing insights into texts with “the community at large.” Every member of my dissertation committee helped me think more critically and write more clearly. (David Darst even taught me to discuss the play in Spanish, with a roomful of native speakers.) The musical-theater angle of this work owes a special debt of gratitude to John Degen and Jo-Anna Dolloff, and the playwriting aspirations of the project are especially indebted to Laura Edmondson. My project learned a lot of its practicality from John Fletcher and Juan Matos, who helped me premiere the “Taller Dramaturgio” which developed field-tested Americanizations of Cervantes entremeses. (Mr. Fletcher finished his PhD and made it to LSU in time for Hurricane Katrina, but Mr. Matos stuck with Don Juan Plays the USA to the last gasp, personally overseeing the conversion to pdf for his computer-challenged roommate.) I’m particularly grateful for the intelligent hearing and helpful feedback that people completely outside of academia have given to this project, especially members of the Open Life Group v in Tallahassee, my friends at the Cultural Resources Commission (the local arts agency for Tallahassee and Leon County), and my cohorts at the Regional Community Center (in Cairo, Georgia) and the South Georgia Culture Express. Through their encouragement, example, and paying gigs, this “community at large” has enlarged my vision of Don Juan Plays the USA, and helped me make it communicable. To Jean Graham-Jones, to Carrie Sandahl, and to the many in their image who have made Don Juan Plays the USA excellent training grounds for connecting potent texts to powerful methods of performance, my grateful acknowledgments, and my heartfelt thanks. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ix INTRODUCTION: THE ABSENT CLASSIC 1 Stageworthiness 6 Losses in Translation 24 Approaches to Identifying Translation Problems 30 DECODING DON JUAN’S SEX LIFE: 44 USING CONSPECTUS TO CLARIFY THE BURLADOR’S CHARACTER OBJECTIVE, STRATEGY, AND THROUGH-LINE Stakes 47 Location and Dislocation 67 New Ways to Play the Burlador 95 Notes 119 RE-CODING MULTIDIMENSIONAL DAMAS: 142 USING STEREOPTICON PERSPECTIVES ON TEXTUAL VARIANTS TO ESTABLISH SUBTEXTS FOR FEMALE LEADS Element, Humor, and Status 150 Political Clout 176 Damas and Don Juan’s Damnation 197 Notes 217 vii TARGETING RE-PRODUCTION OF THE “UNTRANSLATABLE:” 229 USING PRODUCTION CONCEPTUALIZATION TO TRANSMIT NON-VERBAL PERFORMANCE INFORMATION Bending Catalinón’s Gender 234 Re-conceiving Honor 252 Americanizing Musicality 270 Notes 291 CONCLUSION: NEW WAYS OF MAKING COMEDIA ACCESSIBLE 306 IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY Teodora’s Tooth 308 Ben’s Sampler 334 REFERENCES 360 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 368 viii ABSTRACT Plays from the Spanish Golden Age – even plays as famous as the world’s first Don Juan play – are woefully absent from production in the United States. Why? The traditional answer is “no translations,” but the comedia that gave Don Juan his debut has been translated into English, repeatedly. Arguing that longstanding translation problems are responsible for obscuring this comedia’s stageworthiness, Don Juan Plays the USA synthesizes new ways of making the first Don Juan accessible onstage. I develop methodologies for solving three representative problems that have robbed this comedia famosa of production potential. “Decoding Don Juan’s Sex Life” devises a tool that displaces sex-drive as the driving force inside the first Don Juan. Taking advantage of this play’s uniquely rich translation history (no less than ten translations in print or onstage in the last 50 years), I premiere the practice of Conspectus – i.e., reassessing critical passages in the play through the eyes of a series of translators. Using Conspectus as a tool, it’s possible to determine that delight in seduction (not sex) motivates Don Juan, that a strategy of mirroring other characters characteristically advances his agenda, and that an energetic identity quest describes his arc through the play. “Re-coding Multidimensional Damas” turns a unique feature of the play’s production history into a tool for revitalizing female roles onstage. Don Juan’s debut is recorded in two 17th century printed scripts which are clearly twins but manifestly not identical: El Burlador de Sevilla and Tan largo me lo fiáis. Rather than erase differences between the Burlador and Tan largo by conflating textual variations, I use variants to build a Stereopticon