Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
November 10, 2023
Click on a Panel or Keynote for Lecture Topic and Participants
10:00-10:20 am (EST) Arrival at Chain Theatre and Coffee
10:20am (EST) Welcoming Address
Panel 1 at 10:30-11:50am (EST)
La monja alférez y el momento contemporáneo
(The Lieutenant Nun and the Current Moment)
5-Minute Break
El nuevo mundo en las comedias y las comedias en el Nuevo Mundo
(The New World in the Comedia and the Comedia in the New World)
Lunch 1:15-2:15pm (EST)
Speaker: Germán Vega García-Luengos, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, un dramaturgo aún más grande: La monja alférez y otras novedades de un repertorio creciente
Nuevas perspectivas sobre el teatro en las Américas y de las Américas
(New Perspectives on the Theatre in the Americas and on the Americas)
5-Minute Break
La representación de la comedia desde la época colonial hasta la actualidad
(The Comedia on Stage from the Colonial Period to Today)
Moderators
Click on the Moderators‘ Names for Their Bios
Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas, Ohio Wesleyan University
Erin Cowling, MacEwan University
Associate professor of Spanish at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada. Her current research interests lie in how marginalized characters are portrayed, as well as how modern performances can inform and expand our understanding of early modern plays. She is the author of Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature and co-editor of Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre, both from the University of Toronto Press, 2021. Together with Glenda Nieto, she is working on a new project, Siglo Latinx, which looks at current adaptations of early modern plays by Latinx artists in North America.
José Cheo Oliveras, Founding Artistic Director of Teatro Círculo
Holds a BA in Theatre and Public Communications from the University of Puerto Rico and ABD at CUNY Graduate Center where he studied Spanish and Luso‐Brazilian Literatures. He has worked as an actor and director at most of the established Latino theatre companies in New York City including Repertorio Español, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and Thalia Spanish Theatre, among others. Cheo has received multiple ACE, HOLA, LATA, and ATI awards for his work as an actor and director and several awards from BORIMIX and “Comité Noviembre” for his contribution to the Latino Arts in NYC.
Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
PANEL 1
La monja alférez y el momento contemporáneo
(The Lieutenant Nun and the Current Moment)
Click on the Participants’ Names for Information on Their Lectures and Bios
Ana Méndez-Oliver, Syracuse University
I was born Catalina de Erauso’: Crossing Borders and Genders in the Life of the Lieutenant Nun (Lecture in English)
On March 10th, 2022, the artistic collective Cabello/Carceller opened their exhibition “Una voz para Erauso. Epílogo.” at the Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Spain. Inspired by Juan van der Hamen’s seventeenth century painting of Catalina de Erauso dressed in a lieutenant navy colonial uniform, the artists created an audiovisual piece that proposed a thought-provoking new “portrait” of Erauso. The audiovisual performance is composed of three monologues performed by LGBTQ actors that interpolate Erauso’s life and account in Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alferéz. The monologues are followed by a song in which a fictive Erauso talks about her life. The paper will examine how the three monologues question and challenge Erauso’s narrative in Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alferéz. While Erauso’s narrative has gained popularity in the past decades for being considered the first transgendered transatlantic account, the fact remains that she/he is still a problematic historical character. Hence, the paper will look into how “Una voz para Erauso” inserts this enigmatic historical figure in present debates of gender and transgender studies.
BIO
Ana Méndez-Oliver is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Syracuse University. She specializes in medieval and early modern Transatlantic Spanish literature and culture. Her research focuses on the role of confessional identity in the creation of race on the eve of Spain’s national project and during its later period of imperial expansion. Her other interests include Experiential Learning, Digital Humanities, Translation Studies, and Theater and Performance. In the past years, she has especially delved into the challenges of translating race and ethnicity in performing arts. For the past eleven years, she has been the principal Spanish Translator for The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Her most recent translations include, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up My Bones, Verdi’s Don Carlos, and Dean’s Hamlet, among others.
Marta Albala Pelegrín, Cal Poly Pomona
Staging The Lieutenant Nun in Translation: Approaches to Acting and Voice Acting Erauso (Lecture in English)
My presentation will be based on the work Edward “Mac” Test and I have been doing while co-translating the play for actors into English (under contract by Routledge). For this work, we have relied on Practice as Research methodologies (PAR), which involved talking to theater professionals, gender non-conforming actors and directors, LGBTQIA+ advisors, and scholars of trans and gender studies. Several drafts of our translation have been workshopped at different venues. In all those venues we took notes about actors’ comments and requests. We were particularly interested in rendering the translation easy to articulate by actors, taking into consideration its speakability. We were also keen on portraying with honesty scenes with strong emotional impact, which entailed misgendering and a sexual assault. On many of these occasions, we could rely on gender non-conforming actors, as was the case at the Engendering the Stage Workshop at Stratford in 2018. In others, we had a counselor in the room, such as at the staged reading in Cal Poly Pomona’s Theater Department in Spring 2022, which counted with the presence in rehearsals of the University’s Pride Center Coordinator. As we get our manuscript ready for publication, our last draft will be read by a sensitivity reader. My talk will focus on how translation can benefit from the collaboration with actors, peer translators, and scholars specializing in trans and gender studies and Early Modern Hispanic and English Drama.
BIO
Marta Albalá Pelegrín is an Associate Professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She has been a Berenson Fellow at Villa I Tatti, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at UCLA. Marta is the Forum Assembly Delegate for the16th and 17th Century Iberian Theatre at the MLA. She coordinates Radio Comedia, the podcast section of Diversifying the Classics which introduces classical Hispanic theatre in short episodes, and that will soon feature a collaboration with Dragoncillo. She has co-translated seven plays with Diversifying the Classics and is co-translating The Lieutenant Nun with Mac Test. She has co-edited with Esther Fernádez Comedia Crossings: Spanish Classical Theater Across the Arts and Practices.
Macarena Baeza, Escuela de Teatro, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Read in Spanish)
La monja Alférez de Inés Stranger y Teatro La Calderona (2010) (Lecture in Spanish)
El año 2010, y en el contexto de un trabajo sobre mujeres coloniales, generamos un espacio de investigación/creación para llevar a escena fragmentos de la vida de tres mujeres que habitaron en el continente americano. Buscábamos mujeres sui géneris, diversas y fuera de norma. Las elegidas fueron: Catalina de Eraúso, la monja Alférez; Santa Rosa de Lima, la primera santa americana; y la religiosa chilena Sor Úrsula Suárez. Nos interesó de Erauso y Suárez su escritura, aún sabiendo que la de la alférez era posiblemente una falsa autobiografía. Y en el caso de Santa Rosa, los relatos de sus penitencias y la fe que su figura generó en la América Colonial. En esta comunicación, analizaré el fragmento de esta puesta en escena titulado La Monja Alférez, que fue escrito por la dramaturga chilena Inés Stranger. Revisaré tanto fragmentos como imágenes de dicha puesta en escena, y me referiré a algunos pasajes textuales muy interesantes de la breve obra. Finalmente, me concentraré en dilucidar el impacto que tuvo dicha puesta en escena, presentada como un montaje site specific en diez escenarios españoles, los patios y jardines del Campus Oriente de la UC y el claustro del Museo San Francisco de Santiago de Chile.
BIO
Macarena Baeza “En Chile es la más importante investigadora escénica del teatro barroco, desplegando un trabajo de creación a partir de las dramaturgias del teatro español y latinoamericano con la Compañía teatral La Calderona, que funda en 2003. Ha llevado a escena muchos montajes entre los que destacan: Celestina (2004), La cruzada de los niños (2006), Mujeres coloniales (2010); Los empeños de una casa (2012), La cueca de Gil con polainas verdes (2014), El retablo de las maravillas (2016), La casa de Granada (2018); La piedra oscura (2019); Las voces de la viola (2019) y La vida es sueño, versión musical (2021).”
Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
PANEL 2
El nuevo mundo en las comedias y las comedias en el Nuevo Mundo (The New World in the Comedia and the Comedia in the New World)
Click on the Participants’ Names for Information on Their Lectures and Bios
Moisés Castillo, University of Kentucky (Read in Spanish)
Principio y fin de las ‘comedias de indio:’ El Nuevo Mundo de Lope y La aurora en Copacabana de Calderón (Lecture in Spanish)
Tanto la primera ‘comedia de indio,’ El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón de Lope de Vega (1598-1603), como la última, La aurora en Copacabana de Calderón (1661), coinciden en desplegar una visión de América y de los amerindios acorde con las estrategias que el sistema monárquico-señorial pone en marcha para legitimar su hegemonía. Dentro de esta tesitura, las dos comedias escenifican al indígena como un ser honorable y bárbaro en versos contiguos. Como veremos, esa aparente contradicción, a nuestros ojos contemporáneos, prueba ser la mejor estrategia teatral que ambos dramaturgos implementan para asimilar a los amerindios en la ficción, y por medio de ella lograr hacerlos súbditos a la vez que se los hace esclavos. Asimismo, veremos qué distingue a una obra de la otra y cómo sirven a diferentes intereses culturales en sus respectivas épocas.
BIO
Moisés R. Castillo is an Associate Professor of Early Modern and Colonial Studies in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. He has a B.A. in Philosophy from Universidad de Granada, Spain, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic and Luso-Brasilian Literatures and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Indios en escena: la representación del amerindio en el teatro del Siglo de Oro, Purdue University Press, 2009; editor of “La vida como obra de arte”: Essays in Memory of John Jay Allen, Juan de la Cuesta, 2021; guest editor of the special number of Romance Quarterly 61.2 (2014) devoted to Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels; and numerous articles and book chapters in refereed venues. His research focuses on Golden Age theater and Cervantes studies. At present, he is writing a manuscript on Cervantine theatricality.
Diana Conchado, Hunter College
“La prodigiosa jornada… de la canela”: Cinnamon and the Vegetal in Tirso’s Amazonas en las Indias (Lecture in English)
BIO
Diana Conchado teaches Spanish and Golden Age literature at Hunter College, City University of New York. In addition to the Siglos de Oro, her research interests include literary translation, Galician literature, and Early Modern herbals.
Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
KEYNOTE
Speaker: Germán Vega García-Luengos, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
Moderator: José Cheo Oliveras
Click on the Keynote Speaker’s Name for Summary of His Speech and Bio (Read in Spanish)
Germán Vega García-Luengos
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, un dramaturgo aún más grande: La monja alférez y otras novedades de un repertorio creciente (Speech in Spanish)
Website: https://uva-es.academia.edu/GermánVega
Email: german.vega@uva.es
Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
PANEL 3
Nuevas perspectivas sobre el teatro en las Américas y de las Américas (New Perspectives on the Theatre in the Americas and on the Americas)
Click on the Participants’ Names for Information on Their Lectures and Bios
Christopher Gascón, State University of New York, Cortland
“The Comedia and las Américas: Diversity, Innovation, and Rigor” (Lecture in English)
“What does Latin America bring to Hispanic Baroque drama? The answer for me is three-fold: Diversity, Innovation, and Rigor. We see diversity in Sor Juana and Ruiz de Alarcón’s inclusion of criollos and Indigenous characters. Peninsular playwrights such as Lope and Moreto and Lanini y Sagredo were also eager to explore notions of New World otherness, in such works, for example, as Arauco Domado (1625) and Santa Rosa de Perú (1671). Sor Juana also contributed greatly to notions of female empowerment and woman’s capacity for intellectual achievement, ideas that were explored by peninsular playwrights of both genders, such as Ana Caro, Ángela de Azevedo, Maria de Zayas, Lope, Calderón, Tirso. In addition, Ruiz de Alarcón presented, perhaps for the first time, a galán as a person with physical differences. The integration of such characters and the situations they occasion is, in itself, highly innovative. We may also, however, consider the contributions of Latin American actors and directors of contemporary productions in discussing what the Americas have brought to Hispanic Golden Age theater.
BIO
Christopher D. Gascón is a Professor of Spanish at the State University of New York Cortland. He specializes in performance analysis of innovative contemporary productions of Hispanic Golden Age plays. He is the author of The Woman Saint in Spanish Golden Age Drama (Bucknell, 2006), and his articles, play reviews, and book reviews have appeared in Anuario Lope de Vega, Bulletin of the Comediantes, Calíope, Comedia Performance, Drama Criticism, Hispanófila, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Renaissance Quarterly, Symposium, and various edited volumes. He served as an Executive Officer of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater from 2011 to 2020, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the organization from 2005 to 2020.
Carmela Mattza, Louisiana State University (Read in Spanish)
¿La mejor o más bella rosa? ¿Coloquio o drama? ¿Teatro áureo o colonial? Apuntes sobre un manuscrito del siglo XVII en la Hispanic Society of America (Lecture in Spanish)
Esta comunicación estudia el género literario de un coloquio manuscrito anónimo de la primera mitad del siglo 17 que se encuentra de la Hispanic Society of América. El propósito de esta comunicación es discutir hasta qué punto este coloquio contiene una obra teatral áurea, específicamente una comedia hagiográfica sobre la vida de la primera santa de las Américas. La presentación termina con un comentario sobre las prácticas matrimoniales en las colonias españolas en América que se describen en el manuscrito.
BIO
“Carmela V. Mattza is associate professor at Louisiana State University. She recently coedited with Frederick A. De Armas “”Cervantine Excesses and Eccentricities”” (Cervantes, vol. 42.1, 2022). In 2020, she was elected a member of the executive committee for the MLA LLC 16th-and 17th Century Spanish and Iberian Drama (2021-2026), and in 2022, she was elected SAMLA’s executive committee member-at-large for the period 2022-2025.”
Erin Cowling, MacEwan University
Recuperating Ruiz de Alarcón: How a Transatlantic Trio of Comedias Demonstrates His Influence in the Siglo de Oro and Beyond (Lecture in English)
This paper considers a little-studied play, Los empeños de un engaño by Juan Ruízde Alarcón, as a possible source text for both Calderón de la Barca’s Los empeños de un acaso and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa. The phonetic similarities of the latter two titles have relegated Ruíz de Alarcón’s unique drama to obscurity. However, the unusual details of both the Alarcón and Sor Juana pieces demonstrate the relative freedom the two New World authors had in composing unique versions of the capa y espada genre, particularly when compared to their peninsular counterpart. Although all three plays are similar in title, plot, and even character names, they are ultimately unique pieces that speak to the specific conditions under which each of their authors composed and staged their work. It is also the author’s wish that this paper, along with the recent discovery that the play La monja alferez was penned by Alarcón and not Pérez de Montalbán (Vega García-Luengos), will inspire more scholars to consider the Mexican dramaturg’s oeuvre beyond his better-known pieces such as La verdad sospechosa or Las paredes oyen.
BIO
Erin Alice Cowling is an associate professor of Spanish at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada. Her current research interests lie in how marginalized characters are portrayed, as well as how modern performances can inform and expand our understanding of early modern plays. She is the author of Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature and co-editor of Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre, both from the University of Toronto Press, 2021. Together with Glenda Nieto, she is working on a new project, Siglo Latinx, which looks at current adaptations of early modern plays by Latinx artists in North America.
Teatro Novo Hispano Conference
PANEL 4
La representación de la comedia desde la época colonial hasta la actualidad (The Comedia on Stage from the Colonial Period to Today)
Click on the Participants’ Names for Information on Their Lectures and Bios
Mina García, Elon College (Read in Spanish)
Espacios de colaboración en el proyecto hegemónico: La conquista de Jerusalén en Tlaxcala (Lecture in Spanish)
La conquista de Jerusalén, el drama evangelizador representado en Tlaxcala en 1539, se convirtió en catalizador perfecto de la estrategia de los primeros franciscanos en Nueva España. Esta forma de acercamiento ya apuntada por fray Hernando de Talavera, primer arzobispo de Granada, proponía el diálogo y la persuasión como camino de apertura cultural en la España de la Reconquista. Esta obra, trascendiendo lo teatral, ofrece un espacio abierto para la colaboración entre el proyecto imperial y la agencia nativa, un presente histórico capaz de relacionar la problemática colonial vigente en el momento con los precedentes peninsulares.
BIO
Mina García is a Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Elon University, where she teaches Spanish language and literature. Dr. García’s research interests include the role of literature in the expansion of the Spanish empire, Early Modern Spanish literature, transatlantic studies and Latin American colonial culture and literature with special attention to the role of the Other: conversos, moriscos, and witches. She has authored multiple articles and book chapters as well as numerous conference papers. Her first book, entitled Magia, Hechicería y Brujería: Entre La Celestina y Cervantes was published by Editorial Renacimiento (Seville, Spain) in 2010. Her second book, Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire was published by University of Colorado Press in 2018. Her third book, Social Justice in the Spanish Comedia, is a co-edited volume in which she is both contributor and editor together with Erin Cowling, Tania de Miguel Magro and Glenda Nieto Cuebas. It was published by University of Toronto Press in 2021. Her fourth book, and second co-edited is entitled The Religious Body Imagined and is forthcoming in January 2024 with Equinox, U.K.
Julia Hernández, New York University
Redefining the “Classical” through Reception Studies in the Classroom: Intersections in the Teaching of Transatlantic Comedia and Contemporary Latinx Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (Lecture in English)
The theater of the ancient Greece and Rome and of the early modern comedia of the Spanish-speaking globe share the denomination of “classical” in traditional academic discourse. Although the fields of Classics and early modern Hispanic Studies, in which each is studied respectively, are not often in close dialogue within the US academy, scholars who research and teach these theatrical contexts nevertheless have much in common. Notably, in both disciplines today’s scholars continue the work of expanding the boundaries of the respective canons that the use of the term “classical” implies for each. In recent decades, the Anglophone Classics—a space notoriously exclusionary to any but the most elite, white demographic—has looked to “reception studies,” the exploration of the afterlives of Greco-Roman texts, for strategies to create a field more welcoming to a more diverse range of students, particularly those of color and others historically marginalized in the academy, among which Latine students remain the most underrepresented of all. At the same time, US-based Spanish departments have been working to create more and more programing tailored to the unique linguistic and cultural experiences of heritage-speaking Latine students at all levels of Spanish proficiency. In the case both of Classics and Hispanic Studies, how we choose to teach “classical” theater genres can have a significant impact in furthering these complementary goals. This presentation will highlight some of the fruitful pedagogical intersections between the two fields that I have observed firsthand teaching both theatrical traditions, exploring in particular how approaches to “reception” from Classics can serve in engaging Latine students in the study of the global phenomenon of comedia.
BIO
Julia C. Hernández currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at New York University and as Associate Editor of the international Spanish theater journal Bulletin of the Comediantes. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges the fields of Classics and Hispanic Studies, her research traces the afterlives of the Greco-Roman tradition throughout the early modern Spanish-speaking globe. Both her teaching and scholarship explore the intersections of Classics, early modernity, and US Latine identity, particularly the legacies of Greek tragedy and global Hispanic comedia on the contemporary Latine stage. Julia is a co-founder and steering committee member of the international scholarly organization Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World.
Israel Franco Müller, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras (Read in Spanish)
Plástica escénica: La imagen de oro que duerme en el texto por siglos (Lecture in Spanish)
Al leer textos de dramaturgos del Siglo de Oro tales como Tirso de Molina, Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega o Calderón de la Barca por mencionar algunos de los más icónicos de este periodo, imaginamos cómo pudieron ser estos montajes dentro de una plástica escénica. Buscamos comprender cómo por medio de sus recursos plásticos y disposición espacial lograban comunicar la idea o el códice que el dramaturgo creo en el texto de acuerdo al estilo y narrativa de la época. Logrando que el público se envuelva en la acción y este pueda captar la crítica lanzada dentro de la psicología y aspectos sociales de la misma. Estos textos catalogados como literatura universal por la vigencia que mantienen aún en nuestros días, lanzan grandes retos para aquellas compañías dedicadas a representarlos. Quienes, por medio de un equipo creativo liderado por un director y diseñadores de plástica teatral, apuestan por adaptar los mismos de manera visual para que el público no experto en este estilo y aquellos que si lo son sean cómplice y se involucren en la historia como sucedía en el momento en que fueron representados. Entonces, ¿Cómo es, el proceso de creación para nuestros días, en que se fijan estos creativos plásticos para que se siga manteniendo el código de la época en nuestros días, dentro de la sociedad del nuevo mundo?
BIO
Israel Franco Müller es diseñador de la plástica escénica (escenografía, vestuario e iluminación para teatro, cine y televisión). Con una trayectoria internacional participa de prestigiosos festivales y casas teatrales, entre ellas: Teatro Círculo en Nueva York, Escena Latina y Teatro Público en Puerto Rico, fungiendo como diseñador residente; en adición, es miembro activo de la Asociación de Académicos de las artes escénicas españolas. Imparte su conocimiento en el Departamento de Drama de la Facultad de Humanidades de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Entre sus publicaciones se encuentran «El Catálogo Escenográfico» y, varios artículos encontrados en el «Repositorio de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.» Es un ávido creyente y practicante de la «dramaturgia lumínica», término que desarrolla y pone en práctica tanto en sus diseños, como en el colectivo «Watts». Sus diseños han sido presentados en las ciudades de: Nueva York, Georgia, Washington D.C., Almagro, Madrid, Murcia, Santiago de Compostela, Barcelona, Edimburgo, Medellín, Calí, Juárez, Chihuahua, entre otras. La enseñanza de esta práctica desenlaza en el proyecto Watts que nace en el 2016, bajo su dirección del colectivo universitario, “Watts: la luminiscencia del arte” donde se muestran historias contadas con luz. Ha publicado La Importancia de un Buen Diseño, El Teatro Rodante Universitario en Puerto Rico, La Iluminación: Protagonista del Espacio Escénico, Poesía sobre poesía: Autobiografía y la auto ficción, plástica escénica y La Dramaturgia Lumínica. Ha obtenido premios por su trabajo como diseñador y diseñador de producción como: Mejor Diseño de Vestuario, premios ATI, 2018, ciudad de Nueva York, Mejor Diseño de Escenografía, premios ATI, 2017 y 2018, ciudad de Nueva York, Outstanding Production Designer, premios HOLA, 2016, ciudad de Nueva York y Mejor Diseño de Escenografía, premios ATI, 2016, ciudad de Nueva York.
