17 - Tirso de Molina on Stage: Comedy, Costumes, Chameleons

Summary

In March 2010, I had one of my most unforgettable experiences with Tirso de Molina. We had brought our University of Massachusetts’ production of Marta la piadosa [Marta the Divine] to the Siglo Festival at El Paso’s Chamizal National Memorial. I was the show’s translator and adapter, and my perspective on the play had always been from the audience’s side of the proscenium, whether during rehearsals and performances from the previous November’s run at UMass or brush-ups for our Chamizal remount. We were able to bring only a skeleton crew to El Paso; all hands were needed literally “on deck” to crew the performance. Where was the need greatest? Costumes, of course! Along with costume designer Felicia Malachite and dramaturg Sarah Grunnah, I got swept up in the frenzy of the backstage costume-change pattern. In the dimly lit wing space off-left, we helped harried actors get in and out of breastplates, shawls, head-dresses, hoop skirts, belts, booties, stockings, and accessories—all in near darkness and sometimes with just a few seconds to spare before an actor was called upon to exit our murky world and enter the audience’s brilliantly illuminated one. It was one of the most exhilarating and also one of the most exhausting nights I have ever spent in a theater, and it gave me new appreciation for Tirso: for the technical complexity involved in engineering the spectacle taking place on stage, and for the virtuosity required of his performers—especially actresses—who are called on to juggle multiple intricate tasks for the entire run time of a show, on stage and off.

From my perspective as a theater practitioner, Tirso’s dramaturgy, at least in his comedies, is rooted in the potentialities of costume, in ways that distinguish him from his early modern Spanish playwriting peers. My observations come from a close knowledge of his texts from a series of productions that I have been associated with over the last thirty years.