The panel will start with distinguished professor Sharon Keefe Ugalde’s (Texas State University) presentation “Eduardo Quiles's Ofelia sin Hamlet: Gender (in)equality Past and Present.” Eduardo Quiles (Valencia, 1940) is not alone among dramatists of the New Spanish Theatre who, because of censorship or lack of commercial or institutional support for experimental theater, looked beyond national borders to pursue their art. The Valencian dramatist’s critical and ethical positions also reflect those of his generation. Three of Quiles’s works, often categorized as liberation theater, El adiós de Elsa, Una Ofelia sin Hamlet and El tálamo all have female protagonists and a common theme of the repression and frustration of women subjected to a world vision and norms dictated by men. One area which sets Eduardo Quiles’s experimental theater apart from that of most dramatists of his generation is his understanding and practice of characterization which combines the avant-garde notion of abstract, symbolic characters with the classic model of developing the individual personality. Una Ofelia sin Hamlet (1993) is an excellent example of Quiles’s views on characterization. Strikingly, Ofelia is no longer the silent ingénue; rather it is she, not Hamlet, who is the protagonist. All eyes are on her, and she leads audiences to reconsider female subject positions and agency.
The second presentation, by Anthony Pasero-O’Malley (Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia), is entitled “Exploring Alterity and Artistic Expression in Mar Gómez Glez’s Fuga mundi.” Mar Gómez Glez’s fact- and figure-inspired drama Fuga mundi (Premio Beckett de Teatro 2007) examines the limits of artistic creation and freedom in an age of political anxiety and tension. Set in 1609 (the year that marked the commencement of Moorish expulsion from the Spanish Peninsula), Fuga mundi establishes as its interpretive frame the protagonist Juana’s decision to sculpt an image of the Virgin with the face of a ‘morisca’ girl, and the consequences derived from her purposeful deviation from the imposed norm. Risking inquisitorial persecution and expulsion herself for an action deemed ‘heretical,’ Juana finds protection and refuge in a convent. Her relationships with the other women there, and her experiences and interactions which at times defy the limits of reality, provoke in the character of Juana a reflection as to her own aesthetic and personal beliefs. The play’s exploration of the multifaceted nature of alterity and difference within the pages of the script further stimulate a parallel inquiry in the minds of the reader/spectator, as the play’s seventeenth-century historical conflicts can find their own reflected images in today’s twenty-first century society. This reading also takes into account Fuga mundi’s premiere in 2016 in the Teatro (Espacio) Guindalera, an important site of performance and production in Madrid’s theatre scene. Directed by Juan Pastor, and starring María Pastor as Juana, Fuga mundi marked the Guindalera’s final performance as it was forced to close its doors after over a decade of producing quality theatre. Though the Guindalera was saved and reopened a year later (and remains open to this day), the challenges and difficulties of producing theatre in economically precarious times constitutes a constant spectral presence for current Spanish alternative theatre sites of production.
The third and last presentation, by Xana Mendéndez Prendes (PhD student, University of British Columbia) is entitled “Violence and Internal Conflict in Today’s Spanish Theater: Angélica Liddell’s La casa de la fuerza.” Angélica Liddell (1966)’s La casa de la fuerza (The House of Force) was first performed in 2009 and presents a new theatrical paradigm in which violence is ever-present. This ever-presence of violence has a critical a purpose: the author sets out to provoke an emotional catharsis, not in terms of the moral purpose presupposed by Aristotelian theater, but through the experience of a virtual reality that is associated with the theatre of Artaud. The risk is that this emotional catharsis may not happen: “catharsis” is contingent and will depend on the spectator who manages to extract reason from emotion. Liddell poses an aggressive catharsis that can lead to internal conflict within the audience, so long as they do not simply turn away in disgust.
Xana Menéndez argues that in La casa de la fuerza language is the central element through which violence is produced. This play takes up the lyricism and the expressiveness of language to end the supremacy of the image and in order to impinge upon a consciousness dulled by visual excess. Language cannot cause physical pain, but it can both provoke violent internal conflict and also address such violence. It can generate in the spectator a problem that is intrinsically violent, in parallel to the feelings portrayed by a play’s characters. This is a surrogate mode of experiencing violence, achieved through the use of both dialectics and emotion. The playwright must therefore make the spectator feel the violence by combining several techniques.
Professor Anne Pasero (Marquette University), specialist in Renaissance and contemporary Spanish drama and poetry, will be the respondent for special session.