Remaking the Comedia: Spanish Classical Theater in Adaptation ed. by Harley Erdman, and Susan Paun de García

Abstract

Reviewed by: Remaking the Comedia: Spanish Classical Theater in Adaptation ed. by Harley Erdman, and Susan Paun de García Carmela V. Mattza Erdman, Harley, and Susan Paun de García, editors. Remaking the Comedia: Spanish Classical Theater in Adaptation. Tamesis, 2015. 303 pp. ISBN: 978-18-5566-292-6. The present volume is an important contribution to both the field of performance studies and the interdisciplinary effort to perceive, conceptualize and study the 400 years history of the Spanish Golden Age comedias. Such a history should include not only a history of a text or play, but also of its adaptations and performances. The authors of this volume, who are a mix of 21 well-known international scholars in the fields of History, Literature and Theater, and 5 actors and directors with an established professional trajectory, take on the common criticism of "(in)fidelity to the text" made to contemporary staging of the comedias to show how decisive it is not to lose sight of the fact that these Early Modern plays were very often a "freewheeling adaptation or refundición of others" (xvi). This reminder becomes the epistemological ground to understand why every adaptation and/or performance studied in this volume is not a negation of past scholarship, but an interdisciplinary effort to foreground our own methodological practices when studying comedias. An interdisciplinary approach engages and challenges not only the text, but also its adaptation and performance in a way that becomes meaningful to today's spectator. The volume contains 26 short essays grouped in four sections: theorizing, surveying, spotlighting and shifting. In "Theorizing," Catherine Larson's contribution takes on Sander's and Hutcheon's theories on adaptation to highlight the complex process of translation of plays from Early Modern Spain into a different language and their performance in front of a contemporary public. Her essay links well with Susan Fischer's on the process and value of "appropriation" that any adaptation and performance entail, which echoes well Lope de Vega's aim to produce theater based on the public's preferences, the most important feature of the comedia nueva. The works by Alejandro González Puche reminds us the ludic aspect behind every staging (31); while Laurence Boswell meditates on how every performance and staging make possible almost a phenomenological continuity, one that "transcends time, culture and language. It is profoundly human; it is human beyond language" (41). [End Page 145] The next cluster is called "Surveying," and it analyzes the staging of the Early Modern comedia in specific socio-cultural circumstances, in a specific moment or in relation to global concerns. Charles Ganelin takes on the staging in nineteenth century Spain to study how Spanish Baroque plays were modified to address the political anxieties aroused by the question of individual or collective identity (50). Duncan Wheeler ponders on the potential of Golden Age drama for the modern stage by examining the performance of La dama boba, La vida es sueño, La dama duende, etc. during the Franco regime. It adds a transatlantic perspective to get an insight into the plays' "dialectical and intercultural relationships, adaptations and appropriations" (64). Robert Bayliss examines "the inherent complexity of studying contemporary performances of early modern comedias by addressing how they constitute a nexus of cultural, economic and political concerns that operates simultaneously at local, national, and global levels" (65) as he sets out to evaluate the liveliness of today's Spanish Golden Age Theater. Jason Yancey's essay surveys four decades of the Chamizal Siglo de Oro Festival in El Paso, Texas to note its pioneering role and to address the importance of a more collaborative approach between academics and artists in order to facilitate more annotated English translations of the comedias to the potential public we can find in high school. A co-authored essay by Hegstrom and Williamsen focuses on contemporary performances of plays by Early Modern dramaturgas as a fruitful field for the interrogation of postmodern subjectivity (91). Jonathan Thacker's article on the cultural and linguistic challenges on staging among others, Lope de Vega's comedias in British theaters closes this section. With ten essays, "Spotlighting" becomes the largest section of this book whose focus...