Wrighting Back to Spain: Constructing Latina/O Identities
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Wrighting Back to Spain: Constructing Latina/o Identities Through Translation, Adaptation, and Staging of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Johnathon D. Boyd, M.A. Graduate Program in Theatre The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Ana Elena Puga, Advisor Beth Kattelman Nena Couch Elizabeth Davis Copyright by Johnathon D. Boyd 2013 nii Abstract Adaptations of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play La vida es sueño by Latino playwrights Nilo Cruz, José Rivera, and Octavio Solis establish a relationship between Spanish Golden Age comedia and contemporary Latina/o identity. Analysis of plays by Cruz, Rivera, and Solis suggest that there are distinctive ways in which Spanish Golden Age culture connects with Latinidad in the United States. Their work engages readers and audiences with issues involving Latinidad, a concept used to describe a shared, common identity among a wide variety of Hispanic peoples in the United States, or a means of claiming Latina/o identity. Latinidad provides a lens through which the Spanish Golden Age is viewed as an era that impacted life in the New World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and remains relevant as a source of cultural heritage and identity, tension and anger, and even as a source for parody. Three questions guide this research: First, to what extent do these three plays convey, or exist as, an echo, haunting, or nostalgic resonance of this historical era? Second, what does the history and politics of translating and adapting Pedro Calderón’s play La vida es sueño reveal about the formation of U.S. Latina/o identity? Finally, to what extent do these three plays and their productions contribute to a process of, or resistance to, cultural assimilation, defined as a process in which a minority group sacrifices or loses aspects of its own identity by integrating cultural characteristics from a more dominant population? ii The theoretical framework used to analyze these plays involves a balance of Latina/o cultural theory, post-colonial theory, assimilation theory, and translation theory. This framework supports my argument that the plays by Cruz, Rivera, and Solis establish a relationship with Spain that displays the range and complexity of Latina/o identity, and provide a means for readers and audiences to identify connections between Latinidad and Spanish cultural heritage. iii Acknowledgements Many people have helped me while writing this dissertation. I want to thank my adviser, Ana Elena Puga, for encouraging me to become a better writer, for her insight and guidance on how to build an argument, and for her patience in supervising each stage of the process. I want to thank the mentors who have encouraged, supported, and shaped this project, and my academic career, while at the Ohio State University, including Beth Kattelman, Nena Couch, Elizabeth Davis, Nicholas Dekker, and Don Larson. This project has also benefited from the contributions of many individuals who helped during the research process. I want to thank those playwrights, directors, and scholars who granted me interviews, offered advice, or whose work was tremendously influential on mine, such as Octavio Solis, José Rivera, Nilo Cruz, Jorge Huerta, Jon Rossini, Kellee Van Aken, Karen Glass, Sue O’Neill, Alex Boyles, Brendan Duffy, Richard Hamburger, and Cecilie Keenan. I am particularly grateful to my family and friends for their support. I want to thank Ashley Derr for providing a place to stay while conducting research at the University of Maryland. I want to thank my colleagues at the Ohio State University for their encouragement: Andrew Blasenak, Chelsea Phillips, Matt Yde, Matt Vadnais, Alison Vasquez, and Elizabeth Wellman. Most importantly, I want to acknowledge and thank my parents for helping me through many difficult times, for enduring moments of frustration and doubt, and for always providing me with wisdom and hope. iv Vita June 2001 ................................................................ B.A. Theatre, Southwestern University June 2008 ..................................................... M.A. Theatre History, Texas State University 2008 to 2012 ..................................................... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University Publications Performance Review of Mariano Pensotti’s El pasado es un animal grotesco, Wexner Center for the Arts Mershon Stage, Columbus, OH, Theatre Journal, 64.3 (Autumn 2012): 433-435. Performance Review of Reid Farrington’s Gin & “It”, Wexner Center for the Arts Performance Space, Columbus, OH, Theatre Journal, 62.4 (Winter 2010): 684-686. Book Review of Teatro Chicana: A Collective Memoir and Selected Plays. Eds. Laura E. Garcia, Sandra M. Gutierrez, and Felicitas Nuñez. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 2008. Theatre Journal 62.1 (Spring 2010): 135. Fields of Study Major Field: Theatre v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Vita ...................................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Nilo Cruz & Assimilation as Process, Product, and Identity .......................... 43 Chapter 3: José Rivera’s New World (W)rights the Old World ..................................... 106 Chapter 4: Octavio Solis’ Dreamlandia and the Borders of Identity ............................. 169 Chapter 5: The Latinidades of Cruz, Rivera, and Solis .................................................. 240 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 254 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Venn diagram for Latinidad .............................................................................. 10 vii Chapter 1 – Introduction Wrighting Back to Spain: Constructing Latina/o Identities Through Translation, Adaptation, and Staging of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño analyzes the ways in which adaptations of Spanish Golden Age plays reveal and construct Latina/o identity in the United States today. In particular, the plays by three Latino dramatists – Nilo Cruz, José Rivera, and Octavio Solis – establish a relationship between contemporary U.S. Latina/o identity and Spanish Golden Age comedia. Their work engages readers and audiences with issues involving Latinidad, a concept used to describe a shared, common identity among a wide variety of Hispanic peoples in the United States, or a means of claiming Latina/o identity.1 Latinidad provides a lens through which I view Spanish Golden Age culture as a distinct historical era with a set of values or worldviews, yet also as a way of life that both impacted the New World and remains relevant today, and as a source of artistic, literary, and theatrical activity that has influenced Latina/o identity. These three playwrights’ shared cultural heritage offer 1 Significant scholarship on the subject of Latinidad includes Felix Padilla’s Latino Ethnic Consciousness (1985), Frances R. Aparicio and Susana Chavez-Silverman’s Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997), Juana María Rodriguez’s Queer Latinidad (2003), Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s On Latinidad (2009), and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera’s Performing Queer Latinidad (2012). My definition, developed from research by these scholars, is used to discuss the work of three playwrights, each classified as a “Latino” yet originating from different Latin American ancestry, and to analyze the relationship of their work with imperial Spain and its legacy. 1 a point of departure for my comparison of how they define Latina/o identity through the act of adapting Spanish Golden Age comedia.2 My research focuses specifically on issues of Cuban-American identity in Nilo Cruz’s Life is a Dream (2008), Puerto Rican identity in José Rivera’s Sueño (1999), and Mexican-American identity in Octavio Solis’s Dreamlandia (2010). These three plays are all adaptations of the same Spanish Golden Age text, and thus allow for comparison. In addition, these plays were published and produced within the last fourteen years, and thus represent a tendency in American Latina/o theatre to focus on classical Spain, to understand the present by exploring the past, and to investigate the relationship between Latinidad and the Spanish Golden Age.3 Although these three plays are representative of 2 According to Raymond Williams, “culture” is one of the most complicated words in the English language to define, due to its intricate historical development and the fact that it has come to be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible systems of thought (87). Williams goes on to highlight three modern categories of usage for the word culture: to describe a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development, to indicate a particular way of