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Comedia Performance Comedia Performance Journal of The Association for Hispanic Classical Theater Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2014 www.comediaperformance.org Comedia Performance Journal of the Association For Hispanic Classical Theater Barbara Mujica, Editor Box 571039 Georgetown University Washington, D. C. 20057 Volume 11, Number 1 Spring 2014 ISSN 1553-6505 Comedia Performance Editorial Board Barbara Mujica – Editor Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Box 571039 Georgetown University Washington, D. C. 20057-1039 [email protected] [email protected] Gwyn Campbell – Managing Editor Department of Romance Languages Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA 24450 [email protected] Sharon Voros – Book Review Editor Department of Modern Languages US Naval Academy Annapolis, MD 21402-5030 [email protected] Darci Strother – Theater Review Editor Department of World Languages & Hispanic Literatures California State University San Marcos San Marcos, CA 92096-0001 [email protected] Michael McGrath – Interviews Editor Department of Foreign Languages P.O. Box 8081 Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA 30460 [email protected] Editorial Advisory Board Isaac Benabu Donald Dietz Susan Fischer Donald Larson Dakin Matthews Susan Paun de García Ángel Sánchez Jonathan Thacker Christopher Weimer Editorial Staff Cristi Killingsworth, Editorial Assistant [email protected] AHCT Officers Susan Paun de García, President Ángel Sánchez, Vice President Christopher Gascón, Secretary Sharon Voros, Treasurer Presidents Emeriti: Donald Dietz, Barbara Mujica, Robert Johnston Editorial Policy Comedia Performance is the journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, an organization devoted to the study of the come- dia and other forms of early modern Spanish theater. Comedia Performance publishes articles on diverse aspects of performance of the Span- ish comedia and other theatrical forms. Appro- priate subjects for articles include, but are not limited to, historical or modern staging of the comedia, translating the comedia for the stage, performance theory, textual issues pertaining to performance, historical issues such as audience composition, corral design, costuming, block- ing, set design, and spectator response. Comedia Performance does not publish text-based liter- ary studies. Comedia Performance publishes interviews with directors and actors, theater reviews and book reviews in special sections. Purchase Information Comedia Performance is distributed without ad- ditional charge to members of the AHCT at the an- nual conference in El Paso, Texas. Individual copies may be purchased for $20. Non-members of AHCT may subscribe for $50 for three issues. Library rates are $30 per issue and $75 for a three-year subscrip- tion. Please contact Gwyn Campbell, Managing Edi- tor, at [email protected], for additional infor- mation. Send other queries to Barbara Mujica at mu- [email protected]. Advertising Rates Comedia Performance accepts advertisements for books, plays, festivals, and other events related to theater. Rates are $100 for a full page and $50 for a half page. Send checks made to AHCT to Sharon Voros and camera-ready text to Barbara Mujica. Submission Information All submissions must be original and un- published. After publication, authors may solicit permission to reproduce their material in books or other journals. Articles may be in either English or Spanish and should be submitted electronically. No paper submissions will be accepted. Articles should use MLA style and not exceed 25 double-spaced, typed pages, including notes and bibliography. Send article submissions to: [email protected] Comedia Performance is a refereed journal. All submissions will be read by a committee of experts. Please submit articles to the appropriate editor. E-mails of editors are listed under Editorial Board. Guidelines for theater reviews: 1. Reviews should be between 3 and five pages long, in- cluding pictures. 2. Reviews should not include endnotes and bibliography. 3. Reviews should not include a detailed description of plot. For canonical plays, no plot summary is necessary. For lesser known plays, a two- to three-line synopsis should suffice. 4. Avoid minute descriptions of action, costume, lighting or sets. Avoid constructions such as, “And then Don Lope comes out and says...” Instead, comment on the efficacy of the blocking of particular scenes or the effect caused by costume and decor. Do not describe details of the perfor- mance unless you are going to comment on them. 5. Avoid structures such as “This reviewer thinks...” Re- views are by definition subjective. 6. One reviewer may not publish more than two reviews in a single issue. CONTENTS Performance Studies Zayas’s La traicón en la amistad in English: Translation and Adaptation in a New Era Catherine Larson 1 Staging the Page: Performing Technologies of the Book in Massenet’s Don Quichotte Cory A. Reed 37 Incidental Music and Its Role in Three English- Language Comedia Performances Donald R. Larson 54 Un montaje ciberpunk de La vida es sueño de Calderón de la Barca en Duke University Alejandra Juno Rodríguez Villar 85 Stage Picture, Text and the Twenty-First Century Audience: Performance as the Final Element of Translation in Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer Ian M. Borden 112 Interviews El director de la Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico debe defender a Lope y a Calderón, no a sí mismo Purificació Mascarell 154 “La española inglesa” sube a las tablas en Almagro: Entrevista con Miguel Cubrero, actor y director de teatro Esther Fernández 180 Lope’s Fuenteovejuna through the Eyes of a Twenty-First Century Director: A Conversation with Lisa Abbot Michael J. McGrath 196 Theater Reviews 211 Book Reviews 248 Performance Studies ZAYAS’S LA TRAICIÓN EN LA AMISTAD IN ENGLISH: TRANSLATION AND ADAPTA- TION IN A NEW ERA CATHERINE LARSON Indiana University In the last twenty-five years, María de Za- yas’s La traición en la amistad has emerged as an influential text in the field of Comedia studies. Moving from virtual obscurity into the spotlight, Zayas’s comedy has been reborn in multiple edi- tions, translations, adaptations, and performances on both sides of the Atlantic,1 and it has been the topic of a significant number of scholarly studies and per- formance reviews, creating in the process new gen- erations of readers and spectators who have discov- ered the play. My own experience with La traición en la amistad is similarly multi-leveled: I have read insightful scholarly essays about the comedy, taught it, translated it to English (as Friendship Betrayed) for the bilingual volume that featured Valerie Heg- strom’s careful edition, written about it, and seen my translation performed by two theater companies with quite distinct approaches (a third company re- 1 2 Comedia Performance Vol. 11, No. 1, 2014 cently produced a staged reading).2 Reading Cari- dad Svich’s A Little Betrayal among Friends, how- ever, has taken me down yet another path, leading me to interrogate from a more nuanced perspective the complicated relationships existing between text and performance, translation and adaptation, theory and practice, as well as the often conflicting ways in which we talk about what contemporary audiences want, or what we think they want. Equally im- portant are the connections between and among the translators, adaptors, and theater practitioners and the original writer, between the early modern play and its twenty-first-century embodiment—in print or onstage. Several issues guide considerations of the afterlife of a classical play, and recent research in the related areas of performance studies, adaptation studies, and translation studies has proven fruitful in connecting theory and practice.3 Moreover, critical approaches that focus on the degree to which a modernized version differs from or remains “faith- ful” to the source play no longer dominate the criti- cal discourse of the field.4 Topics that tend to ap- pear with increasing regularity in critical essays, performance reviews and translators’ notes include discussions of: what makes a play accessible and acceptable to modern audiences,5 challenges that face those who adapt the classics for English- speaking audiences, and the ways in which different companies have approached the contributions of the C. Larson 3 translators and adaptors who form part of the team taking a text from page to stage.6 Performances of classical theater bring together a host of partnering theater practitioners, each with essential roles in the interpretation of the text and the creation of mean- ing for new audiences.7 All of these topics move center stage when we consider the vastly different twenty-first-century productions of the plays whose source author was a seventeenth-century Spanish woman who, critics agree, never saw her comedy performed. Zayas’s La traición en la amistad offers useful examples of the possibilities that emerge when modern audiences are given the opportunity to sample a variety of contemporary incarnations and examine the issues surrounding their formation. Friendship Betrayed, a relatively literal translation, and A Little Betrayal among Friends, a translation and free adaptation, can help illuminate these issues as a seventeenth- century text inspires vastly different twenty-first- century performances. The Oklahoma City University production of Friendship Betrayed was well received by audi- ences on the home campus (February 2003) and in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (March 2003).8
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