Comedia Performance Journal of The Association for Hispanic Classical Theater Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2013 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 10, Number 1 Spring 2013 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 Patricia Soler – Web Page [email protected] Katherine Vadella – 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 Editor’s Note 1 Antonio Regalado García: In Memoriam 4 Performance Studies Calderon’s La vida es sueño Meets Callaghan’s Fever/Dream: Adaptation and Performance Catherine Larson 19 Water, Wine, and Aloja: Consuming Interests in the Corrales de Comedias 1600-1646 Rachel Ball 59 The Dancing of an Attitude: Inconstancy as Masculine Virtue in Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano Shifra Armon 93 La elusión del vacío en El médico de su honra Gabriel Villarroel 119 Del enredo barroco al minimalismo bizarro: Las bizarrías de Belisa y la renovación escénica de los clásicos Esther Fernández 153 Interview Tirso’s Damned by Despair at London’s National Theatre: An Interview with Bijan Sheibani Maryrica Ortiz Lottman 195 Theater Reviews 227 Book Reviews 244 EDITOR’S NOTE This issue marks the tenth anniversary of Comedia Performance, the journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater. Two years of discussion at AHCT board meetings preceded our launch in 2004. No one doubted the value of creating a journal devoted to the performance of classical plays, and no one doubted the ability of scholars to produce first-rate articles on subjects such as period and modern productions of the comedia, translating for the stage, and acting techniques. Still, questions abounded. How would we finance the journal? Would universities subscribe? Would advertisers place ads? Finally, we decided to close our eyes and leap into the water. Ten years later, we are still swimming! In a single decade, Comedia Performance has grown into a sleek, internationally respected, refereed journal with an acceptance rate of about 30 percent. Our advisory board consists of eminent scholars from three continents. We receive 1 2 Comedia Performance Vol. 10, No. 1, 2013 submissions from Europe, as well as the United States. Numerous universities subscribe, and, although we would like the number of our advertisers to increase, publishers are gradually beginning to place ads on our pages. Most important, we consistently publish well researched, well written articles that are cited routinely by scholars. We are listed in the MLA Bibliographies and are considered an essential resource for both academicians and theater practitioners. And now, Comedia Performance is available not only in print, but also online. Serving as editor of this thriving journal has been a real pleasure. It was something I had longed to do years before the dream of Comedia Performance became a reality, and the experience has been as rewarding as I anticipated. I have been blessed with a hardworking, enthusiastic staff and advisory board, and I am indebted to all of them as well as to the scores of scholars who publish with us. This issue of Comedia Performance is dedicated to the memory of Antonio Regalado (1932-2012), who passed away last June at his home in Estepona, Spain. Regalado was a pivotal figure in the professional lives of several of us in the AHCT, and through his monumental, two- volume study of Calderón, he has influenced countless others. Sharon Voros and I studied with him at Columbia University and have continued to Mujica 3 derive inspiration from his teaching throughout our careers. And now, it’s time to take a deep breath and keep on swimming! Barbara Mujica Editor Antonio Regalado García (1932-2012): In Memorium ANTONIO REGALADO: IRREVERENT, IRREPRESSIBLE, AND IRREPLACEABLE BÁRBARA MUJICA Georgetown University If it weren’t for Antonio Regalado, I wouldn’t be a Calderonista. The summer before I enrolled in his Golden Age Theater course at New York University, I had studied Calderón with another professor—a much older and more distinguished scholar than Regalado was at the time. Alas, the entire summer consisted of counting syllables. The scholar in question was preparing a study of the autos sacramentales, and, I am convinced, he was using free graduate student labor to perform the tedious task of determining the versification of some unpublished plays. Every day after work I would trek up to the Hispanic Society, sit down in the reading room, and count syllables. At the end of the course, the illustrious scholar said, “And now, I hope all of you will continue to study Calderón.” “Fat chance,” I said to myself, vowing 4 Mujica 5 never ever to read another play by this deadly Spanish playwright. Nevertheless, thanks to the exigencies of scheduling courses while working fulltime, I did wind up taking another course on the detested author. The first semester of Regalado’s seminar on Spanish Golden Age Theater was on Lope and his contemporaries. The second semester was on Calderón. Those two courses changed my life. Regalado was so dynamic, creative, and irreverent that I felt suddenly galvanized. We read everything—Lope, Tirso and Calderón, of course, and the pertinent criticism, but also Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Rilke and Saint Augustine. We read these authors not because Regalado assigned them, but because he had read them. He sparked our intellectual curiosity in a way no professor ever had before. He would plunge into German and French philosophy, and then skip suddenly to patristic thought or the Italian Neo-Platonists. One day he expounded on the Counter Reformation roots of German romanticism and another on the Cartesian revolution and Segismundo. His lectures were unpredictable. They were never on exactly what we had prepared for class. He didn’t give us a syllabus, and he didn’t respect ordinary teaching norms.