in

undercover

New Approaches to Plays from the Spanish Golden Age through Hidden Histories of Women & Native Americans

mission

The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is forming a working session to:

• Uncover new riches from theater history’s best-kept secret – the Spanish Comedia nueva.
• Overhear vibrantly expressed underdog perspectives, as Native Americans and women take center stage.
• Unearth golden opportunities for critical study, performance experimentation, and dynamic teaching.

ways in

In pursuit of its mission, this working session forms multidisciplinary teams to dig into two revolutionary plays currently poised for explosion in America:

1. 1.     Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer (c. 1640). 

Known Fact:  playwright Ana Caro (c. 1600–1652) illuminates undercover history of female playwrights during the Siglo de Oro.

Known Fact:  protagonist Leonor (a/k/a Leonardo) mounts feminist counter-attack on Don Juan.

Facts To Be Determined:  How do Caro and her heroine open new horizons for Comedia research, shedding light on theater-making during the Spanish Golden Age and raising implications for staging and teaching today?  How does translation by Amy Williamsen (Courage, Betrayal, and a Woman Scorned) and editing by Ian Borden equip this play for resurgence in America?

1. 2.     Lope de Vega’s El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colón (c. 1600).

Known Fact:  first play in history to put Native Americans on stage.

Known Fact:  explores the causes and consequences of first contact between Europe and America.

Facts To Be Determined:  How do Nuevo mundo’s Amerindian characters interrogate theater’s capacity to challenge expectations about aliens, explode stereotypes, and promote human rights?  How can translation for Florida’s quincentennial (1513-2013) make this play a springboard for everyday citizens to engage in cultural rediscovery?

infiltration plan

Assembling multidisciplinary teams that link modern language experts with theater scholars, incorporate enthusiastic newcomers, and build on a history of collaborations previously sponsored by ASTR’s Comedia research group, this venture penetrates cultural barriers as participants:

• Post initial responses to target plays on session’s wiki (June).

• Contribute to online library of resources for researching target plays (July).

• Formulate collaborative list of team research questions (August).

• Produce an individual paper that explores a target play through a specific research question (September).

• Respond to other team members’ papers and develop presentations for ASTR’s conference (October).

• Participate in presentations that report team findings, stimulate discussion, and actively involve all ASTR members attending the session’s meeting in Nashville (November).

moles

Experienced agents already stationed in the field to help teams dig effectively include:

Team Leaders Karen Berman (Georgia College & State University), Nena Couch (Ohio State University), Janine Kehlenbach (11 Minutes Theatre Company, Denver), and Darci Strother (California State University San Marcos).

Senior Scholars Ian Borden (University of Nebraska Lincoln), Ben Gunter (Theater with a Mission, Tallahassee), Grover Wilkins 3^rd (Orchestra of New Spain, Dallas), and Amy Williamsen (University of North Carolina Greenboro).

Respondent Susan Paun de García (Denison University).

special operative appeals

• Because operations to incorporate comedias into teaching, production, and research in America can fail when agents encounter difficulty in decoding texts, teams will focus on equipping target plays with features that make them user-friendly – e.g., guides to critical hotspots, maps for classroom activities, and pointers for putting the scenes into production.  These resources will remain available longterm via wikispace postings.

• Because this session targets comedias newly translated for performance in the US, team presentations will include rehearsed readings of critical scenes, putting research findings into practice and enhancing the session with performance elements.  Readings may be re-presented afterhours to ASTR at large.

agent selection procedure

1) Craft 250-word statement spelling out your personal interest in going undercover with one of these comedias.  Zero in on any aspect of the project that appeals to you.  No prior experience required; diversity desired.

2) Add 150-word biographical sketch.  Go public about your modern language skills, experience with theater production and/or pedagogy, allied research interests, and/or raw enthusiasm.

3) Send statement & sketch to ASTRundercover2012@yahoo.com by 31 May 2012.

4) Await response.

recruitment disclosures

PLEASE NOTE:  This is not a call to write a paper and read it at a conference, but a quest to burrow into research targets through months-long scholarly exchanges, to share findings with fellow agents (in writing) before ASTR meets, and to engage in intelligence-altering discussion of discoveries at the conference.

More details on how ASTR working sessions operate is available at www.astr.org. (where you can also find dossiers on other working sessions you’ll be privileged to eavesdrop on by joining us undercover).

psst!

Emerging insider info @ spanish-golden-age-plays.wikispaces.com.

Tickets are free on the door or can be pre-ordered from Brown Paper Tickets. Complementary glass of Cusqueña or glass of wine when you pre-order.

More information on the Casa Festival is available online at www.casafestival.org.uk or on the CASA Latin American Theatre Facebook page.

Time: 7pm, 23 May

Venue: Bolivar Hall, London, W1T 5DL

Tickets: Free on door and available for pre-order at Brown Paper Tickets

Time: 4pm  

Tickets: £7 / £5 concession

Venue: Studio Theatre, Roundhouse, Camden    

The Accidental Festival at the Roundhouse presents FourPlay – an afternoon of four short plays, including a version of It’s Raining Cows (Llueven vacas) by Carlos Be, translated by Susanna Herbert and directed by Kate Budgen.

It’s Raining Cows translated by Susanna Herbert

What happens when you love someone so much you believe everything they tell you? Can they make you believe that you cannot hear? Cannot see? That cows are raining from the sky? As Margaret begins to lose faith in her husband, It’s Raining Cows pushes fantasy from the sublime to the macabre, offering a surreal and moving portrait of poisoned dreams.

More information on the FourPlay event is available on the Accidental Festival website.

Friday 4 May 2012

See the link here: PosterTriana for full information.

Inigo Rooms
Somerset House East Wing
King’s College London
Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art
Malet Street
London

Programme:
Sessions held at King’s College London
10.00 – 10.30: Arrival and coffee
10.30 – 12.30: Contextualising Cuba
• Stephen Fay (University of Nottingham): The View from
Cuba’s Imaginary Edge: 1933 in the Isle of Pines Prison
• Fabienne Viala (King’s College London): The House of
Atreides: Cuban Dependence and Psychosis
in José Triana’s Theatre
• Luis Pérez (University of Cambridge): Short Journey
into the Night: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary
Theatre in Socialist Cuba
12.30 – 14.00: Lunch
14.00 – 15.00: Cuban Theatre in Translation
• Kate Eaton (Queen Mary, University of London):
Playing the Cuban
• Gwen MacKeith (King’s College London):
On Nana Mansur’s Theatre
• Catherine Boyle (King’s College London): ‘Ahí están los
Tarahumaras’. On Translating Evaporating Dramatic Form
15.00 – 16.00: José Triana in dialogue

Session held at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art:
19.00 – 21.00: George Bernard Shaw Theatre, RADA, Malet Street
Head for Heights Theatre presents
a rehearsed reading of the unperformed one act play,
Ahí están los Tarahumaras / The Perfect Machine by José Triana
Translated by Catherine Boyle, directed by Daniela Peleanu
Hardie, with Carolyn Pickles and Robin Hooper

King’s College London, 4 May 2012

Out of the Wings is delighted to announce a celebration of José Triana in Cuban Theatre.

The great Cuban dramatist, José Triana, will be at the event at King’s College London on 4 May 2012.

The event will include the dramatised reading of the José Triana’s unperformed one-act play, Allí están los Tarahumaras / Evaporation, translated by Catherine Boyle and directed by Sue Dunderdale.

A complete programme and full details will be published by 16 April.

For further information email: info@outofthewings.org or splas@kcl.ac.uk

Organised by Catherine Boyle and Fabienne Viala

When: 4 May 2012

Venue: King’s College London. Flyer and more details to follow.

Date: Friday 2 March Time: 13:10-13:55 Venue: Richard Mully Basement, UCL Lewis’s Building, Gower Street. Nearest tube stop: Euston Square

Speakers:

1. The Play’s the Thing: Taking the Drama out of Translating for the Theatre. Geraldine Brodie, UCL Centre for Intercultural Studies

2. Guilty Silence: Is the Presumption of Innocence Being Undermined in the Police Station? Abenaa Owusu-Bempah, UCL Law

More information on UCL’s Bite-Sized Lunchtime Lectures Series is available here.

A Panel Discussion on Latin American Theatre in London

In 1967 Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro wrote Siamese Twins, a play which served as a premonition for the state-sponsored violence that would follow a few years later during the Dirty Wars. Throughout her work, Gambaro explores the darker side of human nature and the relationship between citizens and their governments through grotesque characters and harrowing imagery. Now, in 2011 Siamese Twins along with several other Latin American plays such as Las Brutas Juan Radrigán, La Chunga by Mario Vargas Llosa, and Our Private Life by Pedro Miguel Rozo are being performed on London´s stages. These stories present visions of Latin America previously not seen by British audiences, offering new perspectives on their everyday life and traditions.

Upsidedown/Inside-out brings together several key scholars and artists to discuss the relationship between Latin American politics and theatre in London. Join us as we address the ways in which artists in London develop textual and cultural translation of Latin American works and how audiences´ prejudices of Latin America may or may not be challenged through such stagings. This event coincides with the UK premiere of Gambaro’s Siamese Twins at the Theatro Technis and tickets for the production will be raffled off at this event.

19 September, 7:30 pm
Bolivar Hall
56 Grafton Way, London, W1t 5DL

RSVP to the facebook event here

Las Brutas / Beasts by Juan Radrigán at Theatre 503, 30 August – 24 September

On Tuesday 30 August Las Brutas / Beasts, directed by Sue Dunderale and translated by Catherine Boyle, opens at Theatre 503: www.theatre503.com.  The production is in conjunction with Head for Heights Theatre and is the British première of this lyrical and uncompromising play, which we have workshopped in readings at King’s, Tristan Bates Theatre and iceandfire & Amnesty International’s Everyone Has the Right festival.

The timing of the opening could not be better for us, since Juan Radrigán is the favourite to be awarded Chile’s National Theatre Prize, which will be announced on Friday 2 September, our press night.

There will be a staged reading of another of Radrigán’s plays, Hechos consumados / When All is Said and Done,followed by a discussion of Radrigán and theatre in translation, on Saturday 10 September. The play is translated by Catherine Boyle and by directed Justin Lucero of East 15 Acting School, one of the contenders for our Out of the Wing’s Dragons’ Den event in March. All details can be found on the Theatre 503 website.

Los Siameses / Siamese Twins by Griselda Gambaro at Theatro Technis, 2 – 25 September

On 2 September (press night 7 September) Siamese Twins, in translation by the Out of the Wings Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Gwen MacKeith, opens at Theatro Technis: http://www.theatrotechnis.com/show.php?id=42. The production is the work of the winners of the Out of the Wings Dragons’ Den event, Mara Lockowandt and Jorge Pérez Falconi of Silver Lining Theatre: www.silverliningtheatre.com.

Griselda Gambaro’s work has received international recognition, but remains little performed in the UK. This play shows her working through with great artistry her form of the Argentine grotesque, and the creative team has already held a very successful workshop on the grotesque at Canning House.

On Monday 19 September there will be a seminar on Latin American Theatre in translation at the Bolívar Hall: http://www.cultura.embavenez-uk.org/

Oberon Books will be publishing Gwen MacKeith’s translation of Siameses Twins: http://oberonbooks.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Siamese+Twins.

As Out of the Wings comes near the end of our fully-funded stage, these two London openings are important and exciting for the dissemination of our work

For more information click here

Directed by Sue Dunderdale.

Translated by Catherine Boyle.

Chile, 1974. In the extreme isolation of the Andean foothills, three sisters are found hanged from a rock, their animals slaughtered beside them…
Justa, Lucia and Luciana are three Coya (indigenous Andean) sisters, and the last remnants of a large family who tried to survive in an inhospitable environment. Parents, siblings and neighbours have either died or fled the challenging landscape to find work in distant towns. Faced with ageing bodies, loneliness, and terror of unknown forces which seem to be closing in on them, the sisters make a decision which shocks a nation.
Against the backdrop of the Pinochet regime’s ascent to power, internationally-acclaimed playwright Juan Radrigán examines, movingly and at times humorously, the effect of isolation and fear on the human spirit. With poignant echoes of the 2010 Chilean miners’ crisis and resonance with marginalised communities worldwide, Beasts is a haunting portrayal of love, fear and impossible choices.

‘… an observant, sensitive and sad play, never preaching, always generous and directed with matching generosity by Sue Dunderdale.’
The Sunday Times on The Way Home
‘… sparkily translated by Catherine Boyle.’
The Daily Telegraph the RSC’s House of Desires

Juan Radrigán’s awards include: Best Chilean Play (for When All is Said and Done); Circle of Critics Prize (for The Bull by the Horns, 1983 and The Exile of the Naked Woman, 2002); Apes Prize (for Drunken Ghosts, 1997 and When All is Said and Done, 1999); the Agustin Siré Prize from the Academy of Fine Arts, 2002, and the Altazor Prize for Best Dramatist, 2005.

• Post Show talks Tuesday 30 August, Tuesday 6 September & Tuesday 20 September
• On Saturday 10 September, in lieu of a performance there will be a play reading and seminar about Juan Radrigán and Latin American theatre

Developed with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, King’s College London, Out of The Wings and National Theatre Studio.

More information and online booking is available on the Theatre503 website.