In April, Associate Professor of Theatre Ian Borden and five students from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film will travel to the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre Conference in El Paso, Texas, to perform a translation of “La capeadora” for the first time ever in English.
“La capeadora,” written by Luis Quiñones de Benavente, is an entremés or short, comic theatrical performances of one act, performed on their own or in conjunction with longer works from the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain.
“A lot of them are really interesting social and philosophical pieces because in this format, they’re allowed to lampoon the society in ways that other plays are not,” Borden said. “This one has never been translated into English, so that’s an exciting moment, and it probably has not seen a stage in 350 years.”
Lincoln audiences will get a sneak peak of the piece at a workshop performance on Monday, April 9 in the Lab Theatre, 3rd floor of the Temple Building. The performance is at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Borden has been working with a translating group from the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre for around 10 years and this is their eighth translation of Spanish entremés. Other scholars working on the project to translate “La capeadora” include Ben Gunter, Theater with a Mission; Kerry Wilks, Wichita State University; Dave Pasto, Oklahoma City University; and Susan Paun de Garcia, Denison University.
The five Carson School students Emmalee Allen, Tatianna Hizar, Grant Koch, Hilda Rey and Mari Smal are working on the project as part of a UCARE (Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience) project.
“They’ve been doing a lot of reading and research, but now it’s put it on its feet and allow them as actors to make suggestions about what’s working and what’s not, as well as how to stage it,” Borden said.
It’s the first time the translating scholars have used actors instead of scholars in a performance of their translation and used them to help polish the translation.
“Scripts aren’t really meant to be read; they’re meant to be played,” Borden said. “And that’s where it really becomes a functioning piece of theatre.”
“La capeadora” portrays several lively rounds in an epic battle of the sexes—conflict that touches on issues that intriguingly connect 21st century America to 17th century Spain, including questions of access to financial independence for women, the social value of gender equality and the cultural role of marriage.
Allen, a senior theatre performance major from Cincinnati, Ohio, plays Gusarapa, the leading lady in the piece.
“There is one guy in the show, played by Grant Koch,” Allen said. “Me and my kind of assistant or maid play these tricks and pranks on him throughout the entire play.”
Tatianna Hizar, a junior theatre performance major from Bellevue, Nebraska, plays that assistant, Maripandilla.
“She is essentially Gusarapa’s servant girl, but in a direct translation, she’s the ‘crew’ to her,” she said. “She will have Gusarapa’s back and help her out any way she can.”
While at the conference, the students will also attend classes and attend plays at the Chamizal Siglo de Oro Theatre Festival, an international festival of Golden Age Spanish theatre, which refers to theatre in Spain roughly between 1590 and 1681.
“I am looking forward to experiencing all of the historic Spanish theatre that will be there,” Hizar said. “I have no experience in viewing or participating in Spanish theatre before this opportunity in ‘La capeadora,’ so I’m exciting to get my world view broadened a bit more and see what this kind of theatre is about.”
Allen is looking forward to learning more about Spanish culture and performing the new translation.
“The thing that I’m most excited about and most looking forward to performing is the fact that this was written so long ago, and we had to translate the entire thing,” she said. “It’s this completely new project that no one at the School has done before. It’s really cool that Ian came up with this idea and is asking students for help, and I’m getting to travel to El Paso, a place I’ve never been, experience a completely different culture and do something that I love so much.”
Last summer, Allen was among 16 students from the Carson School who studied internationally at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, England. She sees comparisons between Shakespeare and Spanish theatre.
“It is written in and we’re doing this in iambic pentameter,” Allen said. “I feel like a lot of the training I got in London is going to really help me in this show to hit my beats and allow other people to understand what I’m saying.”
Hizar also traveled to England last summer and said the approach will be similar.
“The Globe practices really stressed sharing your character with the audience and fostering a relationship with them,” she said. “While I can’t infer too much yet on Spanish theatre, I really do think it’ll be similar. These short comedies really live and breathe with the acknowledgement of the audience who is there with you, the actor. The Globe definitely helped me develop a comfort with interacting with the audience, and I’m looking forward to bringing that to this play.”
Allen is grateful for the opportunities she gets at the University like UCARE.
“To be able to do undergraduate research and get paid, I think it’s really important,” Allen said. “It gives students so much opportunity and space to create something and do something completely out of the norm. And it’s important for our community and our school to be able to share that and explore different kinds of theatre and art, while still having it impact your major and go towards what you’re getting your degree in.”
This project is also allowing her to learn new theatre.
“I would never learn about Spanish theatre by the time I graduate unless I did this show,” she said.
Hizar agrees.
“These experiences help students discover things they may have never experienced,” she said. “I believe wholeheartedly that some of the best experiences come from reaching beyond your own immediate hometown/community and seeing what else the world has to offer you. UCARE is helping me do that, and I really advocate for anyone else who may have the same opportunity to do a project with UCARE to go for it.”
Allen thinks the work that Borden and the other scholars are doing is important.
“They’re interesting to me because you read it, and you think, ‘Wow, this relates to situations that I know. This could completely happen today, even it was written hundreds of years ago,’” she said. “I feel as if exploring these different cultures and the text they created and translating it into something that we can still understand is just very cool to me.”
Borden is looking forward to seeing the translation performed.
“This has been in our heads for a year, so to finally have it come to life is great,” he said. “What I really love about being able to do this is you get to see closer to how it would have been performed in the moment, which gives a much better understanding scholastically of what’s going on. But also, you can see how it actually plays to audiences and how often it comes forward centuries in time and still makes audiences giggle and laugh. I love that jump of time that always happens. You get it with Shakespeare. You get it with this as well.”
He hopes the students gain an appreciation for Spanish theatre.
“I hope they start to realize how interesting the Spanish Golden Age was, in terms of its dramatic contribution,” Borden said. “It is probably the most vibrant and challenging of all the Renaissance stages in Europe, but it is the least studied by most Western scholars. Part of our project is to bring those plays to a contemporary audience, both in terms of going to the theatre and for scholarship.”
Allen is enjoying learning about Spanish theatre.
“I love taking different classes on different languages, and I especially enjoy learning about Spanish through theatre. That’s the best part,” she said. “I love theatre so much and I love learning about Spanish culture, so it’s fun getting to do two things at once and learn about something that I haven’t really explored since I took Spanish in high school, but still doing it and having it relevant to what I’m majoring in.”
Allen plans to vlog (video blog) during conference. The videos will be available on her YouTube channel at https://go.unl.edu/pi9j.
“I am very excited to go to Texas and participate in the conference,” she said. “This is definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever put on my resume.”