Re-Stor(y)ing Theatre History in the Americas: Professional Players and the Callao Contract of 1599 Susan Beth Finque A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Scott Magelssen, Chair Jose Antonio Lucero Stefka Mihaylova Program Authorized to Offer Degree: School of Drama @Copyright 2017 Susan B. Finque University of Washington Abstract Re-stor(y)ing Theatre History in the Americas: Professional Players and the Callao Contract of 1599 Susan B. Finque Chair of the Supervising Committee: Associate Professor Scott Magelssen, Chair School of Drama In neglecting Peruvian theatre history, theatre studies has kept a branch of American theatre’s genealogical tree nearly invisible, despite the fruits of its growth thriving in plain sight. In investigating a contract drawn in Callao, Peru, 1599, I reveal a culture of secular, professional performance in sixteenth-century Lima. Inarguably creating the first professional company in the Western Hemisphere, the contract features male and female signatories, democratic structure, business sophistication, and a synchronicity with the evolution of the profession in Shakespeare’s London. Players were onstage in the Americas more than a hundred years earlier than current narratives dictate. The contract’s neglect, and English language scholars’ neglect of the Peruvian archives reveal pervasive biases in historiography. Asking how an abundance of archival evidence and the repertory of Peru persist without influencing theatre history in the Americas, I investigate genetic elements in the americanity of Peru, a term defining influences from indigenous, invasive and mestizaje cultures. I theorize with scholars Michel de Certeau, Carolyn Dean, Diana Taylor, Odai Johnson and Joseph Roach, among others, how slow-to-change narratives of theatre history in the Americas lack a hemispheric consciousness and are ruled by a series of persistent hegemonic assumptions. I examine dominant textbooks in order to establish Peru’s absence. Peruvians Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Guillermo Lohmann Villena and Maria Rostrowowski help track cultural formations in Peru before and after Contact. Examining the contract’s moment in history with a feminist lens enables new perspectives on actors coming to the Spanish Americas. This project registers cultural influences from an understudied Peru, contributions of under-recognized scholars of colonial and pre-Contract Peru, and the collections of Abraham Simon Rosenbach, the Jewish American bookseller who purchased the contract and in 1939 published a paper on his finding. The legacy of Peru’s theatre history reveals the implications and rewards of a hemispheric consciousness for the Americas, and the critical role performance can play in cultures surviving traumatic violence. para María sin ella, esto no fuera posible Acknowledgements and Gratitude I could not have predicted how the course of my life would change during and after a first trip to Andean Peru, when I joined a group of undergraduates journeying to Cuzco for Spanish Language immersion study and survey courses in Art History. I have so many people to thank it is humbling: Ruth Yabar Challco and all of her family in Cuzco, Ana Correa and all of the Yuyachkani family; Professors and advisors Dr. Jose Antonio Lucero, Dr. María Elena Garcia, Dr. Stefka Mihaylova, Professor Anthony Geist, Dr. Adam, Warren, Dr. Odai Johnson, Dr. Sarah Bryant-Bertail; colleagues Dr. Jyana S. Browne, Dr. Gibson Cima, Dr. Lezlie Cross, Dr. Elizabeth Coen, Chris Goodson, Scott Venters, Dr. Michelle Granshaw, Sue Bruns, Dr. Todd London, the women of the costume shop and everyone at the University of Washington School of Drama. I am grateful to Dr. Lauren Schwartz for helping me out of the cloud of injury and rehabilitation in order to find the discipline I knew was there. I am appreciative of working groups at conferences I attend including those Theorizing from The Global South at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Kathy Nigh and the Sacred Clowns at the HEMI, and the leadership at Mid-America Theatre Conference that welcomes Seattle scholars. So much gratitude for the eyes of Sam Lowry and Chelsea Gish, my writing partner Menchui and my colleagues/friends of the theatre who’ve been there for me for years onstage and off including Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Jose Carrasquillo, Brad Cerenzia and la patrona secreta, Dr. Craig Latrell and Robert Sandberg, Camryn Manheim, Mark Lutwak and my dear friend Professor Karen Stuhldreher; With deep appreciation and heartfelt gratitude to my dissertation advisor Dr. Scott Magelssen—his unconditional confidence in me constantly bolstered my own, and his gentle and scholarly wisdom kept me on track and at every turn made the task at hand possible; With gratitude to my father Dr. Burt, a retired physician, my sister Janet, a retired grade school teacher, and my brother Sam, a retired arts administrator—sigh. And I am just getting started! With love and devotion to the greatest blessing of my life, my partner Maria Elena Martinez--this whole thing was her idea and she has been behind pushing me forward, ahead of me clearing the way, by my side and in my heart every step of the way; With appreciation to Tyler, Maria’s grandson and the only person in the world who calls me “Cookie;” To those now gone without whom I would not be where or who I am, and for whom I go on: my sister Elaine Lowry, my champion Sarah Nash Gates, Kabby Mitchell III, Clayton Corzatte, Marjorie Nelson and my mother Diana Goss; And I never forget my animal companions, here and gone, who attend with unconditional patience and love. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Section I A Lens for Historiography and Ephemera(l) Matters: The Contract, The Collector, and the Archive…………………………………………...34 Introduction Part One: Ephemera Matters: The Contract’s Appearance and The Collector’s Imperative Part Two: Collecting Matters: The Contract’s Disappearance and Archival (Dys)Functions Part Three: The Contract and its Content: A Close Reading Section II A Lens for History: The Callao Contract as Departure Point; the Genetics of Americanity Developing in Early Modern Lima………………………….110 Introduction Part One: Peru’s National Archive; Autores de Comedias in the AGN, 1575-1600 Part Two: Isabel in Spain: Staging a Journey, 1598 Part Three: Early Modern Lima: Americanity Stages a City Part Four: Andean Peru: The First First Actors Section III A Lens for Relevance: What Must Be Re-Stor(i)ed: The Contract and Redressive Actions Against Hegemonic Assumptions and Dominant Historical Narratives ……169 Introduction Dominant Narratives, Slow Change, Genealogical Implications Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...204 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………212 1 Introduction “The other is the phantasm of historiography, the object that it seeks, honors, and buries.” Michel de Certeau The Writing of History On 28 June 1599, eight actors gathered at the port of Callao, the nautical entry to the colonial virreinato of Lima, Peru. They were joined by witnesses and an official notary of the Spanish Crown and Inquisition; their business to contract together as a company of players for the theatre. They were theatre professionals—Spaniards, Hidalgos and Mestizos—all comedienes.1 The leading lady and wife of fellow actor Francisco de Péres de Robles made a mark over her name, which was written by the notary, as she could neither read nor write. Yet Ísabel de Los Angeles, the first professional actress of the Americas, had left her imprint on the record. The port of Callao was one of the most geographically welcoming yet politically contested natural ports of the western hemisphere. It was there this group of eight actors formed a shareholders’ company in an arrangement that was common business in the cities of Madrid and London. Just outside the city of Lima these comedienes, men and 1 Comedien, not as in comic actor, but as in player, usually of the capa y espada genre of Lope de Vega’s plays. An Hidalgo/a was of Spanish parentage, but born in the Americas. The mestizo, in these times, meant one of the parents was Inca, or “indian”—as these categories further complicated definitions. For guidance of this stratification and identification, I rely on Marisol de la Cadena, in her book Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco Peru; she offers racial and class designations in context. The term “indian” or “indio” was, especially in colonial times, used widely and derogatorily to refer to any indigenous person who was not of the noble class of the Inca. Today it is still considered a slur. 2 women, joined forces to optimize their chances for financial success in a town that not only demanded entertainment, but had more than enough silver and gold to pay for it. More than three hundred years later, Dr. Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach purchased the document I’ve come to call the Callao Contract along with a large lot of Peruvian materials dated between 1554 and 1610. Dr. Rosenbach gave a paper to the antiquarian society of which he was a member entitled “The First Theatrical Company in America,” in which he reported on the significance of the contract; it was published in 1938. In it he translates the document, and reports that the signatories formed, in the language of sixteenth-century Spanish theatre, a compañía de parte, or a company of shareholders. The signatories, six men and two women, were contracting together as a licensed company for a period of three years, agreeing to divide the shares of the profits from their enterprise according to their tasks as actors, managers, investors or stars. The agreement was similar to the standard professional contracts used in London and Madrid of its exact year. The document was witnessed and signed just outside the city we know now as Lima in the Port of Callao, Peru, 28 June 1599.