This edited volume brings together scholars and practitioners in a timely consideration of the relevance of early modern Spanish theater for present-day audiences. In response to the ongoing decline in material and ideological support for the humanities at many institutions of higher learning, the volume asserts the need for collaboration between scholars and those beyond the academy, presenting theater as a public-facing affirmation of the value of humanistic education whose “re-enactment of the human experience” (3) can spur spectators to reflection, empathy, and action on social justice issues. The text's authors and interviewees adeptly demonstrate that Golden Age plays and their modern adaptations can engage readers, viewers, and students with questions related to gender identity, economic inequality, and racial and religious discrimination.
The volume is divided into three parts, each with a different thematic focus. Part 1 (“Readings of Comedias”) consists of analyses of plays that speak to still-relevant social justice issues. Harrison Meadows considers the ambiguous resolution of Vélez de Guevara's La serrana de la Vera in relation to current conversations surrounding the expression of gender identities, while Tania de Miguel Magro examines gender identity and the institution of marriage in Salas Barbadillo's El descasamentero. Melissa Figueroa suggests that Gaspar Aguilar's El gran Patriarca don Juan de Ribera confronts the seventeenth-century expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in ways that resonate with current immigration and labor laws, noting that the play's critiques of discrimination and economic exploitation offer a useful lens through which to think about job insecurity and responses to immigration in present-day Spain. These essays thus identify points of connection between the early modern period and the present, pushing against the notion of the comedia “as a tool for expanding the ideology of the Catholic . . . upper classes” (9) and instead proposing the comedia as a tool for engaging with social justice in the classroom and beyond.
Part 2 (“Adaptations”) highlights creative reinterpretations of Golden Age plays and their theoretical or material engagement with immigration, government corruption, and corporate greed. Erin Alice Cowling's interpretation of EFE TRES Teatro's adaptation of El príncipe inocente centers on its addition of a frame story that shapes the original play into a critique of economic inequality and the criminal justice system. Similarly, Mina García Jordán analyzes a 2016 play by the Centro Dramático Nacional that changes the setting of Cervantes's El trato de Argel from an African prison to an immigrant detention center in Spain, confronting the spectator with the uncomfortable reality of a political system that actively rejects and punishes immigrants. Elena García Martín traces the efforts of the towns of Fuente Obejuna and Zalamea to stage Lope de Vega's plays about their local histories in the face of “oppressive forms of authority that mirrored those of the historic plays they re-enacted” (191), demonstrating how these plays can serve as poignant commentaries on contemporary social issues.
Part 3 (“Interviews”) features interviews with directors, dramaturgs, and actors who have brought productions and adaptations of Golden Age plays to the stage in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. This section of the book is particularly innovative in that it attempts to bridge the gap between theory and praxis, highlighting the ways in which scholars and artists can collaborate on meaningful approaches to early modern Spanish theater. Notably, directors Ben Gunter and Harley Erdman emphasize the interplay between context and content that makes theater useful for engaging with social justice issues. In discussing collaborations with local Native American populations on a production of a play about the Spanish conquest or the staging of progressive notions of gender in a theater located in a US conservative stronghold, they foreground the ways in which scholars and practitioners may work together to understand how the meaning of Golden Age plays is informed by their transplantation to different historical and cultural milieus.
This book makes an important contribution to the field of early modern Hispanic studies and offers a useful model for collaboration among scholars, artists, and the public. In a time of continued struggle for racial, gender, and economic equality, this volume makes a renewed case for the value of the humanities in fomenting productive reflection and collaborative action toward the goal of creating a more just world.
