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Play to be performed in Spanish Nov. 11
4:31 p.m., Nov. 9, 2006--UD's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures presents Hostal Puertas Abiertas, a modern adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's farcical play La Casa de los Linajes, at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 11, in 007 Willard Hall Education Building. While the play will be performed in Spanish, Vince Martin, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures, said the characters are so exaggerated that they will be clear to non-Spanish speaking audience members. First performed in Spain by students from UD's Summer 2006 Madrid Study Abroad Program, the play will by directed by Luis Dorrego, an internationally acclaimed stage director and a professor of theatre and performing arts at the University Complutense in Madrid, who worked with the students during the summer program and will fly from Spain to direct the play at the University. Junior Rosie Seagraves, one of the 20 students who participated in the study abroad program, said she and the other students decided the experience was something to share with family and friends at the University. “I think there was a certain momentum that built at the end of the program,” Seagraves said. “We wanted to show what we had done to people that are important to us.” All of the program's students, including a student outside of the University and the program's teaching assistant, will perform during the 30-minute play. The play was originally performed in Madrid as part the students' theatre workshop class, “Special Topics: Introduction to Performance and Production.” Under the direction of Dorrego, the students performed their own adaptation of the 17th-century play. Martin, faculty director for the Madrid program, said the original play featured a protagonist, Tristan, who lives in an apartment filled with people of different cultures. A bigot, Tristan mocks the other characters, but every time he makes a comment, they appear to defend themselves. At the conclusion of the play, Martin said the characters unite against Tristan and his prejudices. “At the end, this guy gets his just desserts by showing he's a bigoted imbecile,” he said. “Society doesn't agree with what he is saying. It's really interesting because that's not what we typically think from reading 17th -century European literature. We don't typically see that self-criticism so much.” To modernize the play, Martin said the students went out in the center of Madrid to find people that a typical 17th -century Spaniard would see as strange, such as a female businesswoman, gypsies and prostitutes. “What we found is the same multicultural Madrid which was in the original play is still valid today,” he said, “so this is a message we can see and bring into our adaptation, and that's what the students did.” Martin said the students decided their characters, which included a Chinese convenience store owner two Moroccan lesbians and American tourists, would live in a hostel. They rewrote the whole script, keeping the original idea of the play, and created their characters around real people they found in Madrid. Seagraves said making the play their own was a process. “Adapting the play was difficult,” she said. “The play was written in a more archaic dialect. We had to take time to understand what the play was saying, and we had to modernize different stereotypes because they weren't modern anymore.” To prepare for their performance in the Karpas Theatre in Madrid, Martin said the students participated in acting workshops at the beginning of the program before creating and practicing their play. At the end of their trip, the students performed it for a Spanish audience.
Martin said the students decided to keep the play a surprise from him until the final performance. Seagraves said presenting the stereotypes to the Spanish audience was fascinating. “These weren't necessarily stereotypes that were relevant in our culture,” she said. “To see where they reacted the most was interesting.” During the study abroad program, the students spent two weekends in Almagro, a small village that hosts an international theatre festival every July. At 11 p.m. every night, students watched professional actors perform classical plays in the village's open-aired and closed theatres. The students also were able to participate in acting workshops and speak with the actors in the festival as well as the director of the National Classical Theatre Company of Spain. This experience coincided with Martin's class, “Topics: Theory and Practice of Golden Age Theater.” The students also got a backstage tour of the Corral de Comedias, a 17th -century open-air theatre, and played with the backdrops and walked the catwalk at the Hospital de San Juan, a theatre constructed for the National Classical Theatre Company of Spain. While the program is mostly theatre based, Martin said not all the students were devoted thespians upon arrival. “Most of the students who go are not particularly interested in theatre when they go,” Martin said. “They don't know much about theatre, and they don't have much experience in theatre. When they come back, they've changed their perspective on theatre” Seagraves, who added a major in Spanish after completing the program, said their ability to read the plays and then watch them on stage was extremely valuable. “The program was set up to read plays and see them performed, which professors tell you is the ideal way to study theatre,” she said. “Normally you just read the play in class and try to imagine it as a play, but it's not nearly the same as seeing it performed.” Martin said Dorrego, who has worked with U.S. college students since 1986, was an important part of the process. “This director is so good, and has so much experience working not only with professional Spanish actors but also with American college students,” he said. “He Martin said Dorrego and his connections allowed them to get the professional actors to work with the students, making the program the only one of its kind in the United States. Martin said he is pleased that the students are both willing to perform the play and to participate in such a rigorous language program. “I'm proud of them for having the endurance and the interest to redo this,” he said. “I'm also really happy to see that this kind of a project has really taken off here and that there is so much interest among the students at the upper level, because this kind of a program at the lower level just couldn't work. They don't have the language ability to really do something like this. Students have been asking for a long time now for upper level study abroad opportunities and this is exactly it. This is perfect for them.” Through the workshops and performances, Martin said the students were able to gain a new understand of the Spanish language, an understanding they might not immediately recognize. “Students see this a lot of times as just doing theatre, but what they don't always see is the fact that they're really using theatre as a vehicle to express themselves through literature and also to improve their Spanish,” he said. “When they memorize these lines, they have to get them down as they should be pronounced, as they should be said. It's not just repeating words. They really have to get an ear for that.” Seagraves said she feels performing can have a profound influence on people. “It sort of gives you a new sense of self, shows you how you can relate to people and what you can be,” she said. “It's confidence building, and I could see that effect happening on many people in the program.” The play is free. A program in English will be provided at the Nov. 11 performance. For more information, e-mail [vmartin@udel.edu]. Article by Julia Parmley, AS '07
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