Bolulu, bolula, bolulo, bululú : A Speculative Approach to the Early Modern Single Performer

Abstract

In El viaje entretenido (1603), Agustín de Rojas Villandrando described the ‘bululú’ as ‘a player who travels alone and afoot, who enters a village, goes to the priest, and tells him that he knows a comedia and a loa or two’. Rojas’ definition included explanations of metatheatrical techniques the bululú employed: voice modulation, improvised scenography, and out loud stage directions. This entertainer constituted a company of actors, insofar as he exercised all business functions and performed every character in the play. Focusing on its defining characteristics, my paper considers this type of comedian as a point of departure to analyse the relationship between performance, reception and subjectivity in early modern Spain. I argue that the bululú was a subject of multi-discursivity ( ludio diversas personas agens , or histrio performing as different characters) whose interchangeability of roles was only possible when a strong dramatic contract between spectators and the performer existed. This contract was linked to the materiality of his voice, and it strengthened and modified certain qualities of the dramatization. My approach is informed by recent scholarly developments in the theorization of the human voice, which emphasize the role of sound for a decentred modernity no longer defined by the printed word.