Search results for ""author harley erdman""

This bilingual edition presents Luis Vélez de Guevara’s 1613 play La Serrana de la Vera (The Mountain Girl from La Vera) for the first time ever in English translation. This long-forgotten tragedy has come back into focus in recent years because of its extraordinary protagonist, Gila, a peasant girl who calls herself a man, takes fierce pride in doing things men do, and falls in love with Queen Isabel. Her betrayal by an army captain who she has humiliated leads to lawlessness, violence and tragedy. Dramatized by the playwright as an heroic rebel, Gila has been variously described as feminist, homosexual, bisexual, lesbian, transsexual, hybrid, queer, and transgender. Highly relevant today, The Mountain Girl from La Vera is also a great piece of theatre, full of dramatic confrontations, colourful vignettes, striking moments of music and spectacle, and plentiful comic relief. This bilingual edition presents the entirety of the play, annotated, along with a Critical Introduction by the translator that contextualizes the work.

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Tirso de Molina's Marta the Divine (c. 1614-15) is a spirited comedy about an ingenious young woman who fakes religious piety in order to avoid an arranged marriage imposed upon her by her father. Marta's false religiosity becomes a cover for sneaking her boyfriend into her house and, to all intents and purposes, having a sexual relationship with him without her credulous father suspecting a thing. The stakes involved in this risky gambit are particularly high because her boyfriend, Felipe, is also the man who has killed her brother. In this fast-moving play that celebrates the victory of youth over age, of love over revenge, little is held sacred, as circumstances spiral to the point of outrageousness. Not surprisingly, Marta has been a controversial play over the years, condemned for immorality and salaciousness by some, championed as an anticlerical tract by others. Readers and audience members over the years have puzzled as to what Tirso wants us to make of the title character and her behaviour. Is she a cautionary example, a sly hypocrite, whom we are to hold at a critical distance? Or she is a sympathetic comic heroine, even a proto-feminist, whose cause we are to embrace? No matter one's perspective, Marta is memorable because of the audaciousness and resourcefulness of the title character. Marta is a great stage creation, and the plot Tirso builds around this trickster has the feel of the archetypal, transcending the time and place of its creation. At the same time, Marta is a surprisingly comprehensive satire of the Spanish empire of its day. Through a variety of subtle touches, Tirso paints a picture of an imperial capital plagued by avarice and hypocrisy. The play has some puzzling elements or 'problems' from a technical point of view, but the irresistible force of its comic energy has appealed to readers and audiences for nearly 400 years. This edition presents the play for the first time ever in English translation. The translation is accompanied by the Spanish text, translators' note and a substantial introduction.

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Leading Golden Age theatre experts examine the ways that comedias have been adapted and reinvented, offering a broad performance history of the genre for scholars and practicioners alike. This volume brings together twenty-six essays from the world's leading scholars and practitioners of Spanish Golden Age theatre. Examining the startlingly wide variety of ways that Spanish comedias have been adapted, re-envisioned, and reinvented, the book makes the case that adaptation is a crucial lens for understanding the performance history of the genre. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the early stage history of the comedia through numerous modern and contemporary case studies, as well as the transformation of the comedia into other dramatic genres, such as films, musicals, puppetry, and opera. The essays themselves are brief and accessible to non-specialists. This book will appeal not only to Golden Age scholars and students but also to theater practitioners, as well as to anyone interested in the theory and practice of adaptation. Harley Erdman is Professor of Theaterat the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Susan Paun de García is Professor of Spanish at Denison University. Contributors: Sergio Adillo Rufo, Karen Berman, Robert E. Bayliss, Laurence Boswell, Bruce R.Burningham, Amaya Curieses Irarte, Rick Davis, Harley Erdman, Susan L. Fischer, Charles Victor Ganelin, Francisco García Vicente, Alejandro González Puche, Valerie Hegstrom, Kathleen Jeffs, David Johnston, Gina Kaufmann, Catherine Larson, Donald R. Larson, Barbara Mujica, Susan Paun de García, Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, Veronika Ryjik, Jonathan Thacker, Laura L. Vidler, Duncan Wheeler, Amy Williamsen, Jason Yancey

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