Shakespeare in Cuba: Caliban’s Books (Global Shakespeares) 3030873668, 9783030873660

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GLOBAL SHAKESPEARES

Shakespeare in Cuba Caliban’s Books Donna Woodford-Gormley

Global Shakespeares

Series Editor Alexa Alice Joubin, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

The Global Shakespeares series, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin, explores the global afterlife of Shakespearean drama, poetry and motifs in their literary, performative and digital forms of expression in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Disseminating big ideas and cutting-edge research in e-book and print formats, this series captures global Shakespeares as they evolve. Editorial Board Mark Thornton Burnett, Queen’s University Belfast Peter Donaldson, MIT Mark Houlahan, University of Waikato Douglas Lanier, University of New Hampshire Dennis Kennedy, Trinity College Dublin Margaret Litvin, Boston University Ryuta Minami, Shirayuri College, Tokyo Alfredo Michel Modenessi, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México David Schalkwyk, Queen Mary University of London Ayanna Thompson, George Washington University Poonam Trivedi, Indraprastha College, University of Delhi

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15016

Donna Woodford-Gormley

Shakespeare in Cuba Caliban’s Books

Donna Woodford-Gormley Department of English New Mexico Highlands University Las Vegas, NM, USA

Global Shakespeares ISBN 978-3-030-87366-0 ISBN 978-3-030-87367-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: David Hare/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is dedicated to my husband, Chaz Gormley, and my son, Carl Gormley, with my love and gratitude.

Acknowledgments

I owe thanks to many people and organizations for the creation of this book. Work on this book was funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Shenandoah University Fund for Excellence supported my first trip to Cuba. The Faculty Research Committee of New Mexico Highlands University has provided some of the funds for my later trips, and the Ballen Visiting Scholar Grant allowed me to bring Cuban poet, Alexis Díaz-Pimienta to New Mexico Highlands University for a two-week stay. I am grateful to all these organizations for their financial support. I owe great thanks to Dr. Ann Lesman, Professor Emerita of Hispanic Studies at Shenandoah University, who invited me on my first trip to Cuba and encouraged me to find a research project while I was there. I am grateful, also, to the many Shakespeareans who have assisted me over the years. Alexa Alice Joubin, in addition to editing the Global Shakespeares Series, has led several Shakespeare Association of America seminars from which I have benefited. Alfredo Michel Modenessi also led a wonderful SAA seminar, and in addition, he has offered me invaluable advice and support, has put me in contact with other scholars, has assisted me with translations, and has been someone I could talk to about Latin American Shakespeares. Mark Thornton Burnett, in addition to generously sharing his knowledge of Global Shakespeare and

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inviting me to Belfast to speak to his students, also reminded me that my book did not need to be comprehensive. Sheila Cavanagh invited Alexis Díaz-Pimienta and me to meet with the students in her World Shakespeare Project, and she made other sessions of that project available to my Shakespeare students. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Tobias Doring led two wonderful seminars on The Tempest at the World Shakespeare Congress in Prague in 2011 and offered excellent advice as I crafted the paper from that seminar into an essay for their edited volume of REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, 29, (2013): 131–148. That essay evolved into the second chapter of this book. I am grateful to Ginger and Tobias for their guidance and to the publisher, Narr Verlag, for allowing me to reprint the essay here. Tom Bishop, Patricia Parker, Peter Holland, Craig Dionne, Parmita Kapadia, Douglas Lanier, Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, Miriam Jacobson, Rubin Espinosa, Vanessa Corredera, Geoffrey Way, Beatrice Lei, Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney, Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams, Elizabeth Pentland, Ema Vyroubalova, Sandra Young, Nathalie Rivere de Carles, and Anne Sophie Refskou have invited me to publish or present on Shakespeare in Cuba, and I thank them all for the opportunities. I have been lucky enough to participate in three NEH summer seminars, which put me in contact with inspiring scholars and introduced me to new friends. I would like to thank the leaders of those seminars, Albert Rabil, Ralph Cohen, and Michael Neill, for creating such stimulating opportunities, and I thank all the visiting scholars and participants of those seminars for the insights and conversations. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Amy Scott-Douglass, dear friend and great scholar, who I met in the first of these seminars. She was the first Shakespearean to hear me talk about Shakespeare in Cuba. Over the years she has asked me to write conference papers and essays, read chapters, given excellent feedback, encouraged me, and taught me how to tell my story. I am fortunate to count her as a friend. I of course owe great thanks to the artists and scholars who have shared their work and invited me into their theatres, and sometimes into their homes, so that I could speak with them about Cuban Shakespeares. Not all of them appear in this book, but they have influenced me nonetheless, and I am grateful. Thanks to José Ramón Neyra, Agustín Fowler, Roxana Pineda, Joel Sáez, Nelson Dorr, Vivian Martínez Tabares, Flora Lauten, Raquel Carrió, and Seth Panitch. Special thanks to Alexis Díaz-Pimienta for his boundless energy and enthusiasm during his stay in New Mexico.

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In addition to talking with students, introducing the films about his work, giving readings of poetry and fiction, reading from his children’s poetry to a group of 700 school children, and, of course, performing repentismo, he also found time to talk with me about Shakespeare in Cuba and to celebrate with my family. I will always fondly recall the improvised décimas of the “viajero repentista congelado” about the snow falling in my backyard. Thanks, also, to Cuban friends, including Liudmila, Teddy, Miriam, Carlos, and Belkis. Thanks to Liván, who trudged through the streets of Havana in search of any book I wanted that he didn’t already have at his stall in the Plaza de Armas, to the many Cuban librarians who have helped me over the years, and to the librarians at New Mexico Highlands University, especially April Kent and April Ortega for tracking down hard to find material during a pandemic. I am grateful for the supportive administrators and faculty at New Mexico Highlands University, and I am thankful for the amazing students at NMHU who inspire my love of Shakespeare and learning. Finally, a very special thanks to my family. My husband, Chaz Gormley, has provided me with love, support, encouragement, comfort, proofreading, substantial feedback, intellectual conversation, and companionship in travels and at home. My son, Carl “Che niño” Gormley, has encouraged and inspired me and has generously shared much of his childhood with this project. I could not have completed this book without them, and I am immensely grateful to have them in my life. This book is dedicated to them.

Contents

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Introduction

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Devouring Shakespeare: Cuba, Cannibalism, and Caliban

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Revolution, Repentismo, and Romeo and Juliet: Consuming Texts/Nourishing Community

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Race and Revolution in Tomás González’s Othello Adaptations: “Of the Cannibals That Each Other Eat”

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3 4 5 6

Ophelia Eats the Air: Consuming Voices in Piel de violetas

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Shakespeare as Cultural Bridge: Incorporating the Other

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In recent decades, Shakespearean scholars have begun to turn their attention to the global afterlife of Shakespeare. However, while Shakespeare is widely performed and read in Latin America, there have been comparatively few scholarly explorations of Shakespeare in this region.1 If much work remains to be done on Latin American Shakespeares in general, work on Shakespeare in Cuba has been particularly scarce. In addition to my own published work on Cuban Shakespeares,2 there are only a handful of essays on the subject.3

1 Latin American Shakespeares , edited by Bernice Kliman and Rick J. Santos, remains the only book to address Shakespeare productions throughout the region. Much excellent work has been done on Shakespeare in Brazil. Alfredo Michel Modenessi has written extensively on Shakespeare in Mexico and Shakespeare in translation, but Latin America is an enormous region and there is more work to be done. 2 See Donna Woodford-Gormley, “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser”; “‘What Country, Friend, Is This?’ Carlos Diaz’s Cuban Illyria”; “Cuban Improvisations: Reverse Colonization via Shakespeare”; “Devouring Shakespeare: Cuban, Cannibalism and Caliban”; “The Woman Behind the Mask: Cuban Women and Shakespeare”; “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba,” and Donna C. Woodford, Review of Shakespeare y sus máscaras. 3 See Alfredo Modenessi. “‘Both Alike in Dignity’: Havana and Mexico City Play Romeo and Juliet” and “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Outsourced and In-taken”; Jennifer Flaherty, “Calibán Rex? Cultural syncretism in Teatro Buendía’s Otra Tempestad”; Maria Clara Versiani Galery, “Caliban/Cannibal/Carnival:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Woodford-Gormley, Shakespeare in Cuba, Global Shakespeares, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7_1

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It is understandable that so little work has been done on Shakespeare in Cuba since there are many barriers to conducting research in Cuba, especially for American scholars. The ever-shifting restrictions of the two governments must be negotiated; limited communication with and unreliable internet and phone service on the island make it difficult to know ahead of time which libraries will be available and what plays are scheduled to be performed, and the volatile political relationship between Cuba and the United States means that one must be prepared to adapt to last-minute changes. My first trip to Cuba was in 2004. I traveled both as a researcher just beginning to explore Shakespeare in Cuba and as a chaperone for university students, but in the months preceding that trip the U.S. government had eliminated many of the possibilities for Americans to travel to Cuba, diminishing the size of our group. During that trip, the restrictions were again increased. While I was in Havana, conducting research at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, President George W. Bush passed regulations that tightened the embargo, including severely limiting the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit family members in Cuba or to send remittances to the island.4 As my first trip ended, Cubans were marching through the streets of Havana toward the Plaza de la Revolución and the U.S. Interests Section building.5 They carried with them banners depicting Bush as Hitler. It was not an auspicious beginning for an international research project, but in that short stay, I had fallen in love, both with Cuba and with Shakespeare in Cuba. I had talked with used book vendors selling copies of Shakespeare’s works in the outdoor market on the Plaza de Armas. I had visited libraries and found adaptations such as Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó. I had seen a Cuban Shakespeare dance across the stage Cuban Articulations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest”; Lorena Terando, “Traces of Shakespeare’s Tempest in Cuba’s Carpentier,” and Enrique Morales-Diaz, Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse. 4 Cuban-Americans had been permitted to travel annually to visit any member of their extended family. The new regulations limited their visits to once every three years to see immediate family, which did not include aunts, uncles, or cousins. The amount of money that could be sent was also limited, and it could only be sent to immediate family members. 5 The United States had no embassy in Cuba between 1961 and 2015; however, between September 1, 1977 and July 20, 2015 the U.S. Interests Section was operated under the auspices of the Swiss Embassy in Cuba.

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and offer masks symbolizing tragedy and love to Montagues and Capulets in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s Shakespeare y sus máscaras [Shakespeare and his masks]. I had witnessed the choreographer of that ballet, the aging Prima Ballerina Assoluta Alicia Alonso, stand each night to receive the tumultuous applause of the audience. Something in me had awakened. Travel restrictions, visas, poor internet, and the other challenges of conducting research in Cuba seemed a small price to pay to see more. I have since seen much more, traveling to Cuba repeatedly, hosting Cuban poet, Alexis Díaz-Pimienta at my own campus in New Mexico, and doing my best to maintain communication in between trips. I have been able to attend plays and ballets, purchase books sold on the plaza, visit libraries, and speak with Cuban artists. I learned to plan as well as I could before traveling to Cuba, and to then be open to my plans changing once I arrived and learned that the theatre company I was hoping to see was traveling, that the library I was planning to visit was unexpectedly understaffed and could not retrieve material for me, or that the theatres had closed for several days in mourning for the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. I have also had a small taste of the difficulties Cubans experience living under an embargo. For me, those experiences included frustrations such as going to a library where I had planned to conduct research, only to learn that the elevator used to transport books to the reading room floor was broken and the staff did not know when it could be repaired. I was welcome to sit in the reading room, and I could access the small number of books housed on that floor, but aside from that, all I could do was check back each day to see if the repairs had been made. For Cubans, such inconveniences are a regular occurrence. Technology lags. New material cannot be purchased, and the right part to repair what is broken is hard to find. Cubans are resilient and creative, and this is true of Cuban artists, as well. When Teatro Buendía performed their Otra tempestad at the Globe Theatre in London, the stage was drenched by a storm minutes before a dress rehearsal.6 However, the actors were not bothered by this, and their director, Flora Lauten declared, “In our theatre in Havana, the rain pours through the roof all the time.” She also noted that “The lights are always 6 Judith Palmer, “Theatre: A Sea-Change into Something Rich and Strange; A Cuban Theatre Company Has Come to Shakespeare’s Globe to Do the Tempest, Starring Hamlet, Shylock, Othello and Macbeth…”. The Independent (London). July 22, 1998, Wednesday, 9. Nexis Uni.

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going off in Cuba so our audiences regularly have to wait two or three hours in the dark until they go back on …. It’s a sacrifice for them, so it’s important for the audiences to see we make sacrifices, too.”7 I have had the pleasure of attending a Teatro Buendía performance in the old church they lovingly reconstructed into a theatre, and while I was spared rain falling through the roof, I can attest to the fact that they made sacrifices and creatively adjusted to the needs of the moment, creating extra seats for an overflow crowd by placing planks over a couple of existing chairs, and guiding audience members through a dark and rather treacherous path to those seats when the lights did indeed go out. From observing creative and resilient Cuban artists, I learned to be resilient and creative in my research. When I could not access most of the books at the Biblioteca Nacional, I browsed through the fading card catalogue of the books that were available to me, and inadvertently stumbled upon the works of Tomás González. When the Biblioteca Nacional was closed, I visited the smaller, provincial library. When that library was too short-staffed to bring me the materials from the closed stacks, I went to see the ballet. While walking from the Casa de las Américas library to the Ministry of Culture, where I needed to sort out some problems with my visa, I stumbled across a sign announcing that director Nelson Dorr was directing Othello at the Teatro Mella. When, on my way to talk with Nelson Dorr, I was caught in a tropical downpour, I took shelter on the steps of Teatro El Público and struck up a conversation with the actors I met there. Researching in Cuba is full of unexpected crises and joys, and I learned to accept them both.

A Brief History of Cuba Learning to navigate research in Cuba has meant learning a bit about the country’s history. Many readers may be familiar with the history of Cuba, but for those who are not, a brief account may be helpful. All of the works I discuss in this book were written after the Revolution in 1959, but some refer to earlier events, so I will touch on those as well. Cuba’s history has been marked by foreign influence, and by relationships, sometimes positive and sometimes troubled, with foreign countries. Cuba’s first encounter with Europe predates Shakespeare. In 1492

7 Palmer, “Theatre: A sea-change,” 9.

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Columbus declared the island “the most beautiful that eyes have seen” and claimed it for Spain.8 Spanish colonization of the island officially began in 1511. Cuba remained a colony of Spain until the 1800s, with the exception of 1762–1763, when it was briefly a colony of England. During Cuba’s time as a Spanish colony, slavery was introduced, which led to the mixing of cultures and religions that is still an important part of Cuban culture. Slavery was abolished in 1886. During the nineteenth century, Cuba fought two wars of independence. The first lasted for ten years, from 1868 to 1878. The second began in 1895 and continued until 1898, when the U.S.S. Maine mysteriously exploded in the harbor of Havana. America entered the war in response. American troops, including Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, entered Cuba and defeated the Spanish in what had become the SpanishAmerican War. However, this did not result in independence for Cuba. A U.S. Military Government was installed, which ruled for four years, and even when formal independence was granted to Cuba in 1902, the United States retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs, which it often did; to supervise Cuban trade relations; and to establish naval bases, including the one in Guantánamo that it still operates. Between the time of the Spanish-American War and the Cuban Revolution in 1959, much Cuban land was sold to American and British companies, and though the Cuban people were frequently quite poor, the island, especially Havana, became a playground for rich foreigners. The American Mafia had a strong presence in Havana, using casinos and luxury hotels there to launder money. Fulgencio Batista, who was president between 1952 and 1958, received a portion of the money from the casinos. Cubans were often second-class citizens in their own country. Fidel Castro and his group of rebels began fighting against Batista almost immediately after he took office in 1952. Their rebellion would be fought on and off for several years until the Cuban Revolution finally resulted in the overthrow of Batista on December 31, 1958. The rebels took over the government on January 1, 1959. The years following the Revolution had a great impact not just on politics but also on art in Cuba. In 1960, Cuba nationalized all U.S. 8 Christopher Columbus, Clement Robert Markham, and Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli, The Journal of Christopher Columbus: (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real (New York: Elbiron Classics, 2005), 60.

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businesses in Cuba, without compensation. 1960 was also the year in which the United States first imposed a partial trade embargo, and in that same year, Fidel Castro formed the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, or CDRs. These committees called the “eyes and ears of the revolution” were intended to advance revolutionary ideals and to report any counter-revolutionary activity. The mission of the CDRs would expand to include public health programs, literacy campaigns, and even the promotion of community art and theatre, but observing and reporting on any counter-revolutionary activity remains one of their primary functions. In 1961 diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana ended, and the embassy in Havana was closed. A group of U.S.-backed Cuban exiles who were opposed to Castro attempted the unsuccessful invasion of the Bay of Pigs, or Playa Girón, in Cuba. A few months after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro, increasingly concerned about dissidents within Cuba, gave his speech to the intellectuals in which he said that the artist had complete freedom within the revolution, but no freedom outside of it. 1961, however, was also the year that Cuba undertook its literacy campaign. The Cuban government sent “literacy brigades” into the countryside to construct schools and educate the illiterate. As a result of this, Cuba’s literacy rate soared. In February of 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy declared a full trade embargo on Cuba, prohibiting any trade with the island and restricting travel by U.S. citizens. This was a major blow to the Cuban economy. The same year, Cuba allowed the U.S.S.R. to deploy missiles on the island, only 90 miles from Florida, and, for a short time, it appeared that the cold war between the United States and the U.S.S.R. might escalate to a nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved when the United States agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviet Union removing its missiles from Cuba. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba became increasingly concerned about dissidents within Cuba. In 1971 a poet, Heberto Padilla, published some work critical of the Cuban government and was imprisoned for 37 days. He was released after he issued a self-criticism. Shortly after this, the First Congress on Education and Culture, and the declaration produced at the close of this congress, laid out the parameters of the revolution. The period that followed, often called the quinquenio gris or five-year gray period, was a period of harsh

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censorship in Cuba. Anyone who fell outside of the parameters of the revolution could be punished. While there have been periods of censorship and artistic limitations in Cuba, there is also great support for the arts. Even as the government was censoring artists who were outside of the parameters, they were also promoting the movimiento de artistas aficionados or movement of amateur artists, which encouraged students and workers to become involved in the arts and to participate in festivals. It also promoted teatro de la comunidad, or theatre of the community, which brought theatre to the people and involved them in the making of theatre. Since the Revolution, artists in Cuba have received salaries and support. Artistic education is available throughout the country, and the government supports artistic organizations such as theatres, museums, and ballet. The U.S. embargo against Cuba has continued, creating an ongoing economic challenge for Cuba. For many years Cuba, cut off from the United States and prevented from trading with many other countries, relied on the Soviet Union for subsidies and support. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered a “special period” of austerity and rationing. Cuba was eventually able to pull out of this period by forging closer ties with Venezuela. The relationship between Cuba and the United States has shifted depending on the heads of state in the two countries. Fidel Castro led Cuba from 1959 until 2008 when illness caused him to step down and hand the reigns to his brother, Raúl Castro. Fidel Castro died in 2016. Raúl Castro remained President of the Council of State9 until 2018 and instituted many economic reforms. Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected President of the Council of State in 2018. In October of 2019 his title was changed to President, and in April of 2021, he also became the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. United States Presidents have made slight adjustments in the U.S.’s relationship with Cuba over the years. George W. Bush tightened the embargo. Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and loosened the travel restrictions, though the embargo remained in place. Donald Trump reinstated many of the travel and business restrictions that had been relaxed under Obama. It remains to be seen what changes, if any, Joe Biden might bring. 9 Between 1976 and 2019, President of the Council of State was the title of the Cuban head of state. In 2019, the title of President was restored.

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The political and economic interactions between Cuba and the United States have had a powerful impact on the daily lives of Cubans. Many Cubans have left the island, often moving to the United States; however, limitations on travel between the two countries make it difficult for them to visit their families. Until 2012, Cubans could only travel if they applied for and received an exit visa, which was difficult and expensive to procure. That changed under Raúl Castro, but the cost of a passport (about five months’ salary) remains prohibitive. Americans have also long been inhibited from traveling to Cuba, though the exact restrictions changed over the years. During the presidency of George W. Bush, when Cuban-Americans were only allowed to visit immediate family once every three years, they would have to make difficult choices such as whether to visit a dying parent or to wait for the birth of a child so that they could introduce their new baby to its surviving grandparent. As I have argued elsewhere, the national tragedy of Cuba is that it is a nation of separated families.10 This tragedy of separation permeates Cuban culture and influences much of the literature discussed in this book.

Cultural Anthropophagy In writing this book, I am following in the tradition of Latin American Shakespeares , edited by Bernice W. Kliman and Rick J. Santos in 2005, which was the first volume to significantly address Shakespearean productions from this region, and Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, edited by Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho in 2019, which, while it is not exclusively engaged with Latin American works, does devote much of the book to Brazilian adaptations, and does make use of a theoretical approach which has its origins in Latin America. That theory is cultural anthropophagy, and it is also the theory I use for exploring Shakespeare in Cuba. The idea of cultural anthropophagy was proposed by Brazilian modernists, including Oswald de Andrade, Mario Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, and Menotti del Picchia in the 1920s. The anthropophagic movement urged Brazilian artists to move away from 10 Donna Woodford-Gormley, “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba,” in Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, ed. Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 207.

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an imitation of European culture into the idea of devouring European culture and incorporating and mixing it with indigenous Brazilian elements. One of these indigenous elements was the anthropophagy practiced by the Tupinambá, an indigenous tribe of Brazil, but, significantly, the ritual anthropophagy practiced in Brazil was not simply the practice of eating other humans. It was not “a dietary condition, nor a form of religious sacrifice, nor, strictly speaking, an act of revenge.”11 It was a ritual that allowed for the incorporation of and an exchange with the other. The Tupinambá consumed those captives who embodied values they admired and wanted to incorporate, and prior to consuming the enemy they would incorporate him into their tribe, making him one of them, and allowing him to marry into the tribe. The integration was thus mutual. The admirable enemy was consumed and incorporated but was first brought into the culture consuming him. The other was not rejected but “subsumed – ‘eaten’ – self-consciously and irreverently while mixed with native and contemporary elements.”12 In contrast to the European view of cannibalism, which saw the cannibal as a monster engaged in one of the greatest taboos, the anthropophagic movement celebrated the cannibal who took the admired qualities of the enemy, discarded what was not needed, and combined the foreign nutrients with native strengths. In his “Manifesto Antropófago” or “Cannibalist Manifesto” Oswald de Andrade celebrates “the transfiguration of the Taboo into a totem. Cannibalism,” and he describes cannibalism as “Absorption of the sacred enemy. To transform him into a totem.”13 His witty inversion of European thought, making a taboo into a totem and a totem into a taboo, is typical of cultural anthropophagy. More than forty years after Andrade’s “Manifesto,” a Cuban poet and scholar, Roberto Fernández Retamar14 would contribute his own piece of cultural anthropophagy with his 1971 essay, “Caliban.” Although Retamar was unfamiliar with the work of Andrade at the time he wrote

11 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural anthropophagy as Global Methodology, Global Shakespeare Inverted (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 4–5. 12 Refskou, Amorim, and Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare, 5. 13 Oswald de Andrade, “Cannibalist Manifesto,” trans. L. Bary, Latin American

Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 42, 43. 14 I will, after this, shorten his name to Retamar.

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his essay, “Caliban,” he was working in a similar tradition.15 In his essay he embraced Caliban as a symbol of Latin America, and specifically as a symbol of Cuba, writing as he did at a time when Cuban fear of foreign intervention was high and Retamar felt the need to defend his country and its revolution.16 His essay represents one of many, and perhaps the most famous and influential, Cuban appropriation of Shakespeare. In it he both argues against the alleged cannibalism in pre-Columbian Cuba and takes up the call of Caliban to devour what is useful from the European cultures, to use their languages to curse, and to possess their books. Retamar, even as he argues that the cannibalism of the Carib Indians was an invention used to justify conquest, becomes one of the more noteworthy Cuban practitioners of cultural anthropophagy, or literary cannibalism. Cultural anthropophagy is a useful theory for the study of Shakespeare in Cuba because, unlike many other approaches to global Shakespeare, it originates in Latin America. It does not involve applying a European concept to Latin American literature, and it does not place Latin American literature in a position of subservience. At the same time, however, cultural anthropophagy is an inclusive theory. It is fundamentally the practice of incorporating otherness, of crossing the boundaries between self and other, and thus it is well-suited to the examination of how Shakespeare is digested, consumed, and incorporated in a country where he is the other. The theory originated in Brazil but is “widely applicable beyond its original context and highly relevant to current discourses and

15 Retamar later wrote several more essays on the topic of Caliban, including “Caliban ante la antropofagia,” in which he admitted that he should have included Oswald de Andrade in his original essay, and would have, had he been familiar with his work. All of his essays on Caliban are included in his book, Todo Caliban (Havana: Fondo Cultural del Alba, 2006). 16 Carlos A. Jáuregui notes that it is an essay of its time, and that it cannot be fully understood without considering the political controversy in which Cuban revolutionaries and artists were at that time engaged. Carlos A. Jáuregui, Canibalia: Canibalismo, Calibanismo, Antropofagia Cultural Y Consumo En América Latina. Ensayos De Teoría Cultural, V. 1. (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008), 504.

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challenges of global Shakespeare.”17 It is particularly well suited to “kindred cultures” such as those in other Latin American countries.18 As an inclusive theory, it also allows an entry point for scholars, like me, who come from outside the tradition they are analyzing. I enter into this exchange humbly, willing to be consumed and changed by these texts.

Caliban’s Books Shakespeare’s Caliban has long been associated with cannibalism. His very name, it has been argued, is an anagram for cannibal,19 and Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals” is one clear source for The Tempest .20 We never see Caliban engaged in any actual anthropophagy; however, we do hear him advocating for a different type of consumption, the theft of Prospero’s books, and therefore of Prospero’s power. In instructing Trinculo and Stefano how to kill and overthrow Prospero, he three times mentions the importance of possessing his books: Why, as I told thee, ‘tis a custom with him I’th’ afternoon to sleep. There thou mayst brain him, Having first seized his books; or with a log Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, Or cut his weasand with thy knife. Remember First to possess his books, for without them He’s but a sot as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command – they all do hate him As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. (3.2.81–89)21

17 Refskou, Amorim, and Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare, 2. 18 Modenessi, “Afterword: Fat King, Lean Beggar?,” in Eating Shakespeare: Cultural

Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, Global Shakespeare Inverted (London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 283. 19 Fernández Retamar makes this argument, though other scholars disagree. Fernández Retamar, Todo Caliban, 15–16. For a detailed discussion of Caliban’s name and its possible meanings see Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 23–55. 20 Vaughan and Vaughan, 24; Paul Yachnin, “Eating Montaigne,” in Reading Renaissance Ethics, ed. Marshall Grossman and Theodore B. Leinwand (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 157–72. 21 Emphasis mine; all quotes from Shakespeare’s plays will be taken from The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd edition and cited parenthetically with act, scene, and line numbers.

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Caliban suggests several ways that Stefano and Trinculo might carry out the murder of Prospero, but he repeatedly emphasizes that the key to overthrowing Prospero is to steal his books, which are the source of his power. This book is based on the idea that Cuban artists have taken a less violent approach to Caliban’s suggestion. They have possessed Shakespeare’s books, consuming them, digesting them, and making them their own. Cuban artists have found various means of possessing Shakespeare’s books. In Teatro Buendía’s Otra tempestad, Prospero goes in search of a utopia, taking with him a ship full of characters from a variety of Shakespeare plays, and shipwrecks on the coast of Cuba, where he meets Sycorax, her daughters, and her son, Caliban. With Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, the amateur actors in a neighborhood of Havana write and perform a play about temporarily separated lovers, who loosely resemble Romeo and Juliet. Piel de violetas , written and performed by Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, shows Ophelia rising from the water, finding her voice, and using it to tell her own story. Tomás González’s adaptations of Othello portray A white Othello and a black Iago and Desdemona living together in Havana and debating the role of the artist in the revolution. The documentary films by Italian director David Riondino and Cuban poet Alexis Díaz-Pimienta feature Cuban poets improvising poems inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. These are only a few examples of the ways Cuban artists have consumed and embodied Shakespeare. Cuban theatre scholar Vivian Martínez Tabares, in her presentation, “Memoria de los Shakespeare cubanos” [Memory of the Cuban Shakespeares] at the 2021 Festival Shakespeare Buenos Aires, observed that Shakespeare productions in Cuba have been both surprisingly scarce and remarkably important: En una escena, como la cubana, que presume de su diversidad … llama la atención que las obras de Shakespeare no hayan ocupado espacio protagónico en los repertorios al tratarse de un autor que representa un incuestionable referente como clásico tanto en el sentir de la gente de las tablas como para la academia. [In a theatre scene like the Cuban, which boasts of its diversity … it is notable that the works of Shakespeare have not occupied a prominent position in the theatre repertoires, considering that he is an author who

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represents an undeniably classical reference point both in the feelings of the theatre practitioners and in academia.]22

However, in her effort to explain “la no tan frecuente presencia de Shakespeare” [the not very frequent presence of Shakespeare] in Cuban theatres, she actually documents how frequently Shakespeare has been consumed by Cuban artists, tracing a number of Shakespearean productions from the colonial period through productions that had shorter than expected runs due to the closure of theatres in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. She admits, furthermore, that nearly all the best-known Cuban directors have staged at least one of his works. While Shakespeare is not native to Cuba, he has been usefully consumed, digested, and embodied by Cuban artists.

Shakespeare in Cuba Because Shakespeare has been frequently consumed in Cuba, I cannot hope to provide a comprehensive discussion of all Cuban Shakespeare adaptations, but this book will provide an introduction to Shakespeare in Cuba, focusing on Cuban adaptations of and interactions with four Shakespeare plays: The Tempest , Romeo and Juliet , Othello, and Hamlet . A final chapter will discuss the attempts of Cubans, Americans, and CubanAmericans to engage in Shakespearean diplomacy. The Tempest has been an important text for Cuba, and so, Chapter 2: “Devouring Shakespeare: Cuba, Cannibalism, and Caliban,” focuses on Cuban consumptions of this play. Scholars and artists have frequently interpreted The Tempest from a post-colonial perspective, seeing it as a play about the Old World’s encounter with the New World and the clash between cultures. Cuban writers have made several important contributions to this field, including Roberto Fernández Retamar’s landmark essay, “Caliban,” and Raquel Carrió and Flora Lauten’s play, Otra tempestad. The chapter explores these two works, and, specifically, the motif of cannibalism, often attributed to new world inhabitants and to the character of Caliban. Retamar championed Caliban as a symbol of Latin America, saying that he, like Latin Americans, had been enslaved and forced to 22 Fundación Romeo, “Vivian Martinez Tabares (Cuba)- Festival Shakespeare Buenos Aires, Argentina” April 16, 2021. YouTube video, 47:47. https://youtu.be/avRIZY aGGCk; All translations from Spanish are mine, unless otherwise noted.

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speak in the language of his conqueror, but Carrió and Lauten move beyond speaking back to the conqueror. They consume Shakespeare’s play, Retamar’s essay, and other aspects of Cuban culture and literature, and from those nutrients, they create a Caliban who symbolizes a third language that is not that of the conquered or the conqueror. Chapter 3: “Revolution, Repentismo, and Romeo and Juliet : Consuming Texts/Nourishing Community” looks at how Cuban adaptations of Romeo and Juliet have been used to solve community problems in Cuba and to build and expand artistic communities both in Cuba and internationally. This chapter begins with a play written and performed by members of a CDR, and, without denying the negative results of the First Congress of Education and Culture, which will be explored in the following chapter, considers the positive effects that came from the push for the movement of amateur artists and teatro de la comunidad. These movements involved the audience and the non-professional in the making of theatre and meaning. Similarly, the art of repentismo, or improvisational poetry, has its roots in amateur performance. It has traditionally been practiced by campesinos who might have had no formal training, though in the decades since the Revolution they are increasingly becoming professional poets, or “obreros de verso.”23 The film collaborations of David Riondino and Alexis Díaz-Pimienta showcase Cuban repentismo based on Shakespeare. The films demonstrate how Cuban repentistas consume Shakespeare, Cubanize him, and use the resulting verse to nourish their art form and a new community. Chapter 4: “Race and Revolution in Tomás González’s Othello Adaptations: ‘Of the Cannibals That Each Other Eat’” explores some of the negative results of the First Congress of Education and Culture. Tomás González experienced racism both before the Revolution and during the quinquenio gris , when his casting of black actors in a production of Hamlet resulted in his exclusion from the theatres. His Othello adaptations are an example of cultural anthropophagy, consuming Shakespeare but also mixing it with Cuban and Afro-Cuban elements. At the same time, he uses these plays to consider the role of the artist in the revolution, the negative aspects of parasitic cannibalism, and the danger of the horror and fascination with which the other, or the cannibal, is often perceived. 23 Alexis Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría de la improvisación poética (tercera edición ampliada y corregida). 3a ed. (Almería, Spain: Scripta Manent, 2014), 158.

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In Chapter 5: “Ophelia Eats the Air: Consuming Voices in Piel de violetas ,” the exploration of cultural anthropophagy moves inward, to examine a more intimate, and feminist form of literary cannibalism. Unlike many other examples of cultural anthropophagy explored in this book, Piel de violetas is not overtly Cuban. It does not consume Shakespeare in order to Cubanize him but in order to give voice to Ophelia, who has long been silenced. In a one-woman show created by Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara and performed by Roxana Pineda, Ophelia cannibalizes the lines of Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes and other Shakespearean characters, and so creates a voice for herself. The final chapter of this book, “Shakespeare as Cultural Bridge: Incorporating the Other” considers whether Shakespeare is a communal enough meal to bring together two feuding cultures. It examines the work of American director Seth Panitch and his Company HavanaBama, which is made up of a combination of Cuban and American actors, and the performance of Hamlet , Prince of Cuba at Asolo Repertory Theatre in Florida. Panitch brought together actors from two countries and had them “meet in Shakespeare.” Michael Edwards, director of Asolo Repertory, directed a bilingual production of a Hamlet set in Cuba, in an attempt to bridge the linguistic divide between Latino and Anglo communities in Florida while also prompting his audience to rethink revenge. The chapter suggests that cultural anthropophagy and the devouring of Shakespeare, while not an easy solution to our cultural divides, can raise useful questions, and aid us in reaching the point where we can incorporate the other.

Bibliography Andrade, Oswald de. “Cannibalist Manifesto,” trans. Leslie Bary, Latin American Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 38–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/201 19601. Columbus, Christopher, Clement Robert Markham, and Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli. The Journal of Christopher Columbus: (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. Hakluyt Society Works. Lst Ser, No. 86. New York: Elbiron Classics, 2005. Díaz-Pimienta, Alexis. Teoría de la improvisación poética (tercera edición ampliada y corregida). 3a ed. Oralitura, 1. Almería, Spain: Scripta Manent, 2014.

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Fernández Retamar, Roberto. “Caliban: Notes Towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America.” Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs 15, nos. 1–2 (1974): 7–72. ———. Todo Caliban. La Habana, Cuba: Fondo Cultural del Alba, 2006. Flaherty, Jennifer. “Calibán Rex? Cultural Sycretism in Teatro Buendía’s Otra Tempestad.” In The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation, edited by Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, and Miriam Emma Jacobson, 102–12. Routledge Literature Handbooks. London: Routledge, 2020. Fundación Romeo. “Vivian Martínez Tabares (Cuba)—Festival Shakespeare Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Cuba).” April 16, 2021. YouTube video, 47:47. https://youtu.be/avRIZYaGGCk. Galery, Maria Clara Versiani. “Caliban/Cannibal/Carnival: Cuban Articulations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price, 307–27. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Jáuregui, Carlos A. Canibalia: Canibalismo, Calibanismo, Antropofagia Cultural Y Consumo En América Latina. Ensayos De Teoría Cultural, V. 1. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008. Kliman, Bernice W., and Rick J. Santos. Latin American Shakespeares. Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Modenessi, Alfredo Michel. “‘Both Alike in Dignity’: Havana and Mexico City Play Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 51–58. ———. “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Out-Sourced and In-Taken.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, 549–67. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019 9687169.013.27. Morales-Díaz, Enrique. Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2009. Palmer, Judith. “Theatre: A Sea-Change into Something Rich and Strange; A Cuban Theatre Company Has Come to Shakespeare’s Globe to Do the Tempest, Starring Hamlet, Shylock, Othello and Macbeth…”. The Independent (London). July 22, 1998, Wednesday, 9. Nexis Uni. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, 1–24. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus, and Gordon McMullan. Third ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016.

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Terando, Lorena. “Traces of Shakespeare’s Tempest in Cuba’s Carpentier.” In Latin American Shakespeares, edited by Bernice W. Kliman and Rick J. Santos, 183–95. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Vaughan, Alden T., and Virginia Mason Vaughan. Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Woodford, Donna. Review of Shakespeare y sus máscaras, o Romeo y Julieta. Shakespeare Bulletin 24, no. 1 (2006): 113–15. https://doi.org/10.1353/ shb.2006.0021. Woodford-Gormley, Donna. “Cuban Improvisations: Reverse Colonization via Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 59–64. ———. “Devouring Shakespeare: Cuba, Cannibalism and Caliban.” REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 29 (2013): 131–48. ———. “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba.” In Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia, 201–11. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008. ———. “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser.” The Shakespearean International Yearbook 19 (2021): 185–99. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003227359-19. ———. “‘What Country, Friend, Is This?’ Carlos Díaz’s Cuban Illyria.” In The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation, edited by Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, and Miriam Emma Jacobson, 150–60. Routledge Literature Handbooks. London: Routledge, 2020. ———. “The Woman Behind the Mask: Cuban Women and Shakespeare.” In “No Other but a Woman’s Reason”: Women on Shakespeare, edited by Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney and Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013. Yachnin, Paul. “Eating Montaigne.” In Reading Renaissance Ethics, edited by Marshall Grossman and Theodore B. Leinwand, 157–72. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007.

CHAPTER 2

Devouring Shakespeare: Cuba, Cannibalism, and Caliban

Shakespeare’s Caliban has received an impressive amount of scholarly attention for a character who speaks relatively few lines, though admittedly the lines he does speak are quite memorable. In Shakespeare’s Caliban Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan document his “eventful odyssey from Shakespeare’s time to the present,” showing “how and, wherever possible, why each age has appropriated and reshaped him to suit its needs and assumptions.”1 Harold Bloom, who sees Caliban as “the grotesque and pathetic slave” of Prospero, edited a collection devoted to the character and rather regretfully states that “we are now in the Age of Caliban, rather than the Time of Ariel or the Era of Prospero.”2 And in Constellation Caliban Nadia Lie and Theo D’haen explore “Caliban as a cultural icon conveniently allowing for the most

An earlier version of this essay was published as “Devouring Shakespeare: Cuba, Cannibalism, and Caliban.” REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 29 (2013): 131–48. 1 Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ix. 2 Harold Bloom, Caliban (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992), xv, 1.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Woodford-Gormley, Shakespeare in Cuba, Global Shakespeares, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7_2

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varied kinds of research and reflection.”3 These broad studies of Caliban, which examine the uses to which he has been put in many times and places, are undeniably valuable scholarship; however, much can also be gained from a narrower examination of Caliban’s uses and adaptations in a single place and a short span of time, such as in Cuba during the few decades between Roberto Fernández Retamar’s landmark 1971 essay, “Caliban” and Raquel Carrió and Flora Lauten’s 1997 play, Otra tempestad [Another Tempest]. In Constellation Caliban Lie and D’haen note that Fernández Retamar’s “Caliban” started a whole new discipline, “Calibanology.”4 Fernández Retamar and others have attempted to redeem and reclaim Caliban and have called for an examination of literature and culture from Caliban’s perspective. They have pointed out that the cannibalism associated with Caliban is a fiction and, at the same time, they have embraced the idea of the cannibal choosing to devour their source text and the colonial and imperial powers with which it is associated. Indeed, Caliban has proven such a compelling character that Fernández Retamar himself has been devoured by him. Though he tried to write an “Adiós a Caliban” [Farewell to Caliban], he found that Caliban would not let him go, and in the wake of Caliban’s emergence from the background of Shakespeare’s play, other, even more marginal, suppressed, or external characters have begun to surface. As these new characters have taken their seats at the table, a complicated and cacophonous dialogue between the cannibals and the cannibalized has begun, blurring the boundaries between the devourers and the devoured. However, in Cuban texts that use Caliban and Shakespeare’s The Tempest as their source or inspiration, an interesting evolution occurs. In Cuba, Caliban has transformed from the “savage and deformed slave” of Shakespeare’s play, to a valiant symbol of Latin America, to a symbol of the language that can finally allow everyone at the table to join in the conversation. Shakespeare might seem like an unusual main dish at a Cuban table. Cuba does differ from post-colonial countries such as India, which were British colonies for a long period and which saw Shakespeare used as

3 Nadia Lie and Theo D’haen, Constellation Caliban: Figurations of a Character (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), i. 4 Lie and D’haen, Constellation Caliban, i.

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a tool for instilling British colonial values.5 Cuba was a British colony for only eleven months between 1762 and 1763, and Shakespeare never seems to have been used as an instrument of colonial propaganda. However, Cuba has endured a long history of both colonization and other foreign influence, and since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, its independence from foreign influence, and particularly its ability to resist the influence of its powerful near neighbor, the United States, have been points of national pride. It might seem surprising, then, given this pride in independence, to see Cuban scholars and poets using Shakespearean characters as symbols, or to see Cuban theatrical companies writing and performing Cuban adaptations of Shakespeare. While Shakespeare is not American, he is foreign, and he could easily be perceived as a dubious foreign influence. But if independence is a point of national pride, so is the high level of education and cultural literacy enjoyed in Cuba since the Revolution, and Shakespeare is seen by many Cubans as an example of the sort of cultural knowledge they prize. His position in Cuba is thus primarily positive, if somewhat ambivalent.6

The First Course: Fernández Retamar’s Cannibalization of and by Shakespeare Roberto Fernández Retamar exemplifies this ambivalence.7 A poet, essayist, and fervent supporter of the Cuban Revolution, Retamar wrote dozens of books; served as the president of the prestigious Casa de Las Americas, a center for the study and preservation of art and culture; and continued to be a leading cultural figure in Cuba up until his death in 2019. In his 1971 essay, “Caliban,” Retamar embraced the figure of Caliban. Though he was not the first Caribbean or Latin American writer to adapt or appropriate The Tempest , in his essay he distinguishes himself from the others, critiquing those whom he feels were too influenced by 5 For more on this see Singh, “The Postcolonial/Postmodern Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare: World Views, ed. Heather Kerr, Robin Eaden, and Madge Mitton (Newark; London: University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1996), 29–43. 6 I have made this argument elsewhere. See Woodford-Gormley, “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba,” in Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, ed. Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 201–11. 7 After this I will abbreviate his name to Retamar, as I did in Chapter 1.

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European thought. He praises the Barbadian author, George Lamming, as the first Latin American or Caribbean writer to assume the identity of Caliban, but then he mourns the fact that Lamming “does not succeed in breaking the circle traced by Mannoni.”8 This criticism is sharper following as it does a paragraph condemning Octave Mannoni, a French psychoanalyst whose Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, first published in 1950, was, Retamar notes, the first work to identify Caliban as a colonial, but which he sees as a flawed, paternalistic interpretation that portrays Caliban as suffering from a “Prospero complex” and wanting to be colonized and dependent. In stating that Lamming was unable to escape Mannoni’s influence, Retamar is both accusing Lamming of a similar paternalistic theory and, ironically, placing him in a dependent relationship with Mannoni.9 Likewise, Retamar acknowledges his indebtedness to the Uruguayan writer, José Enrique Rodó, and his 1900 manifesto, Ariel , but criticizes Rodó both for choosing Ariel, rather than Caliban, as the symbol of Latin America and for being overly influenced by the French writer Ernest Renan. However, Retamar himself is guilty of a similar crime, as he admits when he recalls that his symbol is also “una elaboración extraña” [a foreign creation].10 Though he is critical of other Latin American and Caribbean authors for being influenced by European writers, he acknowledges that it is necessary to speak in the language of the colonizer, in the language that Prospero taught to Caliban, and he also seems to place Shakespeare, who he says is possibly “el más extraordinario escritor de ficción que haya existido” [the most extraordinary writer of fiction that 8 Roberto Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban (Havana: Fondo Culural de Alba, 2006), 29. An English translation of this essay was published as “Caliban: Notes Towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America,” Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs 15, nos. 1–2 (1974): 7–72. 9 Retamar’s criticism of Lamming is much sharper in his original version of “Caliban,” published in 1971 in the Casa de Las Americas. The version included in Todo Caliban, first published in 2000, to which I have referred, takes into account Lamming’s later works and his favorable comments on the Cuban Revolution, and so offers him more praise than criticism. Nevertheless, even in this later version of his essay, Retamar still states “Aunque algún pasaje de su enérgico libro … podría hacer creer que no logra romper el círculo que trazara Mannoni ...” (29) [Although some passages of his forceful novel … could make one believe that he didn’t succeed in breaking the circle traced by Mannoni …] The implication is still that Lamming couldn’t quite free himself from Mannoni’s influence. 10 Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 36.

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ever existed,]11 in a separate category from foreign influences such as Renan or Mannoni. Jonathan Goldberg notes, Retamar’s symbol, “like Rodó’s, comes from elsewhere – indeed, from the same place, Shakespeare, an author whom Fernández Retamar adores ... precisely because he somehow knows ‘us’ better than we do ourselves.” Goldberg further claims that Fernández Retamar “misreads” Shakespeare’s text as revolutionary,12 but he is not the only Cuban to interpret Shakespeare in this manner. Cuban scholar Beatriz Maggi has interpreted Shakespeare’s texts as revolutionary, and in 1964 the Consejo Nacional de Cultura [National Counsel of Culture] produced a pamphlet, Shakespeare, Un Contemporáneo Nuestro, which suggested that Shakespeare was only nominally bourgeois and that he would have been sympathetic with the Cuban Revolution had he been alive at that time.13 Retamar’s text thus illustrates the ambivalent view of Shakespeare in Cuba. He is both a foreign influence, and a great writer who somehow understood and portrayed a people and a land he never encountered. Retamar begins “Caliban” by responding to a well-intentioned, leftist, European journalist, who asked him if there was such a thing as a Latin American culture. In Retamar’s mind he might just as well have asked “do you people exist?” since to question the existence of Latin American culture is to question the existence of Latin Americans as human beings. Retamar goes on to discuss the mestizo culture of Latin America, which blends native, African, and European influences, and the mestizo people who speak in European languages but speak from the point of view of those colonized by the Europeans. He enters into an argument with “these colonizers,” but admits that he, like Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest , must do so in a language learned from Prospero, and he invokes Caliban’s famous cry: “You taught me language, and my profit

11 Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 15. 12 Jonathon Goldberg, Tempest in the Caribbean (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 2004), 9–10, 10. 13 Beatriz Maggi, “Abajo los Montesco! Abajo los Capuleto!” in Panfleto y Literatura (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982), 80–93; Consejo Nacional de Cultura, Shakespeare, un contemporáneo nuestro (Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1964); I have also discussed the Cuban view of Shakespeare as a revolutionary in “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene.”

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on’t/ Is, I know [how] to curse. The red plague rid you/ for learning me your language!” (1.2.362–64).14 Retamar then gives a brief etymology of Caliban, noting that the name is an anagram for cannibal, and that that word came from the word “Caribe,” or Carib, the name of a native tribe who, according to Retamar, “were the most valiant, the most warlike inhabitants” of what is now Latin America “before the arrival of the Europeans, against whom they made a heroic resistance.”15 The Caribs became associated with cannibalism because Columbus claimed to have heard that they ate human flesh. In his letter announcing his “discovery,” dated February 15, 1493, Columbus noted, “We have not encountered monsters here, nor news of them, except in one island ... that is populated by a people that are held by all the islanders to be very ferocious, and that eat human flesh.”16 Notable in this letter is the fact that this instance of cannibalism is actually only heard second hand by Columbus, and that it seems to be offered, apologetically, to make up for the lack of monsters. Of course, Retamar points out, Columbus also wrote in his diary about how he was told that “far from there were men with one eye, and others with dog’s noses,”17 and yet while nobody today believes that the natives of the Caribbean were cyclops or dog-headed people, the belief that they were cannibals persists, and continues to provide moral justification for a brutal conquest. Since the Caribs were so fierce and bestial, goes the argument, their violent conquest, enslavement, and extermination were warranted. Though Retamar asserts that the cannibals from which Caliban draws his name were fictional, a convenient ideological tool in the project of colonization, he nevertheless embraces the symbol of the cannibal, and specifically of Shakespeare’s Caliban. Responding to Rodó’s Ariel , in which Rodó identifies Caliban as a symbol of the corrupt United States and Ariel as a symbol of Latin America, Retamar asserts that Caliban is a more appropriate symbol of Latin America than the passive, docile Ariel: 14 Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 15. In Todo Caliban the word “how” is omitted from the quotation. 15 Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 15–16. 16 Quoted in Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 17. 17 Christopher Columbus, Clement Robert Markham, and Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli,

The Journal of Christopher Columbus: (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real (New York: Elbiron Classics, 2005), 68. Also quoted in Fernández Retamar, Todo Caliban, 16.

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Nuestro símbolo no es pues Ariel, como pensó Rodó, sino Caliban… Próspero invadió las islas, mató a nuestros ancestros, esclavizó a Caliban y le enseño su idioma para entenderse con él: ¿Qué otra cosa puede hacer Caliban sino utilizer ese mismo idioma para maldecir, para desear que caiga sobre élla “roja plaga”? No conozco otra metáfora más acertada de nuestra situación cultural, de nuestra realidad … ¿qué es nuestra historia, qué es nuestra cultura, sino la historia, sino la cultura de Caliban? [Our symbol is not Ariel, as Rodó thought, but Caliban… Prospero invaded the islands, killed our ancestors, enslaved Caliban, and taught him his language to make himself understood. What else could Caliban do but use the same language to curse, to hope that the red plague falls on him? I know of no other metaphor closer to our cultural situation, to our reality … What is our history, what is our culture, if not the history and culture of Caliban?]18

Of course, in taking the part of the cannibal, Caliban, Retamar in a sense cannibalizes Shakespeare. He takes the play of Shakespeare and uses that play as a starting point. But from that point, he diverges, looking at the play, and the world, from the point of view of Caliban, rather than of Prospero. Ironically, however, if Retamar was cannibalizing Shakespeare, Caliban has in turn cannibalized Retamar. In 1993, having seen his 1971 essay translated into many different languages, Retamar wrote an afterword to a Japanese translation of his essay. When he published it separately, he called it “Adios a Caliban” [Farewell to Caliban],19 and he later explained that he wrote it not because he thought there was no more to say about the subject, but to signal his desire to turn, and return, to other topics. Caliban, he said, had become his Prospero, his master, and he could not always be certain which ideas were his, and which Caliban’s, what he, Retamar, had written, and what were the words of Caliban.20 However, his efforts to free Caliban, and so to free himself, were unsuccessful. The character would not let him go. In 1999 he wrote “Caliban ante la antropofagia” [Caliban Before the Anthropophagy] and noted 18 Fernández Retamar, “Caliban,” in Todo Caliban, 31–32. 19 It was published as “Adiós a Caliban” in Casa de Las Américas 33, no. 191

(April 1993): 116–22. In Todo Caliban it is reprinted as “Posdata de enero de 1993” [Afterword of January, 1993]. Todo Caliban, 86–100. 20 Fernández Retamar, Todo Caliban, 87.

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that a writer doesn’t always choose his themes—sometimes the themes choose him, and in this case, he had been chosen, and consumed, by a Shakespearean character who continued to make demands of him.

The Second Course: Teatro Buendía’s Shakespeare Buffet If Retamar has cannibalized and been cannibalized by Shakespeare and Caliban, the food chain does not stop there. Later Cuban writers have cannibalized both Shakespeare and Retamar. Raquel Carrió and Flora Lauten’s Otra tempestad devours not just The Tempest but also many other Shakespeare plays, and blends them together and flavors them with Afro-Cuban ritual and other aspects of Cuban literature and culture, including Retamar’s “Caliban,” which they list among their influences. Lauten, the director and founder of Teatro Buendía, and Carrió, its dramaturge, are not new to adapting classic texts in new and experimental ways. Carrió has written on the topic of adapting the classics in her Dramaturgia Cubana Contemporánea, and Teatro Buendía’s repertoire includes adaptations of ancient Greek plays, such as The Bacchae, and classic Cuban plays. Nevertheless, in an essay describing the creative process behind writing the play, Carrió admits that Otra tempestad might at first appear to be “un cruzamiento forzoso de cosas que poco o nada tendrían que ver” [a forced cross of things that have little or nothing to do with each other.] Wanting, however, to explore Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the cultural encounter between Old and New Worlds, they embarked on a year and a half long process in which teams of actors worked to imagine and interpret different scenes, and Carrió wrote and rewrote those scenes, as the story developed into “una ‘tempestad’ más real, más nuestra” [a ‘tempest’ more real, more ours.]21 In addition to combining Caliban, Miranda, and Prospero with characters from other Shakespearean works, Carrió and Lauten add some of the Afro-Cuban pantheon of orishas into the cast of their play. The orishas have their origins in the gods brought over by the African slaves transported to the New World. Once in the New World, these gods were combined with Catholic saints to whom they bore some resemblance. The

21 Raquel Carrió, “Otra tempestad: de la investigación de fuentes a la escritura escénica,” Tablas 3–4 (1997): 3, 4.

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result was the orishas, dual personality deities worshiped in the syncretic Afro-Cuban religion, Santería or Regla de Ocha. In Otra tempestad these deities are the daughters of Sycorax, and they have additional personalities projected onto them by the old-world, Shakespearean characters, so that they themselves become the embodiment of the syncretic culture created by the merging of cultures. Otra tempestad, created and performed by Carrió, Lauten, and the actors of their theatrical company, Teatro Buendía, is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest . At the beginning of the play Prospero, Miranda, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, and Shylock set sail in search of a new land on which they can found a utopia. They shipwreck on the coast of Cuba and discover that the island is inhabited by Sycorax, Caliban, and the daughters of Sycorax, who are also orishas. The play depicts the encounters between the old-world Shakespearean characters, and the new-world figures onto whom they project the desires, fears, and regrets that they tried to leave in the Old World. Hamlet believes the orisha Oshún, river goddess, to be Ophelia; Macbeth is seduced by the orisha Oyá, the queen of the dead, who he believes to be Lady Macbeth. Prospero sees this new land as the perfect place to establish his utopia, but he is so absorbed in his utopian dreams that he fails to see that his daughter Miranda does not want the marriage he has arranged with Othello and instead loves Caliban. Miranda, who contrary to her father’s wishes wants to marry Caliban, dies in the end. Prospero dies having realized that he has destroyed his new-world utopia, and Caliban becomes king. The plot does contain a shipwreck and some of the same characters, but otherwise it is quite different from the plot of Shakespeare’s play. It is a Cuban tempest, which pays tribute to Shakespeare, but retells the story from the other side of the world, and from the point of view of different characters. This consumption and incorporation of Shakespeare caused some confusion when Otra tempestad was performed at The Globe Theatre in London in 1998. One critic, having seen the play performed there, noted that “Shakespeare’s final play has been hijacked as thoroughly as Prospero’s dukedom,”22 but in her program notes Carrió explains that they are not hijacking the play, nor is Teatro Buendía, like 22 Judith Palmer, “Theatre: A Sea-Change into Something Rich and Strange; A Cuban Theatre Company Has Come to Shakespeare’s Globe to Do the Tempest, Starring Hamlet, Shylock, Othello and Macbeth…”. The Independent (London), July 22, 1998, Wednesday, 9. Nexis Uni.

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Retamar, borrowing the language of the colonizer but placing it in the mouth of the colonized. Carrió writes: Pero en los finales del siglo la fábula se vuelve más compleja. No se trata ya de negar el lenguaje del conquistador, sino de investigar en qué medida del cruce de etnias y culturas resulta una cultura otra, un tercer lenguaje que ya no es del dominador ni del vencido sino un producto cuya naturaleza tiene un carácter sincrético … ¿Qué hacer, desde este lado del mundo, que no reitere las imágines ya hechas de un dramaturgo que ha sido miles de veces llevado a la escena? ¿Cómo lograr un lenguaje que respete la belleza y profundidad de los referentes pero no resulte una simple traslación de los temas y las formas de representación? [at the end of the century the story has become more complex. It isn’t a matter of trying to negate the language of the conqueror but of investigating in what way the mixture of ethnicities and cultures results in another culture, a third language that is neither that of the conqueror nor that of the conquered but a product whose nature has a syncretic character … What can we do, from this side of the world, that wouldn’t simply repeat the images already created by a playwright whose works have been performed thousands of times? How can we achieve a language that respects the beauty and profundity of the original but that does not result in a simple translation of the themes and forms of representation?]23

Carrió and Lauten’s play can, like Retamar’s essays, be seen as a cannibalization of Shakespeare’s work, but they also go beyond what Retamar did. They are not simply speaking back to the conqueror; they are creating a new language in which to discuss Shakespeare, Caliban, Sycorax, and the encounter between two very different worlds. The multiple levels of translation (linguistic, cultural, and temporal) mean that there are relatively few times when language from Shakespeare’s The Tempest , even in Spanish translation, is used, but as Peter Hulme has noted, this makes those Shakespearean citations especially powerful when they do appear, and the fact that the borrowed words are often put into the mouths of different characters also allows for new

23 Raquel Carrió, “Notas al programa,” in Otra tempestad, Raquel Carrió and Flora Lauten (Havana: Edicioned Alarcos, 2000), 59–60.

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interpretations of these familiar words.24 It is, for instance, Miranda, and not Caliban, who wants to “people the island with Calibans,” making the comment not a threat of rape but a declaration of passion. Ariel still sings the same song from The Tempest : A cinco brazos de aquí Yace el cuerpo de tu padre. Corales son sus huesos Perlas son sus ojos tristes Y todo el mar se ha transformada En algo hermosa y extraño25 [Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are Coral made: Those are pearls that were his [sad] eyes, Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a Sea-change Into something rich & strange.] (1.2.400–5)

But in Otra tempestad he is singing it not to Ferdinand but to Hamlet, and rather than serving to soothe Ferdinand’s grief over his supposedly dead father, as the song does in The Tempest , in Otra tempestad it stirs Hamlet’s grief and helps to drive him toward madness. Indeed, the one, minor change to the song, the addition of the word “triste” or “sad” to the description of the dead father’s eyes, adds to the son’s grief and guilt. Additionally, while Hulme is correct in noting that there are far fewer citations from The Tempest than in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête, there are many citations from other Shakespeare plays, and again, the placing of these borrowed words in different mouths and the combination of seemingly different plots adds rich, new meaning to Otra tempestad. If they have cannibalized Shakespeare, they have done it with the result of creating a Shakespeare buffet. Flora Lauten, in discussing why Otra tempestad included characters from so many Shakespeare plays, noted:

24 Peter Hulme, “Otra Tempestad at the Globe,” in “The Tempest” and Its Travels, ed. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 157. 25 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 31–32.

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We thought all the most important themes of Shakespeare should be on that boat … Macbeth is there as a symbol of treason and ambition, Shylock as avarice, and so forth. All of them are eager to go to this new world and leave their pasts behind, but everything they left keeps coming again and again, full circle. These things are all aspects of the human soul and you cannot escape them.26

The play suggests that the Shakespearean immigrants to the New World bring their own fates or destinies with them. They find in the New World exactly what they had hoped to leave behind in the old, and the cultural and psychological baggage that they bring with them often prevents them from truly seeing the New World, from truly speaking its language or hearing what it might have to say to them. As Stephen Greenblatt has famously noted, that communication has been lost. In “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century,” he notes: It is precisely to validate such high-sounding principles – “Eloquence brought men from barbarism to civility” or “all men are descended from one man and one woman” – that the Indian languages are peeled away and discarded like rubbish by so many of the early [European] writers. But as we are now beginning fully to understand, reality for each society is constructed to a significant degree out of the specific qualities of its language and symbols. Discard the particular words and you have discarded the particular men. And so most of the people of the New World will never speak to us. That communication, with all that we might have learned, is lost to us forever.27

The old-world Shakespearean characters of Otra tempestad likewise miss out on their opportunity for communication with the new-world inhabitants, since they are unable to truly see them without projecting their own desires and regrets onto them. This miscommunication illustrates the need for the third language of Otra tempestad. Retamar’s reclaiming of Caliban’s lost voice was an important first step; however, Carrió notes, it is now necessary to move beyond that. It is no longer 26 Palmer, “Theatre: A Sea-Change into Something Rich and Strange,” 9. 27 Stephen Greenblatt, “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the

Sixteenth Century,” in First Images of America, Vol. 2, ed. Fred Chiappelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 576.

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acceptable to give speech only to Prospero, but it is also not satisfactory to listen only to Caliban’s angry cursing. Either solution, Carrió suggests, would involve a loss. Instead, she suggests that a third language must be created to allow communication between the two cultures. Otra tempestad is the attempt of Carrió and Lauten to create this language. Carrió notes that “en el cruce de referentes, sonoridades e imagines europeos y africanos no hay “vencedores” ni “vencidos” sino el intercambio de ritos y acciones que caracterizan el sincretismo cultural propio de América Latina y el Caribe.” [in the mix of African and European references, sounds, and images, there are neither ‘conquerors’ nor ‘conquered,’ but rather the interchange of rituals and acts that characterize the cultural syncretism unique to Latin America and the Caribbean.]28 The translation of the play into Spanish and into Cuban culture, combined with the free adaptation and the incorporation of other Shakespeare plays, of Cuban literature, and of Afro-Cuban ritual has left some playgoers puzzled, particularly when the play was performed in England, where some of the Cuban references were less familiar. Carole Woddis, though generally pleased by the performance, acknowledged her own confusion after seeing the play at The Globe Theatre in 1998 when she wrote, “one may not always understand what is going on, but this hundred-minute version is wonderfully physical and imaginative.”29 Reviewer Ian Shuttleworth also saw the play performed at London’s Globe but had a far less favorable response. He asserted that: Without the program’s scene-by-scene synopsis, I would have had little or no idea what was going on from moment to moment; even with it, there is no indication of why what is happening, is happening. There is, of course, no reason to treat Shakespeare with ossifying reverence – but this particular gallimaufery seems to have been put together simply for its own sake. It is constantly eye-catching … but to no apparent end. There may be a parabolic subtext commenting upon the state of their native Cuba

28 Raquel Carrió, “Sinopsis,” in Otra tempestad, 18. 29 Carole Woddis, “Otra Tempestad, Shakespeare’s Globe, London,” The Herald

(Glasgow), July 29, 1998, 16. Nexis Uni.

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… but if so it lurks, along with any palpable significance of any kind, full fathom five below the surface.30

But though these critics may not always have been able to discern it, the play is full of significance, and the confusion of non-Cuban audiences does not negate Carrió’s idea of a third language. It indeed illustrates the need for that language since the languages of conquered and conqueror do not allow for cross-cultural communication. What Carrió and Lauten have borrowed and imported from Shakespeare as well as what they have changed reveals the complexities of cross-cultural communication and of cultural anthropophagy. It does not simply involve one culture consuming and digesting another so that it is unrecognizable, but rather it is a “celebration of intermixing” that places both cultures on an equal level.31

The Third Course: Varieties of Literary Cannibalism Raquel Carrió, in her observations about the creation of Otra tempestad, notes that there are two different types of theatre: Una es representacional y se corresponde con la noción de “teatro” que conocemos en la tradición occidental. Desde esta tradición… el actor “hace” – representa – al personaje. Sin embargo en la otra tradición no es así…. en los rituales el propósito no es representacional (no se representa para otros) sino participativo, iniciático … Se trata de un dialogo del actante con la divinidad, no con los espectadores. [One is representational and corresponds to the notion of “theatre” that we know in the Western tradition. According to this tradition … the actor “does” – represents – the character. However in the other tradition it isn’t like that … in the rituals the process is not representational (one doesn’t

30 Shuttleworth, “Review: Otra Tempestad” (Shakespeare’s Globe, London SE1; opened July 21, 1998). Accessed May 29, 2021. http:///www.cix.co.uk/~shutters/rev iews/98048.htm. 31 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, Global Shakespeare Inverted (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 6.

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represent for others) but participative, initiatory … it is about the actor having a dialogue with the divine, not with the audience.]32

This latter school of acting requires the actor to both allow himself or herself to be consumed by a role and at the same time to take the role into oneself as one might consume a meal. It is, in other words, similar to cannibalism, but a sort of mutual cannibalism that blurs the line between the cannibal and the cannibalized. It is akin to the inclusive anthropophagic ritual practiced by the Tupinambá in Brazil: The act of eating to incorporate otherness is never unilateral in the Amerindian cosmology. As the Tupinambá ate their enemies, and kept them alive in their own bodies, they knew that they too would be eaten if captured by the enemy. The violation of their beings would ensure their survival, which helps Cultural Anthropophagy to formulate how one may desconstruct an(other) cultural sign – even violently so – but without negation.33

According to Paul Yachnin in “Eating Montaigne,” Shakespeare himself engaged in a similar type of cannibalism when he consumed Montaigne’s essays so thoroughly that they became his own and appeared, almost word for word, in The Tempest . As Yachnin notes “appropriating, owning, and making a profit from the words of another are thus strange but close kin to eating those works and becoming one with the other.”34 Taking another’s words into oneself or allowing a character to possess one during a play is not so different from the act of cannibalism. Indeed, the two schools of acting that Carrió describes could be likened to two different perceptions of cannibalism. The cannibalism that Columbus described in his diaries, and which Retamar both denies as a fact and embraces as a metaphor, sees the cannibal as a ruthless aggressor who consumes his victim. But the cannibalism described by Refskou, Amorim, Carvalho, Yachnin, and Carrió involves being in dialogue. It involves both consuming and being consumed. This, however, is what many of the characters of Otra tempestad fail to understand. 32 Carrió, “Otra tempestad: de la investigación de fuentes a la escritura escéncia,” 4. 33 Refskou, Amorim, and Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare, 10. 34 Paul Yachnin, “Eating Montaigne,” in Reading Renaissance Ethics, ed. Marshall Grossman and Theodore B. Leinwand (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 159.

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The Shakespearean characters who sail from the Old World to the New do not realize that they are becoming actors and cannibals in the ritualistic tradition described by Carrió. They expect that they can control who they are or how they act in the New World; however, they find repeatedly that they cannot leave behind the people that they were, and because they merely project their own desires, fears, and ambitions onto the new-world divinities, they fail to truly enter into a dialogue either with the divine or with the new-world characters. Otra tempestad may be a cannibalization of Shakespeare, but it also depicts Shakespearean, old-world characters attempting to cannibalize the New World, and often biting off more than they can chew. Frequently the old-world Shakespearean characters of Otra tempestad attempt, unsuccessfully, to devour the New World without being changed by it. They think they can remain in control of their own identities and of the new-world characters they encounter. They do not realize that they can neither easily leave behind their old-world identities nor can they truly communicate with the new-world inhabitants if they merely project their own assumptions onto the people they encounter. When Hamlet, for instance, first appears at the beginning of Otra tempestad, he appears to have put on an antic disposition. He is dressed as a “bufón” or jester and appears to be a sort of comic master of ceremonies: “¡Pasen, señores, pasen! ¡Por primera vez, los cómicos de Elsinor representando ... !” [“Enter, gentlemen, enter. For the first time, the comedians of Elsinor, representing ... !”]35 His speech in this first scene is characterized by a strained jocularity and punctuated by bursts of song and laughter. He echoes the song of the gravediggers in Hamlet , who speak the few comic lines in a generally tragic play: “¡Cuando yo era joven, y amaba y amaba ... muy dulce ... todo me … parecía!” [“In youth when I did love, did love,/ Methought it was very sweet”36 (Hamlet 5.1.57–58). Even when he speaks lines that belong to Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, he recalls his comic conversation with the Gravediggers: “Esta calavera … ¡hum! ... tenía lengua. Y en otro tiempo, solía cantar ... ” [“That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once”37 (Hamlet 5.1.70)]. His behavior is slapstick and exaggerated, and he seems to be desperately trying to leave

35 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 21. 36 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 21. 37 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 21.

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tragedy behind in the Old World and to be a jester or comedian in the New World. By the fourth scene of the play, however, he is in the New World, and his tragic nature seems to have caught up with him. Rather than echoing the speech of the comic gravediggers, his lines, though not an exact translation, are reminiscent of the lines spoken by his father’s ghost. “¡Mi alma vaga en una explanada del Castillo condenada a andar errante!” [“My soul wanders on the terrace of the castle, condemned to roam”].38 He then encounters three different orishas. The first is Elegguá, a trickster god who Prospero has already mistaken for Ariel. Elegguá/Ariel sings a song to Hamlet, stirring his grief over his father, and tells him a patakin, or a traditional story about the orishas in Cuba. The story bears some resemblance to the mousetrap play in Hamlet, and at first it serves to remind Hamlet of his father’s death, but then Elegguá/Ariel mentions lovers and Hamlet, reminded of Ophelia, sees her “¡Muerta no, dormida ...! ¡... flotando como un ángel sobre el agua!” [Not dead, asleep! Floating like an angel over the water!]39 The orisha Oshún appears. She is the combination of the Catholic saint and patron saint of Cuba, Caridad de Cobre, and the Yoruban goddess of rivers, beauty, and love. She is the Afro-Cuban equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite. Onto all of these layers of personalities and symbolism, however, Hamlet projects another layer of meaning. He sees her as Ophelia. He is at first delighted to see her alive, but he becomes frustrated when he cannot get her to stop singing her mad songs. They become entangled in a conversation in which most of her lines are from Ophelia’s mad songs and most of his lines are from Hamlet 3.1. She asks how she should know her true love, and he tells her to get herself to a nunnery. She sings about her love’s hat of shells and his sandals, and he tells her not to be a mother of sinners. She says that the owl was a baker’s daughter and he asks if she is fair. At this point, however, she takes on both sides of the conversation, alternatively embodying Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet becomes upset and tries to end this conversation, but then Oyá, the orisha of the graveyards, appears as his mother, and Hamlet is first driven insane and then driven to vengeance.

38 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 31. 39 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 32–33.

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Oshún/Ofelia: ¡Soy doncellita! (Lo incorpora.) ¿Eres honesta? ¡Soy doncellita¡ Eres Hermosa? (Con ira) ¡Soy Doncellita! Hamlet: ¡Basta! Oshún: Yo te amaba, Ofelia Oyá/Madre: ¡Yo no te amaba! Hamlet: ¡Madre! (Con la espada, como el Rey.) ¡Gertrudis, por Dios, veta allá, vete allá … ! ¡Ese muchacho está loco¡ Próspero: ¡Loco! Voces de la Isla: ¡Loco! ¡Loco! ¡Loco! ¡Loco! Hamlet: (Enloquecido por las voces, tapándose los oídos.) ¡Pero de astucia! Oyá/Madre: … ¡Venganza! ¡Venganza! Hamlet: (Con la espada) ¡Venganza! [Oshún/Ophelia: I am a maid! (She embodies him.) Are you honest? I am a maid! Are you fair? (angrily) I am a maid! Hamlet: Enough! Oshún: I loved you, Ophelia! Oyá/Mother: I didn’t love you! Hamlet: Mother! (With the sword, as the king.) Gertrude, for God’s sake, get away from there, get away from there! That boy is crazy! Prospero: Crazy! Voices of the Island: Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Hamlet: (crazed by the voices, covering his ears) But cunning! Oyá/Mother: … Vengeance! Vengeance! Hamlet: (with the sword) Vengeance!]40

Though Hamlet begins the play thinking that he can devour the island, he becomes consumed by it and consumed by the past he attempted to leave behind. Though he sails to the New World as a comedian, he cannot escape the tragedy he brings with him. He cannot withstand the influence of the orishas, but neither can he see them for what they are. He projects the issues he has tried to escape onto the inhabitants of the Island and finds in the New World exactly what he left behind. Macbeth is similarly unable to escape his Shakespearean/ old-world fate. He begins the play shouting “¡fidelidad al rey!” [fidelity to the King],41 but once he is in the New World his ambition overtakes him,

40 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 33–34. 41 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 23.

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and in an ironic appropriation of the idealistic Gonzalo’s lines in The Tempest he starts to imagine himself as king of the Island: “¡Si yo fuera rey de esta plantación!” [If I were king of this plantation].42 But unlike Gonzalo he is not imagining a utopia (that role will be performed by Prospero). He is imagining a kingdom in which he has glory and power. He conjures the spirits of the island, and they begin to chant his name in answer to his questions about who will conquer more lands for the kingdom and gain more slaves for the King. Later in the play, two of the orishas, Echu Elegguá, who is the messenger of the orishas and a guarder of pathways, and Oyá, who is the goddess of graveyards, appear to Macbeth. Echu Elegguá wears the mask of death and recites many of the lines of the weird sisters in Macbeth, and Oyá transforms into Lady Macbeth. Together Echu and Oyá/Lady Macbeth spur Macbeth on to acts of murder and treason. Sometimes Oyá recites Lady Macbeth’s lines from Macbeth, and sometimes Macbeth himself recites these lines, illustrating that the desire for blood and power really comes from within him. Oyá is a convenient hook for his projection of Lady Macbeth, as Lady Macbeth was a convenient excuse for his ambition and bloody acts in the Old World of his own play. But even voyaging to the New World without Lady Macbeth or the weird sisters does not free him from his destiny, since he brings them with him and projects them onto the new-world orishas. Though he thinks he can consume the island, using it to create a kingdom he can rule, he is consumed by the orishas. In both plays Macbeth’s death is inevitable. Unlike Hamlet and Macbeth, Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban do not end up experiencing the same destiny they encountered in their Shakespearean text. Their endings in Otra tempestad are quite different from those in Shakespeare’s The Tempest . While Prospero ends Shakespeare’s play by abjuring his magic only after having recovered his kingdom, inflicted vengeance on his brother, and ensured that his daughter will marry Ferdinand and be the next queen of Naples, the Prospero in Otra tempestad abjures his magic as he dies, having just seen that his singleminded focus on establishing a utopia in this new-world paradise has led to the death of his daughter and of his ideals. He dies vowing that he will not see the island soaked in blood. Whereas Shakespeare’s Miranda is, at the end of The Tempest , married to Ferdinand and prepared to set

42 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 29.

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sail for the Old World where she will be queen, the Miranda in Otra tempestad dies in the forest after fleeing from the marriage her father had arranged for her and Othello, preferring to “people the island with Calibans.”43 And Caliban, who at the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is acknowledged as Prospero’s “thing of darkness” (5.1.275) and whose ultimate fate is uncertain, is, at the end if Otra tempestad, crowned king of the island. But while these characters do not seem stuck in their Shakespearean destinies like Hamlet and Macbeth, they still engage in a sort of cannibalism. Carrió and Lauten’s Prospero, for instance, leaves the Old World where “nuestras ciudades son estrechas, pero también son las mentes de su gente” [“our cities are straight and narrow, but so are the minds of their people”] to search for a land that he hopes will be a “paraíso” or paradise.44 He confesses to Ariel/Elegguá that he came to the New World with the idealistic goal of creating a utopia: “Te confesaré un secreto, amigo mío: ¡no he venido a conquistar, sino a fundar un Mundo Nuevo de donde nazcan hombres libres capaces de realizar mi Utopía!” [“I’ll confess a secret to you, my friend. I didn’t come here to conquer, but to found a New World where men are born free, capable of realizing my Utopia!”].45 But even seemingly benevolent cannibals can be dangerous, particularly if they are unaware of the reflexive nature of cannibalism. The “friend” Prospero is speaking to refers to him as “master” and does Prospero’s bidding as though he is a slave. And though Ariel/Elegguá tells Prospero early on that Caliban will be king after Sycorax’s death, Prospero seems incapable of absorbing this piece of information that is contrary to his vision of the New World. He is determined that Miranda will be queen, but that she will not marry Caliban. And while he is happy to teach Caliban his language before he has seen him with Miranda, after seeing the couple together he calls Caliban a cannibal and threatens to destroy the island and curse his daughter if she marries him. Miranda first comes to the island willing to obey her father and marry Othello, but once on the island she falls in love with Caliban and believes the promises of the orisha, Oshún: “Paracerá que has muerto. Te dormirás en dulces suenos... Tu cuerpo sera nave, océano, viento, pero cuando

43 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 41. 44 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 22, 23. 45 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 37.

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despiertes, el alma del amor estará en ti.” [It will appear that you have died. You will sleep in sweet dreams ... your body will be ship, ocean, wind, but when you awake, the soul of love will be in you.]46 She does not fully understand the ambiguous prophecies of the orisha, and it is this naïve acceptance of a New World she doesn’t understand that leads to her death. These characters show how cannibalism can be dangerous when the cannibal does not understand that it will involve a dialogue. It will involve both consuming and being consumed. It is dangerous for Prospero and Miranda since they die in the New World, and it is dangerous for the New World since even the love of Miranda and the desire of Prospero to establish a utopia can lead to the land being soaked in blood. Caliban’s story, however, reveals something different.

Dessert: The Transformation of Caliban At the end of the published text of Otra tempestad, Carrió and Lauten list the texts consulted in creating this adaptation. They list, of course, Shakespeare’s complete works, but they also list several Cuban texts, including Retamar’s “Caliban.” By incorporating both Shakespeare and Retamar into Otra tempestad Carrió and Lauten complicate the portrayal of cannibalism and Caliban. Is their Caliban the monster so often mentioned in The Tempest ? Is he the child-like Caliban who Prospero and Miranda teach to read? Is he Retamar’s triumphant, powerful Caliban? Teatro Buendía’s Caliban is all of these. He is first introduced as the son that Sycorax gave birth to because she violated a commandment and conceived a child with the god of fire, Changó. Ariel/Elegguá tells Prospero that when Sycorax dies, Caliban will be king, but Prospero, already fantasizing about his utopia and about making Miranda queen, seems incapable of understanding this. We later see Prospero in a paternal role, teaching a child-like Caliban to speak and write the words “Agua” [water] and “Isla” [Island]. In spite of what Ariel/Elegguá has told him, he sees Caliban as an innocent and powerless native or as a noble savage, like the cannibals of which Montaigne wrote. Miranda in Otra tempestad finds Caliban beautiful and wants to “people the island with Calibans,” and once Prospero discovers

46 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 41.

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them together, he suddenly sees Caliban as a monster and a “Canibal” [Cannibal].47 Like his sisters, the orishas, Caliban provides a hook for the projections of the old-world inhabitants. They see in him what they want to see. The projections, however, are of a different nature. While the oldworld immigrants see in the orishas aspects of the Old World they tried to leave behind, Caliban, whether he is seen as a god, a monster, or a child, is always seen as a native of the New World. In the world of Otra tempestad, Caliban is unique. He is the only Shakespearean character who is neither an immigrant from the Old World nor a new-world orisha with a Shakespearean character projected onto him. He comes from Shakespeare’s play, but not from Shakespeare’s world. Unlike Prospero, Miranda, Hamlet, Shylock, Macbeth, and Othello, Caliban does not sail from the Old World to Cuba. And unlike Elegguá, Oshún, and Oyá, he is not an Afro-Cuban orisha. There is no Caliban in the pantheon of Santería.48 He is a polyvalent sign, being both a native of Shakespeare’s text and a native of Cuba. Retamar has previously claimed Caliban as a symbol of the New World and of Latin America in particular, but in Otra tempestad he becomes something more. He becomes a symbol of the third language that Carrió referred to in her program notes on the play, “a third language that is neither that of the conqueror nor that of the conquered but a product whose nature has a syncretic character.”49 This is clear in the final scenes of Otra tempestad. In the penultimate scene, the coronation and death of Macbeth are merged with Yoruban ritual dances. Masked figures, including the orishas, crown Macbeth with a mask, and then actors wearing branches advance and kill him. In the final scene, “Calibán Rex,” all the masked figures remove their masks and Caliban appears crowned with an intricate headdress that includes all the masks. These masks are linked to the Afro-Cuban ritual that has just occurred, but some of them have also been worn by Shakespearean characters and by the orishas when they were embodying Shakespearean projections. Ophelia/Oshún has worn the flower mask. Oyá/Lady Macbeth has worn the mask of death. Prospero wore a mask

47 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 41. 48 Sycorax could perhaps be placed in this category as well, but in Shakespeare’s play

she is a mere reference, not a fully realized character like Caliban. 49 Carrió, “Notas al programa,” in Otra tempestad, 59.

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when he told Ariel “todos esconden bajo el disfraz alguna pasión o algún crimen” [Everyone hides some passion or crime behind a disguise].50 In this final scene, Caliban, the king, takes on the masks of the Old World and the New and becomes the embodiment of this multi-layered, syncretic culture that is neither that of the conquered nor the conqueror, but a compilation of the two. Caliban is not the only cannibal in Otra tempestad, but he is the most successful one since he is the one who is willing to be changed by the process, to both consume and be consumed. But of course, Caliban can only be this sort of cannibal because Carrió and Lauten have created him by cannibalizing both Retamar and Shakespeare, and in doing so they may have created a solution to the apparent contradiction of Retamar rejecting foreign influence while embracing Shakespeare. Through this cannibalization, Shakespeare’s works have traveled to a country that Shakespeare never set foot in, and Shakespeare has been welcomed and embraced there. Retamar may have been correct when he saw in Shakespeare a sympathy for the Revolution or for the syncretic culture of Cuba. While Shakespeare might not have spoken or written in Spanish, there is something in his characters that does speak to Cubans today. These characters do not, however, speak in contemporary Cuba exactly as they would have in early modern England, which may account for the critical resistance to Otra tempestad in London. They have been cannibalized, and they have been changed in the process. When Shakespeare’s works and characters are cannibalized in this way, they bring much that is valued and embraced by the Cubans, but one should not expect them to be “treated with ossifying reverence”51 or to remain unchanged. As the works are reinterpreted by Cuban artists, and as the actors, working in the tradition of ritual, become possessed by these characters and enter into a sort of dialogue with Shakespeare, transformation will occur. Some things cannot be left behind. Hamlet will remain a tragic figure, agonizing over his relationship with his mother and Ophelia. Macbeth will continue to embody the archetype of ruthless ambition. But some transformations will occur. On this side of the world, Caliban is not seen as a monster. In Cuba, even a benevolent Prospero with utopian ideals may be seen as dangerous if he refuses to understand and enter into a dialogue with the culture he is consuming and being consumed by.

50 Carrió and Lauten, Otra tempestad, 28. 51 Shuttleworth, “Review: Otra Tempestad.”

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Shakespeare’s text, adapted, appropriated, or “hijacked” will not remain the same, but if the dialogue is allowed to proceed, this communication might not be lost. It might result in a “sea change into something rich and strange” (1.2.401–2).

Bibliography de Andrade, Oswald. “Cannibalist Manifesto.” Translated by Leslie Bary. Latin American Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 38–47. Bloom, Harold. Caliban. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992. Carrió, Raquel. Dramaturgia cubana contemporánea: estudios críticos. Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1988. ———. “Otra tempestad: de la investigación de fuentes a la escritura escénica.” Tablas 3–4 (1997): 3–6. Carrió, Raquel, and Flora Lauten. Otra tempestad. Havana: Ediciones Alarcos, 2000. Columbus, Christopher, Clement Robert Markham, and Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli. The Journal of Christopher Columbus: (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. Hakluyt Society Works. Lst Ser, No. 86. New York: Elbiron Classics, 2005. Consejo Nacional de Cultura. Shakespeare, Un contemporáneo nuestro. Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1964. Fernández Retamar, Roberto. “Caliban: Notes Towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America.” Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs 15, nos. 1–2 (1974): 7–72. ———. “Adiós a Calibán.” Casa de Las Américas 33, no. 191 (April 1993): 116–22. ———. Todo Caliban. Havana: Fondo Cultural del Alba, 2006. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century.” In First Images of America, Vol. 2, edited by Fred Chiappelli, 561–80. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Goldberg, Jonathon. Tempest in the Caribbean. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Hulme, Peter. “Otra Tempestad at the Globe.” In “The Tempest” and Its Travels, edited by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman, 157–58. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Lie, Nadia, and Theo D’haen. Constellation Caliban: Figurations of a Character. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. Maggi, Beatriz. “Abajo los Montesco! Abajo los Capuleto!” In Panfleto y Literatura, 80–93. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982.

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Palmer, Judith. “Theatre: A Sea-Change into Something Rich and Strange; A Cuban Theatre Company Has Come to Shakespeare’s Globe to Do the Tempest, Starring Hamlet, Shylock, Othello and Macbeth….” The Independent (London), July 22, 1998, Wednesday, 9. Nexis Uni. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, 1–24. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Shuttleworth, Ian. Review: Otra tempestad (Shakespeare’s Globe, London SE1; opened July 21, 1998). Accessed May 29, 2021. http://www.cix.co.uk/~shu tters/reviews/98048.htm. Singh, Jyotsna. “The Postcolonial/Postmodern Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare: World Views, edited by Heather Kerr, Robin Eaden, and Madge Mitton, 29–43. Newark; London: University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1996. Vaughan, Alden T., and Virginia Mason Vaughan. Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Woddis, Carole. “Otra Tempestad, Shakespeare’s Globe, London.” The Herald (Glasgow), July 29, 1998, 16. Nexis Uni. Woodford-Gormley, Donna. “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba.” In Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia, 201–11. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2008. Yachnin, Paul. “Eating Montaigne.” In Reading Renaissance Ethics, edited by Marshall Grossman and Theodore B. Leinwand, 157–72. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007.

CHAPTER 3

Revolution, Repentismo, and Romeo and Juliet: Consuming Texts/Nourishing Community

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most frequently adapted texts. It has been retold worldwide, in film, play, television, novel, ballet, and many other forms. Its popularity in Latin America is evidenced by the fact that Bernice Kliman and Rick Santos’s collection Latin American Shakespeares contains more essays about Romeo and Juliet than about any other Shakespearean text. In Cuba the play is likewise well known and frequently retold. It has been taught in schools, performed as a play and as a ballet, and used as the inspiration for improvisational poetry.1 The idea of the star-crossed lovers is so pervasive in Cuba that Romeo 1 For more on its adaptation as a play and ballet, see Donna Woodford-Gormley, “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba,” in Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, ed. Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 201–11; Donna C. Woodford, “Review of Shakespeare y sus máscaras o Romeo y Julieta. Shakespeare Bulletin 24, no. 1 (2006): 113–15. https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2006.0021. For more on its use in improvisational poetry see Donna Woodford-Gormley, “Cuban Improvisations: Reverse Colonization via Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 59–64; Alfredo Michel Modenessi, “‘Both Alike in Dignity’: Havana and Mexico City Play Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 51–58; and Alfredo Michel Modenessi, “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Out-Sourced and In-Taken,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, ed. James C. Bulman (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2017), 549–67. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199687169.013.27.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Woodford-Gormley, Shakespeare in Cuba, Global Shakespeares, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7_3

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y Julieta is the brand of a popular cigar, and an image of the balcony scene graces the boxes of these cigars. However, while the play is well known and frequently adapted in Cuba, it is often performed not as an exact translation but as an adaptation that consumes the Shakespeare play, digests it, and incarnates it in a Cuban form. Cuban theatre, especially immediately following the Revolution, has struggled to find a balance between incorporating excellent examples of literature and art from outside of Cuba, and establishing Cuban traditions that are not dependent on outside influence. The works explored in this chapter find that balance by an act of cultural anthropophagy that allows for consuming and incorporating both Shakespeare and native Cuban traditions. As Alfredo Michel Modenessi has noted, “Anthropophagic endeavors do not conceal their appropriation of the foreign” but rather celebrate the joining of this foreign element with a native tradition.2 This chapter explores Cuban adaptations of Romeo and Juliet including Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, a play written and performed by a CDR3 in Havana in 1981, and two films, Shakespeare in Avana: altri Romeo altre Giuliette [Shakespeare in Havana: other Romeos other Juliets] (2011) and AEDOS—El mundo en versos —Romeo y Julieta en décimas [BARDS— The World in Verses—Romeo and Juliet in Décimas ] (2016), directed by David Riondino as part of his ongoing collaboration with Cuban poet Alexis Díaz-Pimienta. Though separated by decades, these works digest both the bard and elements of Cuban popular culture in such a way that they celebrate their connections to Shakespeare while also creating a new text that can nourish the community to whom it is served and invite new guests to the table.

Revolution In writing of Cuban theatre immediately after the Revolution, theatre historian Rine Leal notes that it was at this moment that Cuban theatre became truly Cuban, and truly available to the Cuban people: 2 Modenessi, “Both Alike,” 52. 3 Comité de Defensa de la Revolución, or Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.

Founded in 1960 by Fidel Castro, CDRs attend to the needs of the community, but they are also a means of policing the revolutionary attitudes and beliefs of the residents of that CDR. CDR officials are responsible for observing and reporting any counter-revolutionary behavior of the residents.

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Con la Revolución, el teatro cubano conquista su identidad. El estado organiza conjuntos, crea el movimiento de aficionados, estimula la expresión infantil, promueve la enseñanza del arte, decentraliza el teatro, genera dramaturgos y hace de la escena una parte vital de nuestra cultura. Nunca antes el teatro fue tan nacional, y al mismo tiempo tan solidario y internacionalista. Nunca antes la escena fue tan popular, sin necesidad de adulterar su propia imagen. Y nunca antes nuestro teatro y nuestra escena se vincularon tan profundamente al pueblo, para reflejar su realidad no solo con ánimo de explicarla, sino también para ayudar a transformarla. [With the Revolution, the Cuban theatre achieves its identity. The state organizes ensembles, creates the amateur movement, encourages children’s expression, promotes the teaching of art, decentralizes the theatre, produces playwrights, and makes the stage a vital part of our culture. Never before was the theatre so national, and at the same time so supportive and internationalist. Never before had the stage been so popular, without the need to adulterate its own image. And never before had our theatre and our stage been so closely linked to the people, to reflect their reality not only in order to explain it, but also to help transform it.]4

The role of the theatre following the Revolution was discussed in 1967 at the First National Seminar of Theatre and in 1971 during the First Congress on Education and Culture.5 The final declaration of the latter stated, “el desarrollo de las actividades artísticas y literarias de nuestro país debe fundarse en la consolidación e impulso del movimiento de aficionados, con un criterio de amplio desarrollo cultural en las masas, contrario a las tendencias de élite.” [the development of the artistic and literary activities of our country should be founded in the consolidation and momentum of the amateur movement, with a criterion of broad cultural development for the masses, contrary to the tendencies of the elite.”]6 This same declaration asserted that art and theatre in Cuba must be closely tied to the Cuban culture, but also international, without being an opportunity for outside influence or colonization: “El arte de la Revolución, al mismo tiempo que estará vinculado estrechamente a las 4 Rine Leal, Breve historia del teatro cubano (Havana: Editorial Felix Varela, 2004), 87. 5 This congress also notoriously led to some very negative and repressive results, which

will be discussed in Chapter 4. In the current chapter I am interested in exploring how theatre, and specifically Shakespeare, has been used to involve and educate the community. 6 Quoted in Leal, Breve historia, 101.

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raíces de nuestra nacionalidad, será internacionalista ... Combatimos todo intento de coloniaje en el orden de las ideas y de la estética” [The art of the Revolution, at the same time that it is closely linked to the our national roots, will be international ... We combat all intention of colonization in the order of ideas and esthetics].7 They concentrated their creative efforts, according to Leal, “en nuestras propias formas y valores culturales revolucionarios... en la asimilación de lo mejor de la cultura universal, sin que nos lo impongan desde afuera” [on our own forms and revolutionary cultural values ... on the assimilation of the best of universal culture, without it being imposed on us from outside.”]8 Leal further notes that Fidel Castro himself closed the First Congress on Education and Culture by declaring “Hemos descubierto esa otra forma sutil de colonización que muchas veces subsiste y pretende subsistir al imperialismo económico, al colonialismo, y es el imperialismo cultural.” [We have discovered this other subtle form of colonization that many times remains and attempts to continue the economic imperialism, the colonialism, and it is the cultural imperialism].9 It is clear from this that Cuba has, since early in its revolutionary history, been deeply concerned with maintaining its cultural independence, with avoiding cultural imperialism, and with importing “the best of universal art” only if it does so on its own terms and in a way that is not elitist and that involves the masses. This incorporation of outside elements, such as Shakespeare, in a manner that is also closely tied to Cuban culture and to educating and involving the masses can be seen in Cuban adaptations of Romeo and Juliet especially when “‘versions’ of Romeo y Juliet may stem from just a summary or a widespread perception of the play,”10 as is the case, to a greater or lesser extent, with all three works discussed in this chapter. These loose adaptations, which do not adhere too strictly to Shakespeare’s text, allow more room for the incorporation of Cuban traditions. Writing of Shakespeare and world cinema, Mark Thornton Burnett has noted that “in the particular case of Shakespeare on film in his non-Anglophone manifestations, where there is no English lexicon to attend to, we are

7 Quoted in Leal, Breve historia, 101. 8 Leal, Breve histori¯ a, 101. 9 Leal, Breve historia, 101. 10 Modenessi, “Both Alike,” 53.

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invited to be responsive to other verbal registers, to narrative strategies, and to emotional contours.”11 A similar argument can be made for non-Anglophone theatrical productions and poetic interpretations. When there is no Shakespearean language, and only general references to Shakespeare’s play, there is room to consider what Cuban traditions have been digested and incorporated into this new, Shakespearean dish. Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. It has digested Romeo and Juliet so completely that it can be difficult to find traces of Shakespeare’s work in the Cuban appropriation. While it does tell a story of lovers separated (temporarily) by the disagreements of their families, it names those characters Felipe and Odalys rather than Romeo and Juliet. The lovers live in Havana, not in Verona; they are not the aristocratic children of noble families but the revolutionary youth of a neighborhood in Havana, and instead of exchanging sonnet lines at a masked ball, Felipe and Odalys tell us their love story as they and their neighbors collect junk and fumigate the neighborhood. The text is as much propaganda as it is literature, reminding us constantly of the revolutionary fervor and ideals of its characters. When, for example, Carmen, the leader of the CDR, introduces the Romeo and Juliet of this play, she describes them as “Odalys, Buena revolucionaria, buena hija ... Y aquel otro joven es Felipe, igual que Odalys es también buen estudiante, buen revolucionario, buen hijo” [Odalys, good revolutionary, good daughter ... And that other young person is Felipe, like Odalys he is a good student, good revolutionary, good son.]12 When Felipe speaks to the mother of Odalys he explains that he will not leave Cuba, not because he is involved with Odalys and wants to marry her, but because of his commitment to the revolution: “me quedo en Cuba porque no quiero vivir en otro lugar, porque quiero contribuir a lo que aquí se está construyendo.” [I stay in Cuba because I don’t want to live in another place, because I want to contribute to what his being built here.”]13 Even the description of the play on the back cover declares, “Esta obra logra reflejar la actitud revolucionaria de nuestro pueblo trabajador a través de 11 Mark Thornton Burnett, “Adaptation, Shakespeare and World Cinema,” Literature/Film Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2017), https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/first/adaptation_s hakespeare_and_world_cinema.html. 12 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1987), 8. 13 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 75.

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las actividades de los CDR” [This work succeeds in reflecting the revolutionary attitude of our working people through the activities of a CDR.]14 However, the play is still in conversation with its Shakespearean counterpart, incorporating not only Shakespeare’s title but also a series of echoes and reversals of Shakespeare’s play. For instance, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet this play focuses on the generational conflict of the characters, but while Shakespeare portrays the young lovers as impetuous youths who are pawns in the manipulations of the older generation, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, in keeping with the revolution’s youth movement, repeatedly stresses the intelligence, capability, and revolutionary determination of its youth.15 The incorporation of Shakespeare’s title points to the fact that the Cuban adaptation is consuming Shakespeare, but equally significant is the fact that it also consumes Cuban theatrical practice, creating a new text that feeds on Shakespeare and native practices in order to feed the community. Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó was written and performed by a theatre company made up of members of the CDR José Briñas. Some of these members decided to “organizar un grupo teatral para colaborar revolucionariamente en la educación artística del pueblo.” [to organize a theatrical troupe to collaborate revolutionarily in the artistic education of the people.]16 Part of the movement of amateur artists in Cuba, the group trained hundreds of amateur actors, many of whom later attended art schools or joined other theatrical troupes.17 The Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas performed in theatres, schools, workplaces, and military sites in Havana and elsewhere in Cuba. In 1982 their play, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, received the Premio David de Teatro, an award granted to previously unpublished writers by UNEAC [The Union of Writers and Artists in Cuba]. It was published in 1987. The play was not only created in a CDR, but also takes place in a CDR in Luyanó, a neighborhood of Havana. While CDRs have a complicated 14 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, back cover. 15 I have explored these echoes and reversals in more detail in “In Fair Havana.” In

this chapter I want to focus on the consumption of Shakespeare and Cuban traditions in order to nurture community. 16 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, back cover. 17 The movimiento de artistas aficionados began in the 1960s. Students and workers

participated in various art forms, attended festivals, and were allowed time off from work or school to participate in these festivals.

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history of both helping community members and spying on them in order to report any counter-revolutionary activity, this play portrays an entirely positive view of their work. The neighbors all work together at collecting trash and fumigating the neighborhood, and Carmen leads the effort, assigning tasks to different people, explaining to an older woman that while she respects her beliefs, she cannot allow the glasses of water dedicated to her “muertos” or dead ancestors to become a breeding ground for mosquitos, and, in this midst of this, arranging for a role-playing exercise that will allow the neighborhood, and the audience, to understand the problems of Felipe and Odalys and to arrive at a solution. She sees both the fumigation of the mosquitos and the “otro tipo de fumigación, tal vez mas difícil” [other type of fumigation, maybe more difficult], which involves eliminating any perceived barriers separating Felipe and Odalys, as equally her duty as leader of the CDR.18 When the play opens, the actors are collecting junk and taking it to a truck, only pausing to declare “El Grupo de Aficionados Cheo Briñas presenta ¡ROMEO Y JULIETA EN LUYANÓ! Una pieza de creación colectiva” [The Cheo Briñas Amateur Group presents ROMEO AND JULIET IN LUYANÓ! A piece of collective art].19 Carmen then introduces the CDR, the neighborhood, and the principal characters, and invites Odalys to tell her story. When Odalys sadly suggests that there is nothing to tell, that the relationship is over and nothing can be done about that, Carmen replies, “A ver, entre todos vamos a buscar una solución y lo que decidamos aquí en la calle, eso será lo que se haga. A ver, a ver... necesitamos reconstruir todos los hechos para tener todos los elementos de juicio” [Let’s see, between us we are going to look for a solution and what we decide here in the street is what must be done. Let’s see, let’s see... we need to reconstruct all of the events in order to have the necessary information for a decision].20 The rest of the play, except for occasional references to the ongoing fumigation, consists of acting out the events of the relationship between Felipe, Odalys, and their parents. Eventually, it is revealed that the young couple grew up together, fell in love, and would probably have married, but when Felipe’s father announced his plans to move to Miami and take his family with him,

18 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 14–15. 19 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 8. 20 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 13.

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problems arose. Neighbors assumed that Felipe and his mother were, like his father, willing to leave Cuba and the revolution. Odalys’s parents worried that she would go with Felipe, and so they didn’t want her to see him anymore. Odalys went to Felipe to suggest that they marry immediately so that their parents could not keep them apart, but Felipe thought she was going to break up with him, and so he broke off their relationship before he could be rejected. Once all of this is revealed through the role-playing exercise, the young lovers reunite, Felipe’s mother decides to stay in Cuba, and nobody seems particularly upset that his father still leaves for Miami. The play ends with the weddings of Felipe and Odalys: Poco tiempo después se casaron. Fueron a vivir con Amelia, la madre de Felipe, que por fin decidió quedarse con su hijo y para nuestro barrio la boda de estos dos muchachos fue una gran fiesta. Vamos a representarla para que ustedes la vean. (Se realiza la fiesta por la boda de Felipe y Odalys) [A short time later they married. They went to live with Amelia, the mother of Felipe, who finally decided to stay with her son and for our neighborhood the wedding of these two young people was a great party. We are going to represent it for you so you can see it. (They act out the party for the wedding of Felipe and Odalys.)]21

Rather than the play ending with the death of the young lovers and the tentative beginnings of peace after the end of a long feud, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó ends with the involvement of the neighborhood in the role-playing exercise and a community celebration. This final role-playing exercise is performed not, like the others, to involve the community in the resolution of a problem but rather to bring the audience into the celebration. This act once again reminds the audience that this could be their CDR, and so they are invited to the party.

Teatro de la Comunidad While there are, admittedly, few direct references to Shakespeare in Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, there are enough to give a Shakespearean flavor to this dish. However, more significant nourishment in this play comes from its consumption of Cuban theatrical practices, especially those used by the 21 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 82.

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“new theatre” in Cuba, beginning in the late 1960s.22 The use of theatre to resolve the problems in a community and to involve the community in the solving of these problems is a very Cuban and very revolutionary act, since teatro de la comunidad, or theatre of the community, has played an important role in the cultural and political life of Cuba since the Revolution. In 1967, the First National Seminar of Theatre met to try to address the role of theatre in revolutionary Cuba. According to Rine Leal: El escenario no era ya el antiguo espejo de costumbres, sino que se transformaba en un instrumento de utilidad pública. El teatrista dejaba de ser un miembro individual y pasivo de la colectividad, para convertirse en un elemento transformador de la realidad, pero al mismo tiempo, sujeto a exigencias sociales. Como propósito de una sociedad socialista, los teatristas acogieron el principio de que el arte llamado minoritario por la burguesía, esté al alcance del pueblo, pero no a través de lo populachero o el paternalismo. El nacimiento de un teatro popular (realmente del pueblo) se ligó al surgimiento de públicos masivos, y muy especialmente a la formación integral del hombre nuevo. [The stage was no longer the ancient mirror of customs but was transformed into an instrument of public utility. The playwright ceased to be an individual, passive member of a collective, and was converted into a transforming element of reality, but at the same time was subject to its social demands. As a part of the socialist society, the playwrights welcomed the artistic principal that the art called exclusive by the bourgeois, would be within reach of the people, but not through vulgarization or paternalism. The birth of a popular theatre (really of the people) was tied to the growth of massive audiences and, especially, to the formation of the new man.]23

The theatre professionals involved in the seminar were attempting to create a truly popular theatre, a theatre by and for the people. A few months later, a group of theatre professionals with similar goals and with a desire to bring this popular theatre to a rural area formed the Grupo Teatro Escambray in the mountainous region outside of the town of

22 For more on the “new theatre” of Cuba, see Judith A. Weiss, “Traditional Popular Culture,” “Traditional Popular Culture and the Cuban ‘New Theater’: Teatro Escambray and the Cabildo de Santiago,” Theatre Research International 14, no. 2 (1989): 142–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300006118. 23 Leal, Breve historia, 100.

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Santa Clara. The group incorporated sociological research conducted by the actors and debates involving the audience and the actors to create a dynamic theatre in which people could see the problems of their culture being performed and could enter into a discussion of those problems. In this new theatre, “the audience would become the show itself, and the actors conscious provokers of a collective confrontation of ideas.”24 Teatro de la comunidad involved the community in the solving of their own problems. One of the members of Grupo Teatro Escambray, Flora Lauten,25 would later form her own theatre company, Teatro La Yaya, in another rural community. Though she originally intended to work with a children’s theatre company that had formed there, she soon found herself working with a group of local residents who were not theatre professionals but who began to create and perform plays that allowed them to explore the difficulties their community was experiencing. The problem of sexism and discrimination in the workplace, for example, would be addressed through a play on these subjects, written and performed by the local workers. Each performance of La Yaya would begin with one actor coming forward and declaring: Buenas noches. Hemos venido aquí porque nos dijeron que aquí van a dar una asamblea donde van a tratar cosas importantes, cosas que nos interesan a todos como revolucionarios. Además, también vamos a decir quiénes somos. Nosotros somos vaqueros, constructores, amas de casa, fumigadores, choferes, electricistas, jubilados, maestros y niños escolares. También somos artistas. Contamos con un grupo de veintiún compañeros. Tenemos un nombre: Grupo Teatro de La Yaya. ¿Qué cosa es La Yaya? Una nueva Comunidad. [Good evening. We have come here because we were told that there was going to be a meeting in which important issues would be explored, things that interest all of us as revolutionaries. Furthermore, we are going to say who we are. We are ranchers, construction workers, housewives, fumigators, chauffeurs, electricians, retired people, teachers, and young students.

24 Alma Villegas and Ted Kuster, “Grupo Teatro Escambray: Theater in Revolutionary Cuba,”The Black Scholar 20, no. 5/6 (1989): 26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/410 68323. 25 Flora Lauten is also the director of Teatro Buendía, mentioned in Chapter 2.

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We are a group of twenty-one comrades. We have a name: The Theatrical Group of La Yaya. What is La Yaya? A new Community.]26

With the formation of the Grupo Teatro de La Yaya, theatre became truly popular. It was not only aimed at a popular audience, but it was also created and performed by the people, and the people used theatre to explore and solve their own problems and to debate the issues acted out on stage. Similar groups were formed in Havana and other parts of Cuba, and the Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, which wrote and performed Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, appears to have been one such group. So, it is not surprising that the characters within the play enact their own form of popular theatre to resolve the romantic difficulties of Felipe and Odalys. Just as La Yaya begins each performance with a prologue announcing who they are, so Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó begins with Carmen declaring: Están en una cuadra de un CDR. Este es nuestro CDR, pero puede ser el tuyo. Nosotros nos llevamos muy bien, además de alguna que otra familia que hace poco que permutó para acá. Muchos de nosotros hemos nacido, crecido y nos hemos enamorado y casado aquí. Somos como una especie de familia grande y bien llevada. Hemos tenido problemas, es verdad, pero siempre con nuestro esfuerzo y nuestra unidad hemos salido adelante … Ahora, por ejemplo, tenemos algo que solucionar … [You are on the block of a CDR. This is our CDR, but it could be yours. We behave ourselves very well, with the exception of the occasional family that has just moved here. Many of us have been born, grown up, and have fallen in love and married here. We are sort of a big, well-behaved family. We have problems, it is true, but always with our strength and our unity we have come out ahead … Right now, for example, we have something to resolve …]27

Just as Lauten and the actors of La Yaya used theatre to discuss sexism, so Carmen and her neighbors use theatre to explore what is dividing Odalys and Felipe and to emphasize to their audience that this is also their play, their problem, just as it could be their CDR. Had Shakespeare’s starcrossed lovers had Carmen, or Flora Lauten, to resolve the feud between 26 Flora Lauten, Teatro La Yaya (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1981), 6. 27 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, 8.

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their families, they might have achieved a much happier ending. By using drama to resolve the problems in their community, the Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas is very much following in the artistic and revolutionary footsteps of many influential theatre groups in Cuba. It does not involve the audience in a debate at the end of the play, as La Yaya and Escambray sometimes did, but it does invite amateur actors to work together to create theatre, it does show a community involved in solving its own problems, and it makes it clear that this solution could be applied to any CDR, any community in Cuba. By consuming the theatrical practices of teatro de la comunidad and Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers, the Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas brings their audience to the table, allowing them to digest the bard and make the story more truly their own.

Repentismo A similar example of cultural anthropophagy, consuming both Shakespeare and Cuban traditions, can be found in the collaborations of Italian film director David Riondino and Cuban poet Alexis Díaz-Pimienta. Just as the Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas used the Cuban tradition of community theatre, so the collaborations of Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta are nourished by Cuban artistic traditions, in this case, the tradition of repentismo, a form of improvisational poetry in which the poet, or repentista, spontaneously creates verse in a ten-line stanza called a décima. Repentismo is not a uniquely Cuban tradition. Díaz-Pimienta notes that it is difficult to find the exact roots of improvisational poetry, which, he says, exists in some form in nearly all cultures. However, repentismo, like many forms of improvisation, was influenced by the improvisational poetry of Spain, which was influenced by Arab improvisation. Currently repentismo is practiced throughout the Caribbean, in Mexico, and in many Central and South American countries.28 However, while repentismo has its roots in Europe and is practiced in much of Latin America, it has flourished in Cuba and has become an important part of Cuban culture. In Cuba, as in many other countries, repentismo was initially practiced by amateurs, mostly campesinos who improvised during their hours of

28 Alexis Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría de la improvisación poética, (tercera edición ampliada y. corregida). 3a ed. (Almería, Spain: Scripta Manent, 2014), 158; Modenessi, “Victim,” 556.

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leisure or as part of holiday celebrations. However, after the Cuban Revolution, the contributions of repentistas to Cuban culture were recognized, and repentistas became “obreros de versos” or “workers of verse” with monthly salaries, a system of evaluation, and a retirement pension.29 Cuban repentismo involves the impromptu creation of décimas , stanzas of ten octosyllabic lines, with a rhyme scheme of ABBAACCDDC. While décimas are again not unique to Cuba, they are the stanza always used by repentistas in Cuba. In the documentary AEDOS—El mundo en versos , Riondino pauses the description of the project to ask Díaz-Pimienta if the improvisations are always done in décimas , and Díaz-Pimienta teasingly responds: “In Cuba we improvise only in décimas , and always with the same structure. If one of them [the poets on the stage] doesn’t improvise in décimas , he can’t come back to Cuba. The poet who doesn’t follow the rules, has to stay here [in Europe] on a park bench.”30 The improvised décimas often involve a pie forzado or set rhyme. That is, the poet is given an octosyllabic line of poetry, often from a famous poem, and asked to insert that line into an original, improvised stanza, either at the beginning of the décima, if it is a pie forzado inicial, or at the end of the stanza, if it is a pie forzado final.31 David Riondino and Alexis Díaz-Pimienta, sharing a love of improvisational poetry, began experimenting together in the early 2000s with a fusion of theatre, poetry, and film. In 2008 they brought repentistas from Cuba and Miami to Italy where they debated in repentismo. The film documenting this is Due orillas una sola voce: repentistas de Havana e Miami [Two Shores One Voice: Repentistas of Havana and Miami]. In 2009 they began to incorporate Shakespeare into their films, creating Otello all’improvviso, or Improvised Othello, which documents the tradition of repentismo in Cuba, using Shakespeare’s Othello as the

29 As an example of the contributions of repentistas to Cuban culture, Díaz-Pimienta notes the famous controversia or poetic debate in 1955 between Angelito Valiente and the Indio Naborí, who improvised verses about liberty and social justice in front of an audience of 10,000 campesinos, in spite of the opposition of Batista’s guards. Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 158–59. 30 Riondino, AEDOS -- el mundo en versos ,Romeo y Julieta en decimas. April 9, 2016. Vimeo, 1:13.07. https://vimeo.com/162200709. 31 Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 487–96.

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overarching inspiration or prompt, a sort of meta pie forzado.32 In 2011 they continued this project by filming Shakespeare in Avana: altri Romeo alter Giuliette [Shakespeare in Havana: Other Romeos, Other Juliets]. All of these collaborative efforts led to the formation, in 2014, of the Grupo de Experimentación Escénica “AEDOS” [The Group of Experimental Performance “Bards.”] In 2015 AEDOS toured Italy and Spain, performing improvised fragments of Romeo and Juliet There were certain “fragments” of the play that were performed each night, including the balcony scene, the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio, and the death of the lovers, but each night the audience would choose which repentista would perform which role, and each night was different because it was always being created in the moment. The film, AEDOS—El mundo en versos —Romeo y Julieta en décimas [BARDS—The World in Verses—Romeo and Juliet in Décimas ] documents this tour. While all these collaborations are worthy of exploration, examining Shakespeare in Avana and AEDOS—El mundo en versos , which both consume Romeo and Juliet allows for an examination of how the project has progressed and how it is engaged in the same sort of cultural anthropophagy visible in Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó. Like that play, these films consume both Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Cuban artistic traditions, and they incorporate the audience and non-traditional performers in a way that creates a communal feast. In both films Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta explain that Shakespeare did not have to be an important part of this feast; however, he was chosen because he brought more people to the table. As Modenessi has noted, “Shakespeare is not central to Latin American tradition, but a welcome, flexible asset.”33 In Shakespeare in Avana Riondino explains that their ultimate goal is to create a national, and international company of repentistas who could perform any Shakespeare play, anywhere in the world. Díaz-Pimienta quickly interrupts to explain that their repentismo 32 Díaz-Pimienta describes the pie forzado as a form of “tema” or subject that governs the improvisation. In the case of the pie forzado there is a phrase or a line of poetry that must be inserted into the poem at a certain point. The “tema” or theme more generally governs the topic of the improvisation. Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 469–96; 599–710. 33 Modenessi, “Victim,” 555.

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need not be limited to Shakespeare: “No solamente Shakespeare. Henry Ibsen, Calderón de la Barca, Henry Miller,34 cualquier dramaturgo está en peligro en este momento. Cualquier dramaturgo puede ser víctima de repentismo.” [Not just Shakespeare. Henry Ibsen, Calderon de la Barca, Henry Miller, any playwright could be in danger at this time. Any playwright could be the victim of repentismo.] Nevertheless, when they had the “golden opportunity” of an international festival of repentismo in Havana, they seized the chance to return to their project (initiated with their Otello all’improvviso), to Cubanize and modernize Shakespeare. Díaz-Pimienta has observed that they chose Shakespeare for this project because his works were so well known.35 Shakespeare is a useful tool for Díaz-Pimienta and Riondino because they can count on their audience to know the basic elements of the story, thereby allowing the repentistas to freely improvise and recreate the story. Similarly, in AEDOS—El mundo en versos , Díaz-Pimienta explains that the group AEDOS, or Bards, is an experiment in the fusion of poetry, music, and theatre, in which poetic improvisation interacts with the classics of theatre. He notes that they could have chosen any classic play, but that “Shakespeare sigue siendo la voz fundamental del teatro, y sus obras, lo mas conocido” [Shakespeare continues to be the fundamental voice of the theatre, and his works are the best known.]36 He explains to the live audience sitting in front of him, and at the same time to the film audience, that while they could have chosen any playwright, since any work can be translated into improvisational verse, they found Shakespeare’s works very attractive, and having worked with Othello and Romeo and Juliet they wanted to show some of the results of their experiment. To do so they toured several cities in Italy and ended their tour in Barcelona, improvising key scenes of Romeo and Juliet and interweaving them with discussions about the décima and improvisation.

34 Díaz-Pimienta most likely meant Arthur Miller, the American Playwright. 35 Diaz-Pimienta stated in an email that Shakespeare’s works were chosen because they

are universal. During his stay at New Mexico Highlands University as a Ballen Visiting Scholar, he explained that he was referring to the universal familiarity of theatre-going audiences. 36 Riondino, AEDOS -- el mundo en versos .

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Eating Poetry While Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta do not explicitly declare that they are engaged in cultural anthropophagy, they do make reference to the ways that both Shakespeare and repentismo nourish and feed their collaborations and the ways that their improvisations likewise nourish Shakespeare. For Díaz-Pimienta this is not the only time he has used this metaphor. In 2014, in between Shakespeare in Avana and AEDOS—El mundo en versos , he hosted a performance called “Como comer poesía y no subir de peso” [How to eat poetry without gaining weight]. It was a night of poetry, repentismo, flamenco dancing, and Cuban music, and the flyer announcing the event called it “Un banquete poético para paladares exquisitos” [a poetic banquet for exquisite palates] and declared that the event would include “todos los placeres juntos” [all of the pleasures together].37 This event did not include Shakespeare, and it took place in Spain, not Cuba, but it demonstrates that Díaz-Pimienta is certainly familiar with the metaphor of consuming and being nourished by poetry. A similar metaphor runs through both Shakespeare in Avana and AEDOS—El mundo en versos .

“Este pie forzado nutre mis versos”: This Set Rhyme Nourishes My Verses Riondino’s documentary film, Shakespeare in Avana begins at an improvisational poetry contest in Cuba in May of 2010, the Pie Forzado World Championship. After a brief view of a poet improvising in this competition, we see Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta discussing how they will Cubanize and modernize Shakespeare. Repentistas , they explain, will be given a shot of rum, (or a drink of juice if they are adolescents), and a premise based on Shakespeare’s play. With the dual inspiration of Shakespeare and the “divine elixir” of Cuban rum, repentistas begin the “oral rewrite of Shakespeare.” Díaz-Pimienta serves as a poetguide throughout the film, discussing the history of repentismo and décimas with Riondino, introducing certain improvised scenes based, sometimes loosely, on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and showcasing 37 Territorio Huelva. “Espectáculo ‘Cómo comer poesía y no subir de peso,’ accessed May 30, 2021. http://territoriohuelva.com/actividad/espectaculo-como-comer-poesia-yno-subir-de-peso/.

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some excellent examples of repentismo, including some taken from the 2010 championship. Toward the end of Shakespeare in Avana, Díaz-Pimienta appears in the competition and explains that they are going to introduce a new form of pie forzado: the pie forzado móvil, or a mobile set rhyme. Rather than using the set rhyme as either the first or last line of the stanza, the poet will be given both a pie forzado and a point at which to insert it into the décima. The hostess tosses the “poetic die,” and the poet must incorporate the pie forzado at whichever line number the die indicates. Díaz-Pimienta’s die shows the number 7, and so he must incorporate his pie forzado as the seventh line of the stanza, which he says is the most difficult.38 As he improvises, he declares “Este pie forzado nutre mi voz” [This set rhyme nourishes my voice]. In this particular case, he may not be correct, since he has trouble with the mobile pie forzado and stumbles in the midst of his repentismo; however, in his Teoria Díaz-Pimienta asserts that while non-repentistas tend to think of the set rhyme as an additional challenge for the poet, the pie forzado actually aids the poet, giving a clear starting point or a clear destination for the décima.39 Likewise he declares that a given theme or subject, especially when used in a controversia or improvised argument between repentistas , guides the improvisation: El tema es a la controversia lo que el guión al cine: es el molde textual, semántico, cognoscitivo. Una mala controversia, pero con un tema interesante, siempre llama la atención del público. Incluso dos malos repentistas cuando le cantan a un buen tema se crecen, y dos buenos repentistas en un tema infeliz se apocan. [The theme is to the controversia what the script is to the film: it is the textual, semantic, cognitive mold. A bad controversia, with an interesting theme, always attracts the audience’s attention. It is even true that two poor repentistas , when they sing about a good theme, improve, while two good reprentistas with a bad theme are diminished.40

38 By the time he wrote his third edition of his Teoría de la Improvisación Poética, he had eliminated certain numbers, including 7, from the die, so as to make the insertion of the pie forzado less disruptive. Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 635–6. 39 Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 602. 40 Díaz-Pimienta, Teoría, 469.

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In Shakespeare in Avana the theme of Romeo and Juliet clearly nourishes the poetry of the repentistas . Though the poets still have great liberty to branch off from Shakespeare’s play, his images and metaphors feed the repentistas and their verses, as do the Cuban tradition and the Cuban setting. When sitting in Vedado, a neighborhood of Havana, for example, Díaz-Pimienta first identifies the corner he and Riondino are sitting at: “Estamos en El Vedado,/ aquí en 19 y K” [We are in Vedado,/ here at 19th and K] and then points to a balcony next door and asserts that this was Juliet’s balcony: Verá un hermoso balcón que tiene olor de pasión y a corazón de poeta: es la casa de Julieta

[You will see a beautiful balcony that has the scent of passion and the heart of a poet: It is the house of Juliet

As he speaks the camera shows the beautiful and ruined architecture that is so typical of Havana, with many of the colonial buildings in old Havana and the Neo Classical, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco structures of Vedado all crumbling after so many decades of embargo. Though some of these buildings have been well-maintained or repaired, many now fall into ruin but remain standing, rather than being replaced with modern constructions. The “Casa de Julieta” appears to be one of the mansions constructed in Vedado in the early twentieth century, prior to the Revolution, when wealthy Cubans, Americans, and other foreigners chose to build their elaborate homes in this neighborhood. The still stately columns of the “hermoso balcón” are now marked by crumbling plaster and cracked cement. The aging architecture points to both the past and present of foreign influence: the wealthy foreigners who built many of the mansions, and the present embargo that prevents their maintenance but also prevents the building of new structures. Though the result of outside influence, these buildings have also become something beautiful and recognizably Cuban. The images of the film make it clear that the setting is Cuba, even as Díaz-Pimienta’s lyrics reach into a European past to draw on the nourishment of Shakespeare’s play. He continues by describing an extended Cuban balcony scene:

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En este balcón se amaron, se besaron, se escondieron, se dijeron, se quisieron, se oyeron, se enamoraron. Por ese balcón bajaron y subieron muchas veces. Pasaron años y meses en este secreto amor

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[On this balcony they loved, they kissed, they hid, they spoke, they desired, they listened, they fell in love. From this balcony they descended and ascended many times. They spent years and months in this secret love.]

With this décima he takes the action of Shakespeare’s play and places it firmly in Cuba, in an old house in Vedado where the young lovers passed “years and months” of their “secret love.” He is using creative license, not just by Cubanizing the action but also by imagining years and months that the lovers spent together, rather than a few days, but he concludes his repentismo by stating: Pero les voy a expresar, con mis versos trovadores, que entre sombras y entre flores, como era tanto el amor, ese balcón tiene olor a alondras y ruiseñores.

[But I’m going to tell you, with my troubador’s verses, that between shadows and flowers, since their love was so great, this balcony has the scent of larks and nightingales.]

Though Díaz-Pimienta is Cubanizing and modernizing Shakespeare’s play, he is also consuming Shakespeare’s images, such as the larks and nightingales that the young lovers discuss on the morning following their secret marriage: Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yon pome’granate tree. Believe me, love: it was the nightingale. Romeo: It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale. (3.5.1–7).

His impromptu recreation of Shakespeare’s lovers feeds on Shakespeare’s imagery of “larks and nightingales” while using the beautiful Cuban

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setting and his own improvised verses to nourish a new version of the play he consumes. Likewise in another scene of the film, Díaz-Pimienta and Riondino explain to the poets improvising the parts of Romeo and Juliet (Ernesto Mederos as Romeo and Yunet López as Juliet) some of the poetry and images that Shakespeare uses. They refer to the moment when Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger and says: “Oh happy dagger,/ This is thy sheath! There rust and let me die” (5.3.168–9). They insist, however, that the poets do not have to use these images or words. They tell them, and the poets agree, that the images are beautiful, but they give the poets complete liberty with the scene. Díaz-Pimienta states that these “images come directly from Shakespeare,” but he reminds them that they can use the lines or not. They can use the images or not. They are free to change and Cubanize them. Thus, even when specific images or verses from Shakespeare are invoked, the Cuban poets have the authority and liberty to rewrite them, to make them Cuban, and their own. The improvised verses of Yunet López and another poet Romeo (Oniesis Gil) do not contain lines such as “oxídate en mi pecho” [rust in my chest] or “puñal yo soy tu vaina” [dagger I am your sheath] which Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta had earlier introduced; However, Yunet López does, prior to Romeo’s death, mention daggers and poisons, if only to deny that they can destroy the love shared by her and Romeo: “Ni un poderoso veneno/ ni una daga traicionera/ encontrarán la manera/ de matar al amor bueno.” [Neither powerful poison/ nor treacherous dagger/ can find the manner/ to kill true love]. The images of Shakespeare feed her verse, but they are digested and incarnated in a different form. While Riondino’s film, like the play by the Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas consumes both Shakespeare and Cuban traditions, it mixes them into a very different dish. Whereas Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó makes only a few direct references to Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Avana seldom stops reminding us that this is Shakespeare, but at the same time, it is continually reminding the audience that this film is shot in Cuba and features Cuban repentistas and Cuban landmarks. It is, as Díaz-Pimienta declares in his closing décima of the film, “Shakespeare cubanizado.”41

41 David Riondino, Shakespeare in Havana (Eng. Sub). March 11, 2014. Vimeo, 57.31. https://vimeo.com/88749967.

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La décima Alimenta: The décima Feeds The most recent Shakespearean collaboration between Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta is AEDOS—El mundo en versos , a film which documents the tour of Italy and Spain undertaken by AEDOS, the troupe of repentistas that Riondino and Díaz-Pimienta gathered. This film feeds not just on Shakespeare and repentismo, but also on the previous collaborations of the two since it includes repentistas from the previous projects. Yunet López was the Juliet in Shakespeare in Avana; Emiliano Sardiñas improvised the parts of Othello in Otello all’improvviso and Mercutio in Shakespeare in Avana; Héctor Gutiérrez performed Iago in Otello all’improvviso and was one of the repentistas featured in Shakespeare in Avana, and of course Díaz-Pimienta and Riondino have been central to all of the projects. Moreover, the tour that the film documents is, as Díaz-Pimienta notes, a showcase of the experiment of rewriting Shakespeare that they began previously. The film begins with the last performance of their tour, in Barcelona, and shows Díaz-Pimienta and Riondino explaining the décima. They ask the audience for endings to words and using their suggestions, they create the framework of a décima that will use the following rhymes: uta, ar, ar, uta, uta, enta, enta, elo, elo, enta. After joking that this is what is left of an ancient language, Diaz-Pimienta improvises a décima with these rhymes: Sé que el público disfruta oyéndome improvisar en este hermoso lugar que encontré al fin de mi ruta. Para que nadie discuta que la décima alimenta, acabo de darme cuenta que mi verso ha alzado el vuelo y que ya ha perdido el pelo Alexis Díaz-Pimienta.

[I know that the people enjoy hearing me improvise in this beautiful place at the end of my journey. So that nobody disagrees that the décima feeds, I just realized that my verse has taken flight and that Alexis Díaz-Pimienta has already lost his hair.]

This is the first of many examples in the film of the repentista creating “everything from nothing.” His sample décima demonstrates to the audience how repentismo works, while also introducing the humor and creativity we are about to witness. Humor is an important part of this film, which frequently transforms Shakespeare’s tragedy into a comic performance. This is certainly in part in order to engage and entertain the live audience of the tour, but it also illustrates the “simultaneous

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homage and subversive parody, which... is at the heart of the anthropophagic tradition.”42 Though AEDOS certainly does improvise some serious, romantic, and even tragic moments, they also weave a great deal of humor into their repentismo and this, rather than detracting from either the Shakespearean or Cuban elements of the tour and film, adds new layers of meaning to both. The décima feeds the performance, but so do Shakespeare and the playful, humorous reinterpretation of the bard via the décima. The film features a compilation of different performances on their tour, which together give the sense of what a single performance would have involved. Díaz-Pimienta introduces the repentistas and the musician, Francisco “Paco” Rodríguez. Then he and Riondino explain the idea of AEDOS as a fusion of film, theatre, and poetry, and explain that while they could have chosen to consume any text, the repentistas felt a special attraction to Shakespeare. They are therefore improvising certain fragments of the play: the balcony scene, the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt, and the deaths of the two lovers, and they weave these together with recitations of famous décimas and with improvised piropos, or flirtatious, flattering and often humorous comments, in verse, directed at members of the audience. Riondino then explains that each night Yunet López plays the role of Juliet, and the audience chooses which of the three male repentistas (Héctor Gutiérrez, Emiliano Sardiñas, and Alexis Díaz-Pimienta) will play Romeo, which Mercutio, and which Tybalt. Díaz-Pimienta always plays the narrator, along with his other role. During their performances in Italy, Riondino plays the part of the translator, quickly providing the Italian-speaking audience with a translation. After Riondino gives a description of what the performance will be like, Díaz-Pimienta begins to explain how Shakespeare nourishes the improvisation while the improvised décimas feed Shakespeare. It is not simply a matter of the repentistas using Shakespeare for their improvisations. The improvisations also bring new interpretations to Shakespeare: Amigos de Barcelona, bienvenidos a un lugar que esta noche va a cambiar:

[Friends of Barcelona, welcome to a place which tonight is going to change: (continued)

42 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology. Global Shakespeare Inverted (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 2.

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(continued) se convertirá en Verona. Aquí hay más de una persona que sabe ya que pasó, pero lo reinvento yo, y la décima bien hecha incluso cambia de fecha: todo ahora sucedió.

It will turn into Verona. There is more than one person here who already knows what happened, but I will reinvent it And the well-made décima even changes the date: Everything happened now.

Shakespeare murió; eso está claro. También Romeo y Julieta murieron. Pero el poeta, que no puede entrar en paro, puede hacerle un simple amparo a la historia ya leída, para cambiar en seguida todo lo que ha sucedido y darle un nuevo sentido esta historia conocida.

Shakespeare died; that is clear. Romeo and Juliet also died. But the poet, who cannot stand still, can make a simple shelter for the story already read, to change immediately everything that has happened and give a new meaning to that well-known story.]

The relationship between Shakespeare and the improvised décima is a reciprocal one. Shakespeare inspires the improvisations, but the décimas consume Shakespeare, digest him, and reincarnate him in a new form. The date changes. The place changes. Any city they perform in can become Verona, and all the events of Shakespeare’s play are occurring in the moment, improvised on the stage in the “décima bien hecha” [well-made décima]. The décimas , moreover, reaffirm that this anthropophagic act actually creates life out of death. “Shakespeare died; that is clear,” declares Díaz-Pimienta, with mock seriousness, and “Romeo and Juliet also died.” But on this foundation of deaths, the living poets “who cannot stand still” can reinvent the well-known story, using it to create a “new shelter” for the new meanings generated.

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La poesía es el pan que el corazón alimenta: Poetry Is the Bread That Feeds the Heart AEDOS—El mundo en versos demonstrates many reinventions and improvised changes. Though the same fragments of the story are always used as the prompt, each performance involves a different combination of poets, a different audience, and a different interpretation, and so each night is unique. Some are romantic. Some are tragic. Some are humorous. In one improvisation of the balcony scene, Sardiñas (Romeo) sings an improvised song to López (Juliet). Another night shows Gutiérrez and López trading lines back and forth, much as Shakespeare’s young lovers together create a sonnet during their first meeting. In a third balcony scene, however, DíazPimienta, who is bald and older than López, plays the part of Romeo and jumps up on the improvised balcony (a chair turned backwards) to demand that Juliet woo him: “The myth must be broken. Let the woman light the love of a bald and beastly poet.” After López, spurred on by the cheers of the audience, obliges by serenading him, he declares that what matters is love, and it doesn’t matter who does the wooing. The parodic reversal of the balcony scene, with the young Juliet wooing the “bald and beastly” Romeo, breaks the myth of Shakespeare’s famous scene but does so in such a way that it pays homage to the bard while it creates new meaning for a new century.

Duels and Parties The fight between Tybalt and Mercutio is similarly reinterpreted each night. This duel lends itself to the controversias or verbal duels that are a frequent part of repentismo. The contest becomes one of words, rather than of swords, though the battle is still fierce. The dueling repentistas frequently interrupt each other, as occurs in controversias, but in the context of the performance Díaz-Pimienta and Riondino sometimes have to intervene to decide who should continue. At one such point DíazPimienta pulls the dueling Sardiñas and Gutiérrez apart and tells the audience, “that’s the way it is in Cuba.” The poets take the opportunity provided by the duels to enact dramatic death scenes, but these scenes are also frequently comic. Díaz-Pimienta falls to the stage and calls for an ambulance to take him to a hospital, and Sardiñas, who is black and makes many references to this fact, declares that this play is tyrannical, and like an American movie, since the black man always dies first. After

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another duel, however, he sings about how Tybalt killed Mercutio, but Mercutio didn’t die, he kept singing: “Teobaldo mató a Mercucio/ pero Mercucio no ha muerto;/ él sigue haciendo el concierto/ porque resucita mucho.” [Tybalt killed Mercutio/ but Mercutio is not dead/ He carries on with the show,/ because he resuscitates a lot.] Another challenge of these improvisations, Díaz-Pimienta notes, is that the reference to a stab or thrust often comes at the seventh line, and then the poet needs to continue for three more lines, so that “la décima alarga la vida” [the décima prolongs life.] At the end of these scenes of duels, Díaz-Pimienta as narrator returns to serve up another feast of words: Qué cosa loca es la fiesta del teatro y poesía. Yo creo que a mí, hoy en día, casi nada me molesta. Aquí, se formó una orquesta con un sabor africano; hubo un Romeo cubano una Julieta habanera: ésta es la loca manera de hablar todo en shakespeareano.

[What a crazy thing is the party of theatre and poetry. I think for me, today, almost nothing bothers me. Here an orchestra was formed, with an African flavor; There was a Cuban Romeo and a Juliet from Havana: This is the crazy manner Of speaking in Shakespearean.

Shakespeareano y catalán, catalán y shakespeareano: un repentista cubano ha cambiado de ademán. La poesía es el pan que el corazón alimenta …

Shakespearean and Catalan, Catalan and Shakespearean: A Cuban repentista has changed his attitude. Poetry is the bread that feeds the heart …

In this “crazy party” Juliet and Romeo become Cuban, as is the repentista, but the party, like the anthropophagic ritual, is even more inclusive than that. The feast created mixes Shakespeare with repentismo and Catalan43 with Shakespearean, so that in addition to the Cuban/ Italian AEDOS consuming Shakespeare, the Catalan-speaking audience in Barcelona is also invited to the feast, which has an African flavor. The Cuban improvisation of Shakespeare becomes a multicultural celebration.

43 Catalan is a language spoken in Eastern and North Eastern Spain, including in Barcelona, where this particular performance occurred.

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Death Scenes The final scene, the deaths of the lovers, is also portrayed in multiple ways. Two of these interpretations, both featuring López as Juliet though the part of Romeo is played by two different repentistas , are carefully cut together so that the transitions between the two scenes are nearly seamless. While López sits with her head in her hands, indicating death, Sardiñas improvises a sorrowful and moving lament, then dies himself as López recovers and begins improvising her tragic response. But in the middle of her décima we see it is now Gutiérrez to whom she addresses her verse. She completes her décima and again sits next to Romeo, who is once again played by Sardiñas. Then Díaz-Pimienta begins to speak about their tragic end, and we see that it is López and Gutiérrez who are seated next to each other, with their heads in their hands to indicate that they are dead. The fusing together of multiple interpretations from multiple performances shows what these improvisations have in common. They each show the passion between the young lovers, and, as Díaz-Pimienta comments, this story is “tragic in all translations.” The repentistas , however, will not allow Shakespeare to have the final word. Even as Díaz-Pimienta states that all translations of this story are tragic, he proceeds to improvise a happy ending for the scene: Los dos fueron a la Gloria. Se amaron, tantos se amaron, que a la Gloria se marcharon, y se grabó en la memoria, trágica, amorosa historia en todas las traducciones. Qué tristes son las pasiones que tienen triste final. Pero digo, menos mal, que las improvisaciones

[The two went to Glory. They loved each other so much, that to Glory they went. and it was recorded in memory as a tragic, romantic story in all the translations. How sad are the passions which have a sad ending. But I say, fortunately, that the improvisations

hacen de esta reescritura una historia diferente, porque pueden, de repente, aunque parezca locura, despertar, darle otra altura. Romeo, alza la cabeza y al mirar tanta belleza

make of this rewriting a different story, because they can suddenly, although it appears crazy wake up, give it a different ending. Romeo lifts his head and seeing so much beauty dead, (continued)

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(continued) muerta, le toca a ella el pelo. Ella se baja del cielo lo mira un poco y lo besa.

he touches her hair. She descends from Heaven looks at him a little and kisses him

Y, así, se reescribe todo, como en Hollywood, señores …

And so, everything is rewritten, as in Hollywood, sirs …]

Although he initially stated that the story was tragic in all translations, Díaz-Pimienta cannot leave the story there. He devours the story, interceding to narrate a happier ending in which Romeo lifts his head, sees the beautiful Juliet dead beside him, touches her hair, and calls her back from Heaven. He concludes with a humorous reference to Hollywood happy endings, suggesting that Hollywood films are one more course on the menu. He then cedes his final words to Gutiérrez, allowing Romeo to sing a beautiful décima to Juliet. The scene has moved from tragic to happy, humorous to romantic, but Díaz-Pimienta has one more way to reincarnate this story. Gutiérrez’s moving serenade and the rewritten happy ending is still not the final version we see in the film. After this Díaz-Pimienta plays Romeo and comments on how strange it is that they “die” by placing their heads in their hands. “¿Qué hago yo? Me sentaré, / con las manos en la cara./ porque ésta es la forma rara/ que tenemos de morir en el teatro.” [what do I do? I will sit down,/ with my face in my hands,/ because that is the strange way/ we die in the theatre.] This, he says, is the way the “Julietos cubanos” and “Romeos del mar” [Cuban Juliets and Romeos of the sea] have of showing death. When López lifts her head and sees her Romeo dead, she begins to mourn the loss of her bald and ugly lover, who was old enough to be her grandfather. However, then she declares that he’s gone, and she will have to look for another poet to replace him. At that point, Díaz-Pimienta awakes and says when she speaks of cuckoldry, he will revive and haunt her. DíazPimienta and López begin a teasing, humorous dialogue in which they rewrite the ending of Shakespeare’s tragedy into a comic discussion about love and fidelity, and then Díaz-Pimienta motions for the other repentistas to join them as he closes that night’s performance by noting their ability to recreate the story: “Son los improvisadores/ los que han venido a mostrar/ que la obra Shakespeareana,/ en la tierra catalana,/ puede bastante cambiar.” [It is the improvisors/ who have come to show/ that

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Shakespeare’s play,/ in Catalunya,/ can change quite a lot]. The play is devoured, digested, and incarnated in a new form, but this anthropophagy is more than just entertainment. The playful consumption and reincarnation of Shakespeare is itself a meaningful act.

Translation as Anthropophagy Mark Thornton Burnett, writing of adaptation and translation, notes that “the work of adaptation is creative. Art inheres in the act of translation and in its attendant multiplication of meanings.”44 This multiplication of meanings is clear in the work of AEDOS, both in terms of the multiple interpretations the repentistas give to Shakespeare’s play, and in terms of the way that multiple translations are created by the need to communicate in multiple languages with the global community involved in this “world in verses.” Speaking in conclusion toward the end of the film, Riondino declares45 : The actor has to interpret the author; he has to let the character relive. In this case the actor [the repentista] is also an author because [he] improvises the words he says … The actor [becomes] the author: this is important … Rewriting Romeo and Juliet permits us to understand how this great writer and author (Shakespeare) left us one of the possible Romeo and Juliet [s]: only one possible story of the lovers. The Cuban improvisers seem to tell us that Shakespeare made a lot of variants for the same story, Alexis staged them, as a dramatist who composes and decomposes the story, respecting the Shakespearean intention. What he does is unusual, and it investigates the relationship with the text: The text is like a mountain, an iceberg. We see a mountain of ice, but there is a lot of it hidden underwater, that are the variables, the conditions, the questions. They allow the mountain to stand up. The improvisers take these questions, these suggestions and they recall them, making [them relive]. They make Shakespeare very happy, we imagine, who probably wrote a lot of questions and suggestions; because writing happens only in abundance and not in lack.

44 Mark Thornton Burnett, “Adaptation, Shakespeare and World Cinema”. 45 This translation is taken directly from the English subtitles of the film, with a few

minor edits in brackets. Riondino, AEDOS subtutled English (sic). July 18, 2017. Vimeo, 1:13.07. https://vimeo.com/226081643.

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As Burnett points out, adaptations multiply meanings. The Cuban repentistas consume what is already a plentiful feast, an iceberg or mountain of questions and suggestions, and they use these suggestions to add to the “one possible” Romeo and Juliet written by Shakespeare. The interpretations of the repentistas consume the abundance of possibilities provided by Shakespeare, but at the same time, they create more possibilities, feeding the Shakespearean source just as it has nourished them. AEDOS—El mundo en versos also draws attention to the translation that is a necessary part of this exercise. The repentistas , as they freely recreate and improvise new versions of Shakespeare’s story, are involved in a form of translation. Their improvisation not only adapts the stories and characters but translates them from Shakespearean English and iambic pentameter to Cuban Spanish and décimas . These Cuban bards then travel to Italy, where they are dependent on Riondino to translate their verses for the audience in front of them, and the films of these tours add another layer of translation, creating subtitles in Italian, English, or Spanish, depending on the proposed audience and who was speaking at that moment. But while this abundance of languages might appear to complicate and detract from the project of AEDOS, the film suggests that this is not true. An early scene of the film shows Yunet López sitting in a park discussing how, despite the language barrier, they had been able, through gestures, atmosphere, and the complicity of the audience, to communicate, to enjoy themselves, and to share that pleasure with their audience. They have, moreover, used this opportunity to expand their repertoire of works and to continue sharing repentismo with a wider audience. Shortly after this Gutiérrez is shown singing about translation: “Me gusta el rojo salón/ que el Vittoria nos ofrece46 / y el público que aparece/ buscando improvisación./ Por suerte la traducción/ nos hace de un solo idioma” [I like the red theatre/ that the Vittoria offers us/ and the audience that comes/ looking for improvisation./ Fortunately the translation/ makes us speak one language.” The work of the translator, and the ability of poetry to communicate across linguistic divides, is an important theme in this film, which, according to its title, aims to create a “world in verses.” Translation, as the repentistas portray it, becomes another form of cultural anthropophagy. They consume the poetry of one language, digest it, and incarnate it in another form.

46 Vittoria is the name of the theatre in which AEDOS performs in Rome.

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The translator is there to assist in this process, but at times, the poetry transcends the need for translation and is able to communicate across languages. The clearest example of this is when Sardiñas and DíazPimienta are improvising a duel between Tybalt and Mercutio. Sardiñas, as he speaks, mimes throwing away his sword and shooting a gun. DíazPimienta ducks, and turns to look at their translator, Riondino, who would have been in the line of fire of this imaginary bullet. Díaz-Pimienta immediately incorporates this unforeseen event into the improvisation, speaking about how he stepped out of the way and the translator was killed by accident and wondering aloud how a dead man can continue translating. At first, Riondino does continue his translation, even as he and Díaz-Pimienta are both laughing about the strange phenomenon of a dead man translating. However, eventually Díaz-Pimienta makes it clear, both with his words and his gestures, that he wants Riondino to stop. He declares “Entonces la traducción/ ahora se debe callar …” [In that case the translation/ now has to stop], and holds a finger to his lips. Riondino falls silent, and Díaz-Pimienta turns back to the audience and begins to improvise, a bit more slowly, for his Italian audience. Even the subtitles in the Italian version of the film cease. y deben interpretar al simple improvisador: quiso matar al amor y ha matado al que traduce, y como esto conduce a un silencio de la obra, todo lo dicho ya sobra, porque callado desluce

[And you must understand from the improviser alone He [Tybalt] tried to kill love but he killed the translator instead, and since this leads to the silence of the play, there is no need to say more, because he is silenced, he [Tybalt] is tarnished.]

In this world in verses, communication is possible even across a language barrier. Even the “silencio de la obra” [silence of the play], although it makes Tybalt look bad, does not prevent improvisation. The repentista is able to express himself without the aid of a translator. Of course, there are limits to this. The Italian audience may be able to understand the Spanish repentismo, but the version of the film with English subtitles still provides a translation of Díaz-Pimienta’s improvisation at this point. It is, however, the energy and spirit of the repentistas that really conveys the joy of the live performance to the film audience.

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The live audience able to witness the performance becomes another element of this tour, another course on the menu of cultural anthropophagy. Much like teatro de la comunidad involved the audience in the creation of theatre, AEDOS involves its audience in the creation of repentismo. Rather than entering into debates about the meaning of the play or how to resolve problems, the audience assists in the creation of meaning, and humor, on the stage. The audience for the live performances provides rhymes for the sample décimas with which the performance begins, and Díaz-Pimienta calls out to and refers to specific audience members: “That man in the back who is bald like me. No, don’t look behind you. There’s only one bald man there.” Some spectators become the subject and object of the improvised piropos, or flirtatious décimas , with one poet opining about the beautiful tennis shoes that a woman in the audience is wearing, and the way that the laces have entangled his heart. Another woman joins even more fully in the performance. When she is asked to choose one of the three men, she improvises her own poetic, octosyllabic response, declaring that rather than choose one of the trio, she would prefer to be part of a quartet. The people brought up on stage become part of the performance, but so do those who remain seated but laugh, cheer, and applaud, encouraging the performers. The merging of Shakespeare and repentismo not only allows the poets to recreate Shakespeare’s play but invites the audience to join in the pleasure of the performance. It is clear in AEDOS—El mundo en versos that the repentistas are nourished by the enthusiasm of the audience. The art of repentismo is likewise nourished. In one of the interviews sprinkled throughout the film, Gutiérrez comments on how this tour is taking repentismo to a new level: “Yo pienso que este debe ser el inicio de algo que lleve al repentismo a planos mayores. Sobre todo, a que ojos que no han visto... el valor, el alcance del repentismo, puedan verlo. Que haya ojos que nos vean, oídos que nos oigan y público que nos siga.” [I think that this will be the start of something that will carry repentismo to new levels. Above all for those eyes that have not seen... the value, the scope of repentismo, they can see it. There can be eyes to see us, ears to hear us, and a public to follow us.”] It is the creation of an audience, of a community, that helps repentismo to grow. In the inclusive manner of cultural anthropophagy, the repentismo devours Shakespeare, digests him, and incorporates him in a new form. At the same time, the repentismo of AEDOS is providing this nourishment to the Italian and Spanish audiences who attend their performances, and to the film audiences who see the films. The audiences are nourished

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and refreshed by the poetry and by the new incarnation of Shakespeare, but they also nourish the repentismo, and they and the film audiences become part of an international community, a world in verses, that can now appreciate Cuban repentismo as well as this newly Cubanized Shakespeare. The complex cultural anthropophagy of AEDOS, consuming both Shakespeare and repentismo, moves beyond being located in one neighborhood, such as Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó, or in one city, such as Shakespeare in Havana. It has, in fact, moved beyond being simply a Cuban reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet . It has created a feast that can serve many cultures. It has created a world in verses.

Bibliography Burnett, Mark Thornton. “Adaptation, Shakespeare and World Cinema.” Literature/Film Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2017). Díaz-Pimienta, Alexis. Teoría de la improvisación poética: (tercera edición ampliada y corregida). 3a ed. Oralitura, 1. Almería, Spain: Scripta Manent, 2014. Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas. Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó. Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1987. Kliman, Bernice, and Rick J. Santos, eds. Latin American Shakespeares. Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 2005. Lauten, Flora. Teatro La Yaya. Repertorio Teatral Cubano. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1981. Leal, Rine. Breve historia del teatro cubano. Havana: Editorial Felix Varela, 2004. Maggi, Beatriz. “Abajo los Montesco! Abajo los Capuleto!” In Panfleto y literatura, 80–93. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982. Modenessi, Alfredo Michel. “‘Both Alike in Dignity’: Havana and Mexico City Play Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 51–58. ———. “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Out-Sourced and In-Taken.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, 549–67. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019 9687169.013.27. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, 1–24. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Riondino, David. AEDOS – el mundo en versos. Romeo y Julieta en decimas. April 9, 2016. Vimeo, 1:13.07. https://vimeo.com/162200709.

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———. AEDOS – il mondo in versi. June 5, 2016. Vimeo, 1:13.07. https:// vimeo.com/169418786. ———. AEDOS subtutled English (sic). July 18, 2017. Vimeo, 1:13.07. https:// vimeo.com/226081643. ———. Otello all’improvviso. March 3, 2021. Vimeo, 1:20.54. https://vimeo. com/518964496. ———. Shakespeare in Avana. January 11, 2012. Vimeo, 57.31.https://vimeo. com/34892660. ———. Shakespeare in Havana (Eng. Sub). March 11, 2014.Vimeo, 57.31. https://vimeo.com/88749967. Territorio Huelva. “Espectáculo ‘Cómo comer poesía y no subir de peso,’ accessed May 30, 2021. http://territoriohuelva.com/actividad/espectaculocomo-comer-poesia-y-no-subir-de-peso/. Villegas, Alma, and Ted Kuster. “Grupo Teatro Escambray: Theater in Revolutionary Cuba.” The Black Scholar 20, no. 5/6 (1989): 25–29. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41068323. Weiss, Judith A. “Traditional Popular Culture and the Cuban ‘New Theater’: Teatro Escambray and the Cabildo de Santiago.” Theatre Research International 14, no. 2 (1989): 142–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S03078833000 06118. Woodford, Donna. “Review of Shakespeare y sus máscaras, o Romeo y Julieta.” Shakespeare Bulletin 24, no. 1 (2006): 113–15. https://doi.org/10.1353/ shb.2006.0021. Woodford-Gormley, Donna. “Cuban Improvisations: Reverse Colonization via Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 71 (2018): 59–64. ———. “In Fair Havana, Where We Lay Our Scene: Romeo and Juliet in Cuba.” In Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia, 201–11. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2008.

CHAPTER 4

Race and Revolution in Tomás González’s Othello Adaptations: “Of the Cannibals That Each Other Eat”

In Santa Clara, Cuba, bordering the town’s central Parque Vidal, stands the beautiful colonial-era theatre, Teatro La Caridad. The theatre has been the site of numerous international and national performances, and it was also the theatre in which many of Cuban playwright Tomás González’s early plays were performed, possibly including his first adaptation of Othello, Yago tiene feeling [Iago Has Feeling].1 The theatre and its environs clearly made an impression on González, who, in Yago tiene 1 According to a personal interview with Agustín Fowler, a student of González’s when he was in Santa Clara, and according to the transcripts of González’s early works, many of his plays were performed in Teatro La Caridad. There is some dispute about exactly when and where Yago tiene feeling was written. Both Inés María Martiatu and Rosa Ileana Boudet state that González wrote Yago tiene feeling in a single night in 1962; however, Fowler asserts that the play was already being written before González left Santa Clara and that he, Fowler, was originally going to play the part of Yago at Teatro La Caridad. He had to give up the part because he does not play guitar, although he does sing and decades later can still sing songs from the play. Armando López likewise claims that González wrote the play while in Santa Clara, shortly after the triumph of the Revolution and the founding of his Teatro Experimental de Las Villas. The story of the play’s composition in a single night may be part of the myth that has grown up around González. The small but important circle of people who remember González see him as something of a prodigy. Agustín Fowler, interview with Donna Woodford-Gormley, March 2013; Rosa Ileana Boudet, Cuba: viaje al teatro en la Revolución (1960–1989) (Santa Mónica, California: Ediciones de la Flecha, 2012), 51; Inés María Martiatu, El rito como representación: teatro ritual caribeño (Havana, Cuba: Unión, 2000), 62. Armando López, “Levitar en Santa Clara: Viaje a la semilla de Tomás González, dramaturgo que

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feeling , comments on the racism in his native town of Santa Clara, and observes that the statue of Marta Abreu, the philanthropist who financed the building of the theatre in 1885, stands in the center of the plaza in front of the theatre and watches over everything, but says nothing: “Marta Abreu al centro de todo. ¡Lo ve todo! ¡Todo lo vigila! Pero el bronce no tiene palabras. ¡Como coño voy a permitir que una matrona de bronce rija toda mi vida!” [Marta Abreu is at the center of everything. She sees everything. She watches everything. But the bronze has no words. How the hell am I going to let a woman of bronze rule my whole life?]2 The plays performed in this theatre would also have been performed under the frescos that adorn the theatre’s ceilings, the work of Cuban-Filipino painter Camilo Salaya. The frescos represent genius, history, fame, comedy, and tragedy. The latter depicts Othello murdering Desdemona (see Fig. 4.1). This painting, prominently displayed in the grandest theatre of the provincial town, may have inspired González’s interest in Othello, which he adapted multiple times.3 The fact that the painting portrayed this particular, violent scene, showing a dark-skinned Othello having just murdered the white Desdemona, might have been disturbing to the playwright, who was himself from a mixed-race background. His father was white, his mother black, and González described his own birth as a syncretic event, since it combined two different races and cultures.4 The painting, together with the theatre’s location on the Parque Vidal, which, until the Revolution, was surrounded by segregated sidewalks for whites and blacks,5 may have influenced the reversal of the races in González’s own adaptations and his use of his plays to comment on racial tensions in Cuba and the United States. Whether or not this puso el de den la llaga del racismo.” Cubaencuentro, April 18, 2008. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.cubaencuentro.com/cultura/articulaos/levitar-en-santa-clara-79506. 2 Tomás González. Yago tiene feeling, in El bello arte de ser y otras obras, ed. Inés María Martiatu (Havana, Cuba: Letras Cubanas, 2005), 141. 3 Yago tiene feeling [Iago Has Feeling], written circa 1962, was followed by Ote vino en un charter [Othello came in a charter] written in 1987. The two works together form El camino del medio [The Middle Way]. In 1997 González also wrote Yago, el chivo expiatorio [Iago, the Scapegoat] and Yago, el instrumento del amor [Iago, An Instrument of Love]. Neither of these last two plays has been published or performed. Anroart Ediciones. “Autores: Tomás González Pérez.” Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.anr oart.com/autores/44. 4 Martiatu, El rito, 65. 5 López. “Levitar en Santa Clara.”

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Fig. 4.1 Tragedy: Fresco by Camilo Salaya on the ceiling of Teatro La Caridad, 1885

painting influenced González, it is notable that the fresco is itself an adaptation of Othello. The painting shows a dark Othello emerging out of a darker background. He stands over the body of Desdemona with a dagger in his outstretched hand. The bloodstains on her white bodice and the white sheets on which she lies reveal that Desdemona has just been stabbed, not smothered as she is in Shakespeare’s play. Nineteenthcentury performances of Othello frequently portrayed Othello stabbing rather than smothering Desdemona in order to explain Desdemona’s ability to continue speaking. However, while some other nineteenthcentury paintings show Othello standing over Desdemona with a knife

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in his hand or with an empty scabbard,6 Salaya’s fresco actually shows the bloody aftermath of the violence. The change from smothering, a violent act that might seem horrifying when performed on a stage, to stabbing, which is more visually striking in a still painting, emphasizes the violence while also drawing the eyes of the audience seated below. The painting elicits the same horror and fascination as Othello’s stories of cannibalism drew from Brabanzio. It consumes Shakespeare’s story in a way that reflects the racial tensions, and the horror and fascination with the outsider, that affected so much of González’s life.

Anthropophagi and Cannibals When Othello speaks to the senators of Venice in act one, scene three of Othello, he is defending himself against charges of witchcraft, such as those frequently brought in the Venetian inquisition. Brabanzio, outraged that Othello has married his daughter, has him arrested and charges him with being “an abuser of the world, a practicer/ Of arts inhibited and out of warrant” (1.2.78–79). In response to these charges, Othello explains that it was the stories of his adventurous, exotic past that attracted both Desdemona and her father: Her father loved me, oft invited me, Still questioned me the story of my life From year to year: the battles, sieges, fortune, That I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days To th’ very moment that he bade me tell it, Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances; Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hairbreadth scapes i’th’ imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, And portance in my traveler’s history; Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quaries, rocks, hills whose head touch heaven, It was my hint to speak – such was my process –

6 See for example Alexandre Marie Colin, 1829. Oil on canvas. 26 1/2 × 30 1/2 × 2 1/2 in., New Orleans Museum of Art, https://noma.org/collection/othello-and-desdem ona/.

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And of the cannibals that each other eat – The Anthropophagi – and men whose heads Grew beneath their shoulders. (1.3.128–45)

He answers charges of witchcraft and “arts inhibited” with stories of his exotic past, including tales of cannibalism. However, in telling stories of his own “traveler’s history” and incorporating stories of cannibals and “men who heads/ Grew beneath their shoulders,” Othello is himself engaging in literary anthropophagy. He is consuming, and incorporating as his own, the stories of white, European travel writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Richard Hakluyt, Sir John Mandeville, and Christopher Columbus.7 In making these stories his own, Othello both depicts himself as the exotic, monstrous other, a cannibal or a creature with his head beneath his shoulders, and at the same time he positions himself as the observer of the exotic others. He becomes both the exotic spectacle and the European traveler looking at the anthropophagi and relating the stories of his travels to an eager European audience. In placing himself in a position that marks him as both insider and outsider, he demonstrates that he does not see himself as an outsider, or that he only sees his outsider status as a tool he can use to entertain and intrigue his Venetian audience. He remains convinced that the “services” he had done for the senators of Venice will “out-tongue” any complaints by Brabanzio and will make him an insider (1.2.18–19). However, in aligning himself with cannibalism, Othello also associates himself with what Peter Hulme has called “the practice that, more than any other, is the mark of unregenerate savagery”8 and which, as Roberto Fernández Retamar has pointed out, became the justification for the colonizing and enslaving of the indigenous people 7 In his Discoverie of Guiana, Sir Walter Raleigh notes that he has heard of “a nation of people whose heads appear not above their shoulders; which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine own part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair growth backward between their shoulders.” The Diary of Columbus’s first voyage records on Sunday, Nov. 4 that “he also understood that, far away, there were men with one eye, and others with dogs’ noses who were cannibals, and that when they captured an enemy, they beheaded him and drank his blood, and cut off his private parts.” Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations contains many references to cannibalism, as does the Medieval text, Mandeville’s Travels . 8 Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London: Methuen, 1986), 3.

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encountered by European colonists: “Se trata de la característica versión degradada que ofrece el colonizador del hombre al que coloniza.” [It is the characteristically degraded version that the colonizer offers of the man that he colonizes.]9 Thus even as he tells stories that attract and intrigue, he is paving the way for the Venetians in the play to see him as a monster. He is consuming the European discourse that will likewise consume him. It is two-way cannibalism, but not the inclusive ritual of cultural anthropophagy. While the Brazilian Tupinambá may have practiced a ritual anthropophagy that had the effect of “blurring the line between ‘self’ and ‘other,’10 Othello blurs this line only for himself. For Brabanzio he makes the line even clearer. Intriguingly, Othello, in his narrative, mentions both “cannibals” and “Anthropophagi.” Alfredo Modenessi has asserted that there is a “vital distinction between Anthropophagy and the parasitic ‘cannibalization’ of the lexicon of trade and empire.”11 Eduardo Subirats has also noted the distinction between the cannibalism perceived by European colonizers with horror and fascination, and metaphorically embraced by European surrealists, and the cultural anthropophagy celebrated by Andrade and other members of the anthropophagic movement: He observes that for members of the Brazilian anthropophagic movement, their interest in anthropophagy “in no way demonstrated a fascination with the unknown. Even less did it suggest a fascination with the exotic … What for the European artist was exotic, for the Latin American artist meant introspection.”12 Othello, however, is telling stories of the exotic and the horrifyingly unknown. Though he is speaking to defend himself from charges of witchcraft, he serves up another sort of story that portrays him as both fascinating and terrifying, but ultimately as other. 9 Roberto Fernández Retamar, Todo Caliban (Havana: Fondo Cultural del ALBA, 2006), 18. 10 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology. Global Shakespeare Inverted (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 5. 11 Alfredo Michel Modenessi, “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Out-Sourced and In-Taken,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, ed. James C. Bulman, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2017), 555. 12 Eduardo Subirats, Una última visión del paraíso: Ensayos sobre media, vanguardia y la destrucción de culturas en América Latina (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004), 35.

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Cuban playwright Tomás González’s Othello adaptations do engage in ritual anthropophagy, consuming Shakespeare and making his play something Cuban, a part of González’s culture. At the same time, however, his adaptations explore the negative aspects of cannibalism. They portray the results of parasitic cannibalism, which feeds off a host without providing anything of value in return, and they also show the dangerous territory, the “antres vast and deserts idle” of the horror and fascination with which otherness and outsiders are often perceived. González, through his consumption and incorporation of Othello, works to find a middle way, a way to avoid either being a parasite or being the outsider viewed with horror and fascination.

Tomás González’s Othello Adaptations: A Study in Black, White, and Gray Described by Inés María Martiatu as one of the “more unique and lesser known personalities of the Cuban theatre,” Tomás González was an AfroCuban playwright who wrote several Shakespeare adaptations, including Yago tiene feeling [Iago Has Feeling] (c. 1962) and Ote vino en un charter [Ote Came in a Charter] (1987) which together form El camino del medio [The Middle Way].13 Martiatu, a leading scholar on Tomás González, hints at some of the difficulties that he experienced when she describes him as “uno de los autores más prolíficos de su generación y aunque ha sido poco estrenado, ha permanecido fiel al teatro contra viento y marea” [one of the most prolific artists of his generation, and although his works have seldom been performed, he has remained faithful to the theatre against wind and tide.]14 The “winds and tides” that he faced included the quinquenio gris , or five year gray period, a time of extremely harsh censorship in Cuba that occurred roughly between the years of 1971 and 1976, and it is largely because of this stormy period

13 Martiatu, El rito como representación, 60. González also wrote an adaptation of Hamlet–El bello arte de ser. For more on this play Donna Woodford-Gormley, “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser,” The Shakespearean International Yearbook 19 (2021); 185–99. https://doi.org/10.4324/978100322735 9-19. 14 Martiatu, El rito como representación, 60. Yago tiene feeling was performed in 1962. Neither Ote vino en un charter nor the complete El camino del medio was ever performed, though they were published in 2005.

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that his works have seldom been performed and that he is so unknown. If the Revolution, with its emphasis on making art available to the masses, as discussed in the preceding chapter, was beneficial in some respects, it also eventually led to placing limits on artists. In the decades immediately following the Cuban Revolution, Cuba and the United States saw each other as the other, as monsters to be viewed with horror and fascination. These views led to events such as the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion by the United States in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In June of 1961, a few months after the Bay of Pigs Invasion was repulsed, Fidel Castro famously declared that artists and intellectuals had complete freedom within the revolution but no freedom outside of it: “Dentro de la Revolución, todo; contra la Revolución, ningún derecho.” The rights of the revolution, he argued, were greater than the rights of individual artists or intellectuals.15 This was the beginning of Cuba seeing not just the United States but also its own artists and intellectuals as the other. Fear of outside influence only increased the desire of the Cuban government to maintain art as “an arm of the revolution.”16 In 1971 poet Heberto Padilla published work that was considered counter-revolutionary, and he was imprisoned for thirty-seven days. He was released once he issued a statement of self-criticism. Shortly after what came to be known as the Padilla affair, the First Congress of Education and Culture was held, and the parameters of what was and what was not revolutionary were established. Following this, those who fell outside of the parameters of what was considered acceptable and revolutionary were censored, punished, or excluded. Frequently censored subjects included intellectualism, homosexuality, and Afro-Cuban religion, ritual, and culture. These latter were subjects that were important to González, who grew up influenced by the Afro-Cuban rituals practiced by his aunts and cousins, and whose own theory of transcendent acting was heavily influenced by Afro-Cuban

15 Fidel Castro Ruz, “Discurso Pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario y Secretario del PURSC, como conclusión de las reuniones con los intelectuales cubanos, efectuadas en la biblioteca nacional El 16 23, y 30 de Junio de 1961.” Departamento de versiones taquigraficas del gobierno revolucionario. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1961/ esp/f300661e.html. 16 “Declaración del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura,” Casa de Las Americas. Nos. 65–66 (March–June 1971), 18.

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ritual17 and by González’s belief that spiritual possession, an important part of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería, is the true origin of acting.18 Even prior to the quinquenio gris , González had experienced racism in Cuba. He grew up chafing under the segregation of the pathways around the central plaza in his native town, Santa Clara, and the memory of this would continue to irritate him “like a bloody thorn” even after the Revolution and the integrating of the pathways.19 In Yago tiene feeling , a play which Martiatu has noted is written with a “markedly autobiographical sentiment,”20 Yago compares the experience of being black in Santa Clara to being slowly strangled: Santa Clara es una jaula; pero ¡me escapé! Allá no vuelvo más. En esa aldea van apretando lentamente el cuello de sus pájaros negros. Jamás los matan de una vez. Cuando están a punto de la asfixia, con los ojos en blanco, rozando la muerte, alguien afloja la mano. Entonces se vuelve a respirar. Por unos días se puede respirar. Luego, cuando menos te lo piensas, comienzan a apretar de nuevo. ¡Es un juego! [Santa Clara is a jail; but, I escaped! I won’t ever go back there. In that village they are slowly squeezing the necks of their black birds. They never kill them quickly. When they are on the verge of asphyxiation, with their eyes rolled back, praying for death, someone relaxes the hand. Then one starts to breath again. For a few days one can breath. Later, when you least expect it, they start to squeeze again. It’s a game!].21

The Cuban Revolution may have given González hope that this cruel sport was ending. The barriers dividing the white paths and black paths

17 Transcendent acting combines aspects of the theories of Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Artaud and also incorporates the spiritual possession of the Afro-Cuban religion, Santería. For more information on transcendent acting, see Inés María Martiatu, “Taller de actuación transcendente: ¿el nacimiento de un método?” in El rito como representación: teatro ritual caribeño (Havana: Unión, 2000), 115–51. 18 Tomás González Pérez, “La posesión (privilegio de la teatralidad),” in Rito y representación: los sistemas mágico-religiosos en la cultura cubana contemporánea, ed. Yana Elsa Brugal and Beatriz Rizk (Madrid; Frankfurt: Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2003), 204. 19 López, “Levitar en Santa Clara.” 20 Inés María Martiatu, “El bello arte de ser de Tomás González,” in El bello arte de

ser y otras obras, ed. Inés María Martiatu (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005), 23. 21 González, Yago tiene feeling, 141.

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in the Parque Vidal were torn down.22 González started his own theatre company, Teatro Experimental de Santa Clara, won the Premio de Teatro Rural, and then earned a scholarship that allowed him to attend the prestigious Seminario de Dramaturgia in Havana. In the 1970s, however, he found himself again subject to discrimination and excluded from the theatres. During the quinquenio gris even casting black actors in a Shakespeare play was enough to draw the unwelcome attention of the censors. González was directing a production of Hamlet in 1973 at the Teatro Mella in Havana when he was informed that his work was “negrista” because he had cast black actors. González compared his experience of being interrogated by Armando Quesada, the government official who censored theatre, to being brought before Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition: Torquemada (Armando Quesada) brought me to a dark office with a lamp directed at my face … He said that my [Hamlet ] was negrista [Afro-Cuban focused] because the actors that I had chosen were black. And at that time they removed me from the theatre and sent me to sing in the worst cabarets and farms all over the country. I returned to the theatre when a hiccup of the hangover removed Luis Pavón23 from the Segundo Cabo Palace.24

If Othello was brought before the Venetian Inquisition, González was brought before the Cuban Inquisition. Though he was later able to return to the theatres, during an important period of his career, he was barred from them because of the racial focus of his works, and he was likewise prevented from publishing his essays.25 This ban from publishing and performing no doubt explains why he is not well known today; however, the influential group of theatre professionals who do remember him and his work recall him as a multi-talented and influential dramatist. Upon his death in 2008 a volume of the theatre 22 López, “Levitar en Santa Clara.” 23 Luis Pavón Tamayo was the Director of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura (National

Council of Culture), which was replaced by the Ministry of Culture in 1976. 24 López, “Levitar en Santa Clara.” 25 Martiatu, El rito como representación, 70.

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journal Tablas was dedicated to him, and it included essays by many important artists of the day.26 Among his more notable contributions to Cuban theatre are his adaptations of Othello.

El camino del medio In El camino del medio, which consists of Yago tiene feeling , written circa 1962, and Ote vino en un charter, written in 1987, González alludes to Shakespeare’s Othello with the names of his three primary characters: Ote (Othello) Yago (Iago) and Desdi (Desdemona). However, while they possess the same names and some of the same characteristics as Shakespeare’s characters, much is changed in these plays. Silviano Santiago, writing of Latin American adaptations of European texts, asks, “Can the work of art’s originality be grasped if it is considered exclusively in terms of the artist’s indebtedness to a model that was necessarily imported from the metropolis? Or, rather, would it not be more interesting to highlight the elements of the work that establish its difference?”27 The elements that establish the difference between El camino del medio and Othello are precisely what make Tomás González’s plays interesting. His plays reverse the races of the characters; set the action in Cuba in two different time periods, 1960 and 1980; explore the role of the artist in revolutionary Cuba, and examine Cuban sentiments about Cubans who leave the country. The characters retain some of the qualities of their Shakespearean counterparts, but they are also changed. Yago is still manipulative, but he is also a sensitive artist. Ote still has a life story full of suffering and adventure, but he is also from a privileged white family. Desdi still longs for an exciting and fulfilling life, but she outlives her marriage to Ote and becomes, by the end of the play, a shrewder, more self-sufficient character, who seems to have consumed and embodied the qualities she initially admired in Ote and Yago. In the tradition of cultural anthropophagy, González is “absorbing, transforming, and incorporating” Shakespeare

26 Alberto Abreu, Elaine Centeno Álvarez. Barbarella González, Patricia González Gómez-Cásseres, Inéz María Martiatu, and José Milián, all wrote articles in praise of Tomás González in Tablas 3–4, 2008. 27 Silviano Santiago, “Latin American Discourse: The Place In Between,” trans Ana Lúcia Gazzola and Gareth Williams, in The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture, ed. Silviano Santiago, Ana Lúcia Gazzola (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 31.

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without losing either González’s own “cultural autonomy,” or completely erasing the nutritive elements of Shakespeare. This act of anthropophagy allows “those traditionally excluded and marginalized the opportunity to reclaim their agency,” but in this case, the potential exclusion and marginalization have come not just from Europe or the United States, but also from a Cuba that did not see González as appropriately Cuban or revolutionary.28 Yago tiene feeling and Ote vino en un charter together tell the story of Ote, Yago, and Desdi, or Othello, Iago, and Desdemona. In the first play, Ote, a white Cuban man from a privileged family is married to Desdi, a mulatta. They have recently moved from the provincial town of Santa Clara to the city of Havana, where Ote has given up his own painting in order to paint billboards. Yago, their friend, is a mulatto musician, also from Santa Clara. Yago has recently fled the racial oppression he felt in Santa Clara to come to Havana, and he is staying in the small apartment of Ote and Desdi. He refuses to sell out or compromise his art just to make money, and he criticizes Ote for having given up his art, but he is living off of the salary Ote gains through his compromise. Ote, a white Cuban who recently moved to Havana from Santa Clara, is supporting the three of them with his work on billboards. Billboards in Cuba are never commercial. They celebrate the triumphs of the revolution or they decry the activities of the foreign powers such as the United States.29 They are, of course, a form of art that would conform to the parameters of the revolution and that is clearly “an arm of the revolution,” but they are not what Yago considers true art. Ote hopes to gain a promotion so that he can get a motorcycle and a larger house with a studio for Yago, but he is clearly unfulfilled by his work and seems to be living vicariously through Yago.

28 Rick J. Santos, “Introduction: Mestizo Shakespeares: A Study of Cultural Exchange,” in Latin American Shakespeares, ed. Bernice W. Kliman and Rick J. Santos (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), 11–12. 29 Some examples include billboards that proclaim “El arte es un arma de lo Revolución—Fidel” [Art Is an Arm of the Revolution—Fide] or “8,5 millones de niños en el mundo trabajan en condiciones de esclavitud – ninguno es cubano” [8.5 Million Children in the World Work in Condiciones of Slavery—None of Them Are Cuban.] See Julio A. Larramendi, José Antonio Martínez Coronel, and Rafael Acosta de Arriba. Vallas Y Carteles De Cuba: Cuban Billboards and Posters = Panneaux Publicitaires Et Affiches De Cuba (Guatemala City: Ediciones Polymita, 2013).

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Desdi is Ote’s mulatta wife. She stays at home, cooks, and keeps the house, but she longs for some fulfillment, some life outside the house. She defends Ote when Yago says he is a sell out. She is proud of him for working hard and wanting to be independent from his mother, who has left Cuba and doesn’t send her son money. Nevertheless, when Yago questions Desdi about how she knows that she loves Ote if she has never been with or kissed another man, she agrees to his suggestion of a “trabajo” or experiment. The first act ends with Yago and Desdi kissing passionately. In the second act Ote comes home and is confused by the tension in the house and the unresponsiveness of Yago and Desdi. An argument develops between him and Yago, and finally Yago tells him about the “trabajo,” then walks out, leaving Desdi and Ote to negotiate their relationship. Ote vino en un charter shows the same three characters twenty years later. Desdi now works outside the home, and she lives alone. At the beginning of the play she is preparing for a visit from the two men. Yago, now a successful musician who frequently travels internationally, arrives first, and from his conversation with Desdi we learn that their “trabajo” in the earlier play involved nothing more than kissing, a fact that Desdi resents. Ote now lives in New York. He left Cuba when his mother, who had abandoned him to go to Miami when he was young, returned and asked him to come back to manage the estate and money his stepfather left to her. She insisted, however, that Desdi could not come because an interracial marriage would not be acceptable in the United States. Ote is successful and rich, but lonely and unhappy. He proposes another “trabajo.” In this one, he asks Yago and Desdi to tell him what they need to make them happy. Then he offers them fame and luxury if they will move to the United States with him. They refuse, explaining that while they suffer some problems in Cuba, they wouldn’t want to leave. Yago says that he has a “lucecita” or little light in him that tells him who he is, and that this lucecita is more valuable to him that anything Ote can offer. Desdi tells a story of riding on a bus when a woman had an epileptic fit and everyone on the bus helped her, even though they did not know her. She asks if that would happen in New York, and Ote says that it would not, that in New York there would be fear and indifference. Desdi says that she could not live in a place where there wasn’t “la solidaridad

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humana” [the human solidarity.”]30 Finally, after much bickering, Desdi kicks Ote out. Yago offers to help Desdi clean up, but she tells him he should go, too. Then she states that she heard once that each river has two banks on it. On one bank are those who never leave, or who return to the same place if they do, and on the other are those who have left and cannot return. Yago asks her which bank she is on and she replies that she is in the middle, riding the current, in what is called “El camino del medio” or the middle way.31

Reversal of Races This middle way seems to be what González is struggling for, as well. Santiago notes: Somewhere between sacrifice and playfulness, prison and transgression, submission to the code and aggression, obedience and rebellion, assimilation and expression – there, in this apparently empty space, its temple and its clandestinity, is where the anthropophagous ritual of Latin American discourse is constructed.32

González engages in an anthropophagic ritual with Othello in order to create this empty space, this middle way. He does this by consuming key elements of Othello but then changing them in important ways. Perhaps the most immediately visible way in which González consumes and transforms Shakespeare’s play is the racial reversal of the characters. In González’s plays Ote is not the Moor of Venice but rather the white Cuban from a wealthy family. Yago and Desdi, in contrast, are mulatto.33 And while this is certainly not the only time the races of these characters have been altered or reversed, González does so to different effect than, for example, Jude Kelly with her photo negative Othello in which a white

30 Tomás González, Ote vino en un charter, in El bello arte de ser y otras obras. ed. Inés María Martiatu (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005), 181. 31 González, Ote vino en un charter, 192. 32 Santiago, “Latin American Discourse,” 38. 33 The distinction between black and mulatto is stressed more than once in the play, as when Ote’s mother asks if Desdi is black and Ote says that she’s mulatta, You’d hardly notice. His mother assures him that in Miami people will notice.

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actor, Patrick Stewart, played Othello while the rest of the cast was black. That was, according to Kelly, “a deliberate attempt … to make white audiences experience some of the feelings of isolation and discomfort that black people experience all of the time in their lives.”34 While Ote may end the second of González’s Othello adaptations feeling isolated and discomforted, that isolation results from his decision to leave Cuba, not from his race. Shakespeare’s Othello is the outsider, in spite of his position as General, and Iago plays on Othello’s outsider status to make him insecure and jealous. On the contrary, González’s white Ote remains in the racial, social, and economic position of authority and power throughout both plays. He is the one who comes from a wealthy, well-educated family. He is the one who seems to have more freedom to stay in Santa Clara or to move to Havana. He is the one who can, at the invitation of his wealthy mother, move to Miami, and when he tires of Miami, he is the one who can move to New York. Even at the end of the second play, when it becomes obvious that he is unhappy living in the United States without Yago and Desdi, Ote has the financial power to offer to buy them whatever they need to be happy, if only they will join him in New York. Yago and Desdi are less free, and the plays constantly remind us of their race and how it affects their opportunities. Yago begins the first play by noting that Santa Clara is a cruel prison for its black residents. The white Santa Clarans, he says, are engaged in an ongoing game in which the goal is to slowly strangle the blacks. Ote and Desdi have also recently moved from Santa Clara, but as Ote came from a family “muy bien educada, gente fina, de mucha plata” [very well-educated, fine people, with a lot of money], his experience of the village was very different. He could return without the risk of being suffocated. Even the fact that his well-educated, rich family have fled to Miami, becoming “burdos gusanos a noventa millas de aquí” [crude worms, ninety miles from here], does not prevent Ote from being able to return to his hometown.35 Yago, in contrast, cannot return without returning to the same “game” of slow strangulation.

34 Lyn Gardner, “Jude Kelly.” Asides: A Publication of the Shakespeare Theatre. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/_pdf/asides/97-98/97-98%20Othe llo.pdf. 35 González, Yago tiene feeling, 143. Gusanos literally means worms, but it is also a derogatory term used for those who left Cuba and emigrated to the United States.

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Desdi, although married to Ote, is similarly limited in her movement, as is shown by the fact that when Ote’s mother asks Ote to come to Miami with her, she is certain that Desdi will not be accepted there. This is portrayed in one of the many moments of transcendent acting used in González’s plays. In González’s theory of transcendent acting, an actor is possessed by a character. Agustín Fowler, a student of González’s, described transcendent acting as similar to spiritual possession: En la llamada Santería, pues, la persona que esta poseída … esa persona es poseída por un ente, o un muerto, vamos a decir, o un espíritu y a ser poseída hay un cambio en la personalidad de la persona que presta su cuerpo físico. Entonces ya cae en un llamado trance … al prestarle el cuerpo, luego puede comenzar hablar. No comience hablar conscientemente, sino que, como que ha prestado su cuerpo y es el espíritu el que habla, y habla, y habla, y dice este y el otro … pero inconscientemente. No tiene consciencia, ni hay un control también. Entonces que ocurre con este actor caracteriza más o menos la misma técnica…. para asumir el personaje de, por ejemplo, de Otelo, o el personaje de Hamlet, o el personaje de Macbeth, o el personaje de Yago, el actor debe caer en una especie de trance para incorporar ese personaje… va incorporándola, va incorporándola … o sea, el actor se convierte en un observador del … personaje. In what is called Santíera … the person is possessed … this person is possessed by an entity, or a dead person … or a spirit, and upon being possessed there is a change in the personality of the person who lent his physical body. At that point he falls into a so-called trance. Upon lending his body, later he can begin to speak. He doesn’t begin to speak consciously, rather it is as though he has lent his body and it is the spirit who talks, and talks, and talks, and says this and that … but unconsciously. He [the possessed] doesn’t have consciousness, nor is there control, either. What happens with the actor involves more or less the same technique … to assume the character of, for example, Othello, or the character of Hamlet, or the character of Macbeth, or, the character of Iago, the actor has to fall into a type of trance in order to incorporate this character … he incorporates it, he embodies it … or, it is as though the actor changes into an observer of … the character.]36

36 Agustín Fowler, interview.

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In González’s plays, similarly, characters often take on the roles of absent people or their younger selves and reenact key events from their past. In one notable case Desdi takes on the role of Ote’s mother to help him act out the moment when his mother urged him to join her in Miami to help her manage her money: Desdi [como madre de Ote]: Hay que recuperar el tiempo perdido. Me he decidido a reparar en algo mi conducta y el daño que te pueda haber causado. Tengo una deuda contigo, ¿no es así?… Mira, te propongo una cosa. Vienes conmigo, administras mis negocios hasta que yo muera … Después podrás hacer lo que quieras con ese dinero. Puedes donarlo a quien te plazca … pero mientras yo viva, no podrás utilizar libremente ese dinero. ¡Tienes que dejarme gozar un poco! ¡Bastantes privaciones he pasado! Sólo tendrás que esperar unos años, no más. Espera, dear, espera. ¡Tu eres el único heredero! Ote: Madre … soy feliz. No necesito nada de eso. Tengo mujer. Desdi: Me han dicho que es negrita. Ote: ¡Es mulata! Casi no se le nota. Desdi: Allá sí que se nota todo. ¡Allá todo se sabe! ¡Tienes que borrarla! ¡Olvídate de ella pero ya! Ote: ¡Que olvide a Desdi! Desdi: Sí, a la negra esa tienes que desparecerla de tu vida. Desdi [as Ote’s mother]: We have to make up for lost time. I have decided to repair some of the damage my behavior may have caused you. I owe you a debt. Isn’t that so?… Look, I’m going to propose something. Come with me. Look after my business until I die…. Afterwards you can do whatever you want with this money. You can give it to whomever you please… but while I live, you can’t use the money freely. You have to let me enjoy myself a little! I’ve suffered enough deprivations! You just have to wait a few years, no more. Just wait, dear, wait. You are my only heir! Ote: Mother … I’m happy. I don’t need any of this. I have a woman. Desdi: They’ve told me that she’s black. Ote: She’s mulatta! You almost don’t notice. Desdi: There they will notice it. There everything is known! You have to get rid of her! Forget her already!

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Ote: Like I could forget Desdi! Desdi: Yes, you have to make that black woman disappear from your life.]37

His mother begins by offering him the temptations of reuniting with her, of having the injuries she has done to him healed, and of having a lot of money. But then she hints at what this tempting deal will cost him. He must be willing to abandon his wife. Although Ote initially resists the idea of leaving Desdi, his mother is quickly able to manipulate him into choosing her rather than his wife, and much of her argument is based on the idea that a black woman, and an interracial marriage, will not be accepted in Miami. González here anticipates the double ostracism that Martiatu says befell black Cubans who left the island: “Los intellectuals negros y mulatos exiliados serían sometidos además a un doble ostracismo: el de la isla, y la discriminación del exilio cubano predominantemente blanco y prejuicioso” [The exiled black and mulatto intellectuals would be subjected to a double ostracism, that of the island, and that of the discrimination of the predominantly white and prejudiced Cuban exiles.]38 Racism, González suggests, will affect them both in Cuba and beyond. González’s reversal of races emphasizes that it is race and racism that will determine the freedom and power one has.

The Horror and Fascination of Exile Race and his desire to include Afro-Cuban elements in his plays also placed González outside the parameters of the revolution, and this position outside the parameters made him a monster, a cannibal threatening to devour the revolution. However, if González and other artists outside the parameters were seen as a threat to the Cuban Revolution, González seems to perceive the possibility of leaving Cuba with the same horror and fascination that Brabanzio felt for Othello’s stories. Having endured racial oppression both before and after the Cuban Revolution, González had seen the weaknesses of Cuba, but he also loved his country and saw the dangers of foreign influence and of leaving Cuba and not being able to return. He is both tempted and terrified. Indeed, González did leave 37 González, Ote vino en un charter, 187–9. 38 Inés María Martiatu, “Tomás González: El autor como protagonista de su tiempo.”

Tablas 3–4 (July–December 2008), 141.

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the country in the 1990s and lived in the Canary Islands for several years; however, when he was dying he asked to return to Cuba. He wanted to die “en su Isla, en su Habana, esta ciudad que hizo suya y que amó” [in his Island, in his Havana, this city that he made his and that he loved.]39 His friend and fellow playwright, José Milián, described himself as being lost when González suddenly moved to the Canary Islands: Yo que había sido su adopción, su hermano, su confidente, nunca supe de sus planes de viajar al extranjero. Confieso públicamente mi perplejidad. Cuando tuve un éxito, un premio, un fracaso, necesité que Tomás estuviera allí. Como siempre estaba. Nunca pude llenar este vacío. I, who had been his adopted son, his brother, his confidante, never knew of his plans to leave the country. I confess publicly my perplexity. When I had a success, a prize, a disaster, I needed Tomás there. As he always had been. I never could fill that emptiness.40

His words are a curious echo of what Ote says to Yago about Yago and Desdi: “Ustedes, cuando vivíamos los tres juntos, llenaron a la perfección el hueco que dejó mi madre; pero cuando te fuiste, volví a caer en el mismo hueco” [You two, when the three of us lived together, filled to perfection the hole left by my mother. But when you left, I once again fell in that same hole.]41 The departure of loved ones, or departing and leaving loved ones behind, creates an emptiness, a hunger that cannot be filled. In spite of this looming emptiness, however, the desire to leave and find an easier life is tempting. In the exercise in transcendent acting in which Ote and Desdi reenact a conversation between Ote and his mother, we see that Ote’s mother is still tormented by her husband having left her, and that her son now feels the pain of her having left him: Desdi [como madre de Ote]: ¡Suélteme, son of a bitch! ¡No quiero tus besos! ¡Eres igualitico que él! (Llora.) … . (A partir de aquí la madre ve al padre en el hijo.) No te hubieras ido … ¿Por qué me abandonaste? Ote: ¡Fuiste tú, mamá, quien me abandonaste!

39 Martiatu, “Tomás González: El autor,” 139. 40 José Milián, “El rey negro,” Tablas 3–4 (July–December 2008), 192. 41 González, Ote vino en un charter, 170.

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Desdi: (Iracunda.) ¡No estoy hablando con mi hijo! ¡Estoy hablando con su padre! (De repente se deja arrastrar por los besos y lo besa, casi al borde de los labios, y luego, enseguida, lo besa como a un amante.)¡No te olvido! ¡No te he olvidado nunca! Ote: (Llorando.) ¡Lo sé, mama, lo sé! Desdi: (Protestando.) ¡Que no es contigo, coño! Estoy hablando con tu padre. Ote: Lo sabía, mamá. (Separándose violentamente del abrazo y zarandeando a la madre por los hombros.) ¡No soy mi padre! ¡Soy el hijo! ¡Mírame! Desdi: (Apretando los ojos.) ¡No! ¡Quiero a tu padre! Ote: Mi padre no está aquí … Te abandonó cuando yo tenía tres años. Desdi: ¡Mentira! ¡Él me ama! Él no pudo abandonarme. Desdi [as the mother of Ote]: Let go of me, son of a bitch! I don’t want your kisses! You are the same as him! (She cries ) … . (From this point on the mother sees the father in the son.) You shouldn’t have gone … Why did you abandon me? Ote: It was you, Mama, who abandoned me! Desdi: (Wrathful.) I’m not talking with my son! I’m talking with his father! (Suddenly she stops resisting the kisses and kisses him, almost near the lips, and then immediately she kisses him like a lover.) I don’t forget you! I have never forgotten you! Ote: (Crying.) I know, Mama, I know! Desdi: (Protesting.) I’m not talking to you, asshole! I’m talking with your father … Ote: I knew that, Mama. (Separating himself violently from the embrace and shaking his mother by the shoulders ) I’m not my father! I’m the son! Look at me! Desdi: (Squeezing her eyes shut ) No! I want your father! Ote: My father isn’t here … He abandoned you when I was three years old. Desdi: Lie! He loves me! He couldn’t abandon me.]42

In this confusing conversation in which Desdi plays the part of Ote’s mother while Ote’s mother frequently thinks that Ote is his father, it becomes difficult to keep straight who is playing what part, but the pattern of abandonment, anger, and bereavement is clear. Ote’s father abandoned Ote’s mother when Ote was three. Ote’s mother abandoned Ote when she left Cuba to go to Miami. Both feel hurt and abandoned. 42 González, Ote vino en un charter, 186–87.

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Both blame the person who abandoned them, and both want desperately to reassure themselves that the person who abandoned them still loves them. Even following this troubled moment and the declaration by Ote’s mother that Desdi would not be welcome in Miami, Ote is still persuaded to go with his mother so that he can finally be reunited with her. However, in Ote vino en un charter, we see that his reunion with his mother did not heal the wounds initially caused by their separation. Instead, his decision to leave Cuba has left him feeling like an outsider. In Ote vino en un charter the very title suggests that Ote is now an outsider. Because of the U.S. embargo and the restrictions on travel to Cuba from the United States, licensed charter flights have often been the only way to fly directly from the United States to Cuba. Those flights are, therefore, primarily used by former Cubans who, like Ote, have moved to the United States and are returning to Cuba for a visit.43 Unlike Shakespeare’s Othello, however, Ote is an outsider by choice, having left Cuba for economic advantages. His new outsider status is emphasized by the way that Yago and Desdi react to him. When Yago is reluctant to speak about the state of Cuba in front of Ote, Desdi tells him, “Hay que decir las cosas, aún delante de nuestros enemigos” [You have to say things, even in front of our enemies.]44 Likewise, when Desdi tells about a triumph at work, she rejoices that they had triumphed over the whole world, “hasta a ustedes, los norteamericanos” [even over you, the Americans.]45 Ote sharply reminds her that he is still Cuban, but she doesn’t accept that and tells him that “Los cubanos siempre han estado del lado de acá.” [the Cubans have always been on this side.]46 He has moved from being the man who could be an insider in Santa Clara, Havana, or Miami, to a man who, when he returns to Cuba, is the “enemy” and an “American.” Even Ote eventually admits to his being an outsider, excluded from their company: “Me siento solo. No tengo a nadie. Si los tuviera a ustedes. Si yo pudiera … regresar” [I feel lonely. I don’t have anyone.

43 They are also used by Cubans visiting the United States or returning from such visits, but the number of Cubans permitted to make such trips is limited and would have been even more limited in the 1980s when this play was written. 44 González, Ote vino en un charter, 173. 45 González, Ote vino en un charter, 181. 46 González, Ote vino en un charter, 181.

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If I had the two of you. If I could … return.]47 But, they assure him, he cannot return, or at any rate it would not be the same. He has become the monstrous other. His description of Miami reveals both that he feels like an outsider there, as well, and that he is not alone in longing for what he left in Cuba. When asked about his mother he explains that she lives in Miami, where he cannot stand to live because it is merely an unsuccessful attempt to imitate Cuba: ¡Mi madre es una momia! Ella vive en Miami. Allí todo el mundo vive edificando un pasado. Reproducen a cada paso todo lo que dejaron aquí.… Pero al final, caes, siempre caes en la cuenta de que todo aquello es artificial y que aquello ya no es Cuba. Esa Habana no es La Habana.” [My mother is a mummy. She lives in Miami. There everyone lives building a past. At each step they reproduce everything they left here.… But finally, you realize, you always realize that all that stuff is artificial and that it still isn’t Cuba. That Havana isn’t Havana.]48

Ote, who previously was an insider wherever he went, now feels at home in neither country. He is an outsider everywhere. In his plays, González anticipates both the effect on loved ones of his departure and his own longing for home. González is thus deeply ambivalent about the idea of leaving Cuba. He neither wants to accept discrimination in Cuba nor to exile himself from his home and turn himself into another sort of outsider. Ote, like González, is caught between horror and fascination, between his fear of leaving the land and people he loves, and his desire to flee the parameters within which he is confined. These plays seem to be his attempt to work through his ambivalence and find a middle way that would neither leave him confined within the parameters of the revolution nor stranded outside, unable to return to the country he loves and in which he feels at home. In his plays González acknowledges both the power and the problems of Cuba, and he tries to find a stance that will allow him to criticize the weaknesses without rejecting the whole. González consumes a play about outsiders and their inability to ever truly be accepted and incorporates it into a new form that shifts these roles. 47 González, Ote vino en un charter, 183. 48 González, Ote vino en un charter, 177–78.

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The Artist in the Revolution An additional element that makes El camino del medio different from Shakespeare’s Othello is Gonzáles exploration of the role of the artist in revolutionary Cuba. González consumes and incorporates Shakespeare’s play, but even as he is engaged in an anthropophagic ritual, he is also exploring the dangers of parasitic cannibalism. Santiago argues for the need to move beyond looking at Latin American adaptations only in terms of “the study of sources and influences.” Such an approach, he argues, “reduces “Latin American artists’ creative production to the parasitic condition of a work feeding off another without ever providing anything in return; a work whose life is limited and precarious since it is enclosed in the radiance and prestige of the original, of the trendsetter.”49 This parasitic relationship differs from cultural anthropophagy in that the latter places the two works on an equal level, and suggests that while the new work draws valuable nutrients from the previous work, it also brings something valuable to the newly embodied work. González, in his Othello plays, is engaged in the act of cultural anthropophagy. He is not simply using Othello as a source but digesting the nutrients he considers valuable while also nourishing the story with elements from his own culture. He consumes Shakespeare’s characters, but digests them and mixes their portrayal with spiritual possession, an examination of racism in Cuba and the United States, and an exploration of the role of the artist in the revolution. At the same time, however, he is also commenting on parasitic relationships and on the difference between artists who are only parasites as opposed to those who learn to nourish others. In doing this, he is exploring what artists owe to the revolution and to the community, and what an artist owes to his art. In Yago tiene feeling , Yago is a talented musician, but he is also a narcissist and something of a parasite. At the beginning of the play, he declares himself a genius: “Yo soy un genio. La gente como yo no se da todos los días. Uno cada cincuenta o cien años. Los genios somos escasos. Los que abundan son los burros” [I am a genius. The people like me don’t come along every day. One every 50 or 100 years. The geniuses are scarce. It’s the stupid people who abound.]50 He contrasts himself with Ote, who 49 Silviano Santiago, “Latin American Discourse: The Space In-Between,” trans. Ana Lúcia Gazzola and Gareth Williams, 32. 50 González, Yago tiene feeling, 140.

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gave up his painting to create billboards, and though Desdi points out that they are beautiful billboards, Yago says that Ote’s decision shows that his art was always a lie: “Está demostrando que siempre fue una mentira. Lo que pintaba era una mentira. No lo hizo desde adentro, por una necesidad” [He is demonstrating that it was always a lie. What he painted was a lie. He didn’t make it from within, from a necessity.]51 Implicit in this is a criticism of those artists who give up their art for the revolution, but there is also a criticism of artists like Yago who think only of themselves. While Yago may brag of being a genius who cannot be “barrido de la gran ola de los iguales” [swept away by the great wave of equals,]52 he is also, as he will later admit, a parasite, living off of Ote’s work even as he criticizes Ote for having given up his painting in order to make a living creating billboards. Desdi is quick to remind Yago that Ote is supporting them. She points out that Ote brought Yago to live in their tiny apartment, where there was hardly room for two of them, Y todo porque su amigo es un artista genial que compone bellas canciones que nadie entiende y que nadie quiere grabar … Ote se pasa todo el día trabajando como una bestia, mientras tú te la pasas acostado, tocando la guitarra o componiendo canciones que nunca se van a escuchar. [And all because his friend is a brilliant artist who composes beautiful songs that nobody understands and that no one is going to record … Ote spends all day working like a beast, while you spend it lying around, playing the guitar or composing songs to which nobody will ever listen.]53

Yago dislikes being reminded that in Havana he is a parasite intruding on Ote’s hospitality. When Desdi reminds him that he is living in Ote’s house, he responds, “¡Sí, ya lo sé! ¡Ya me pesa bastante esa expresión! ‘¡Su casa!’” [Yes, I know that already! That expression really weighs on me! His house!]54 But even though Yago is a parasite, all three of the characters recognize that he is the only one bringing life and art to the house, 51 González, Yago tiene feeling, 146. 52 González, Yago tiene feeling, 143. 53 González, Yago tiene feeling, 144. 54 González, Yago tiene feeling, 146. In the second play this expression is, significantly, reversed when Desdi invites him into the same apartment, now occupied only by her, and

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and Ote’s sacrifice of his painting for billboards and dreams of buying a motorcycle and a bigger apartment really do seem to have drained life and inspiration from all three. Yago, as the true artist, does have the potential to move beyond his parasitic state. As both the title, Yago tiene feeling and Yago’s frequent comments suggest, he has “feeling,” or “filin,” the musical style that originated in Cuba in the 1940s and that involves using emotions to interpret the song and to establish communication with the audience. Canciones de filin or songs of feeling involve “A guitar and a voice and a human being who gives himself to others.”55 The singer of “feeling” songs expresses strong emotions in his songs and gives himself and his feeling to the audience, in order to let them experience these emotions, or in order to express what they have felt but been unable to communicate. It is a sort of musical catharsis. In the second play, Ote vino en un charter, Yago is an accomplished and successful musician, living in Cuba but traveling frequently to perform. He can see the flaws and problems in Cuba, and he is frustrated with them: “Aquí las cosas andan muy lentamente. El mundo anda a otra velocidad. He viajado. ¡Mucho! En todas partes no se pierde tanto tiempo como aquí. Toda idea nueva encuentra obstáculos. Siempre hay alguien que te dice ‘ese tiene que esperar.’” [Here the things go very slowly. The world moves at a different speed. I’ve traveled, a lot! In no other place do they lose as much time as here. Every new idea encounters obstacles. There is always someone who tells you, ‘that we have to wait for.’]56 Nevertheless, he cannot imagine living elsewhere. When Ote offers to give him everything he lacks, he declares that he doesn’t need that: “No necesito nada de eso. He llegado, he llegado alto en forma modesta, en forma honesta. No le he tenido que vender mi alma a ningún diablo.” [I don’t need any of that. I have arrived. I have arrived in a modest way, in an honest way. I didn’t have to sell my soul to any devil.]57 To leave, or to take an easier route, would be to sell his soul. Unlike Shakespeare’s tells him “Estás en tu casa” [you are in your house]. González, Ote vino en un charter, 167. 55 Josefina Ortega, “Ese sentimiento.” Ortega, Josefina. “Ese sentimiento que se llama … Filin.” La Jiribilla. Memorias. 2003. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.lajiribilla. co.cu/2003/n095_03/memoria.html. 56 González, Ote vino en un charter, 173. 57 González, Ote vino en un charter, 178.

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Iago who is accused of being a devil at the end of Othello (5.2.292–93), González’s Yago is the one who resists the temptations of the devil. Yago is also the one who explains to Ote how he stopped being a parasite and truly became an artist with feeling by putting others before himself: cuando salí de esta casa, creí que todo acababa para mí. Había dejado de ser un parásito. Y algo me estalló por dentro. Comprendí muchas cosas. La primera, que estaba equivocado. No era el mundo el que estaba equivocado, sino yo. ¡Y me viré al revés para poder encarrar el mundo! Mi camino fue largo, escabroso, pero depués de muchos cabezazos, logré hacer algo a la medida del mundo, digo, a la medida de las necesidades de la humanidad. Conseguí hacer una canción donde yo me borraba. Una canción donde la vida de los otros se imponía sobre la mía. Y la canción era hermosa, hablaba de aquellos que luchan por cambiar al mundo, por mejorarlo, por hacerlo más justo … ¡Así fue como llegué a mi pueblo, a mis gentes, y a mí mismo! [when I left this house, I thought everything had ended for me. I had ceased to be a parasite. And something exploded inside me. I understood many things. First, I was wrong. It was not the world that was wrong, but me. And I turned around backwards so I could face the world! My journey was long, rough, but after banging my head many times, I managed to do something for the world, that is, to suit the needs of humanity. I managed to make a song where I erased me. A song where the lives of others were imposed over mine. And the song was beautiful. It spoke of those who struggle to change the world, to improve it, to make it more fair…That was how I came to my people, my people, and myself.]58

The “feeling” that he boasted of having in the first play, once he truly discovered it, became his means of connecting to the people, and connection to something, someone, outside himself was, ironically, how he came to know himself, and how he ceased to be a parasite. Feeling is more closely related to cultural anthropophagy than to parasitic cannibalism, since it consumes the feelings and needs of others, but expresses them via the artist who gives himself, “erases” himself, in the process.

58 González, Ote vino en un charter, 180.

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The Middle Way Martiatu claims that Yago, as the transcendent artist, is the character with whom González identified, and to some extent that may be true. González was a painter and musician, and he did later write additional plays about Yago. But by the end of El camino del medio, it seem that Desdi is the true hero of the work. Unlike Shakespeare’s Desdemona, Desdi is alive and well at the end of the second play, and she seems a character who has come into her own, in spite of the pain she suffered from Ote’s rejection and the difficulties she endures living in Cuba. But while Ote’s acts are less violent than Othello’s, Desdi behaves as though they are somehow worse. Unlike Desdemona, who takes the blame for her own death, responding “Nobody, I myself” when Emilia asks who has killed her, (Othello 5.2.121), Desdi calls Ote a sick degenerate, kicks him out, never responds to his letters, and when he finally returns to Cuba and asks her to come back to the United States with him, she kicks him out again and makes it clear with her “hasta nunca” [good riddance], that she will not see him again.59 Abandoning country, wife, and friend for his mother and an easier life seems, in her opinion, to be a worse crime than Othello’s jealous murder of Desdemona. Over the course of the two plays, she has herself transformed from an unhappy, unfulfilled wife, to a self-sufficient woman. Desdi begins Yago tiene feeling trying to assure Yago that Ote is still an artist and that he has feeling, too: Pero es que Ote por eso no ha dejado de tener feeling. Es un feeling distinto al tuyo; pero es feeling también. Cuando ese macho me dice cosas, así, a secas, cosas, me vuelvo como loca. Parece como si estuviera en nota y, lo mejor de todo, es que me la transmite. [But Ote hasn’t stopped having feeling because of that. It is a different feeling from yours, but it is also feeling. When that man says things to me, just so, things, it drives me crazy. It seems as if he is in tune, and, the best thing of all, is that he transmits it to me.]60

59 González, Ote vino en un charter, 191. 60 González, Yago tiene feeling, 147.

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Even though he has given up his painting, she asserts that his passion, his feeling, still nourish and inspire her. By the end of the play, however, we see that this “feeling” is not enough to satisfy Desdemona. She, like her Shakespearean counterpart, is tired of being confined by “house affairs” and wants something more meaningful in her life, as she tries to explain to Ote: Quisiera salir de estas cuatro paredes. Y no sólo para ir a bailar los sábados por la noche. (Pausa.) Si se pudiera … ¡Eh, Ote, si yo pudiera estar todo el día en la calle, como tú, trabajando, no aquí en la casa sino en la calle! Si trabajáramos cerca pudiéramos hasta almorzar juntos. Y por las tardes, a la salida del trabajo, citarnos en un parque para hablar de amor y de las cosas que nos pasaron en el día. [I would like to leave these four walls. And not just to go dancing on Saturday nights. (Pause.) If one could … Oh, Ote, if I could be all day in the street, like you, working, not here in the house but out in the street. If we worked near each other we could even have lunch together. And in the afternoons, when we left work, we could meet in a park and talk about love and the things that had happened to us that day.]61

She is not an artist who can find meaning in her creations, but she does not want to be a parasite, either. Ote, however, does not respond to her pleas. In Ote vino en un charter we learn that Yago’s departure precipitated a change for both Desdi and Ote, as she explains to Yago: Desde tu partida todo cambió para nosotros. Después de aquello, salí al mundo. Salí a pagar mi cuota de vida con la vida. ¡Y fue bueno! Desde entonces aprendí a ver el mundo por mí misma. Descubrí muchas cosas a partir de aquello. [After you left everything changed for us. After that, I went out into the world. I went out to pay my quota of life for life. And it was good! Since then I learned to see the world for myself. I discovered many things since then.62

61 González, Yago tiene feeling, 162. 62 González, Ote vino en un charter, 167.

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In learning how to pay her quota of life for life, Desdi learns to participate in the inclusive ritual of anthropophagy. She understands that she must give something of herself in order to receive nourishment and fulfillment in return. Yago tiene feeling was written prior to the quinquenio gris , but in it González is already anticipating the potential conflicts between artists and the revolution. Ote vino en un charter was written after the gray period, during which González had experienced firsthand the repressive censorship of the government. In this second play, he sees less possibility for the triumph of Yago-like artists and he begins to seek a middle way. Martiatu has noted that “Ote, Yago, y Desdi, en El camino del medio, están envueltos en un juego de responsabilidades y culpas que al final los separa y que de haber continuado habría impedido la verdadera realización de los tres” [Ote, Yago and Desdi, in El camino del medio are wrapped up in a game of guilt and responsibility that finally separates them and that, had it continued, would have impeded the true personal fulfillment of the three.]63 In Shakespeare’s Othello of course, the three do interfere with each other’s personal development. Two of them are dead by the play’s end, and the third is a prisoner, about to be tortured for his confession. González’s plays move beyond this point, separating the three characters and exploring what might have happened to each of them had they been able to pull themselves out of this game. González begins the first play identifying with Yago, the transcendent artist, faithful to his own ideals, but willing to erase his own personality from his songs in order to create something of use to humanity. Indeed, the fact that González later writes two more plays about Yago suggests that the character continues to serve as an important symbol for González. In El camino del medio Yago does succeed, but Desdi’s closing comments suggest Yago’s form of success is not open to many. He may be able to leave and return to the same spot, but the others who stand on the river bank with him are those who never leave. Desdi does not want to be one of those, nor does she want to stand with Ote on the bank of those who leave and never return. Desdi thus becomes the real hero of these plays, showing as she does the strength to keep riding the current in the middle of the river, holding to the middle way.

63 Martiatu, “El bello arte de ser de Tomás González,” 19.

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Bibliography Anroart Ediciones. “Autores: Tomás González Pérez.” Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.anroart.com/autores/44. Boudet, Rosa Ileana. Cuba: viaje al teatro en la Revolución (1960–1989). Santa Mónica, California: Ediciones de la Flecha, 2012. Castro Ruz, Fidel. “Discurso Pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario y Secretario del PURSC, como conclusión de las reuniones con los intelectuales cubanos, efectuadas en la biblioteca nacional El 16 23, y 30 de Junio de 1961.” Departamento de versiones taquigraficas del gobierno revolucionario. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1961/esp/f300661e.html. Colin, Alexandre Marie. 1829. Oil on canvas. 26 1/2 × 30 1/2 × 2 1/2 in., New Orleans Museum of Art. https://noma.org/collection/othello-and-des demona/. Columbus, Christopher, Clement Robert Markham, and Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli. The Journal of Christopher Columbus: (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. Hakluyt Society Works. Lst Ser, No. 86. New York: Elbiron Classics, 2005. “Declaración del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura.” Casa de Las Americas. Nos. 65–66 (March–June 1971): 4–19. Fernández Retamar, Roberto. Todo Caliban. Havana: Fondo Cultural del ALBA, 2006. Gardner, Lyn. “Jude Kelly.” Asides: A Publication of the Shakespeare Theatre. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/_pdf/asides/ 97-98/97-98%20Othello.pdf. González, Tomás. Ote vino en un chárter. In El bello arte de ser y otras obras, edited by Inés María Martiatu, 163–92. Repertorio Teatral Cubano. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005. ———. “Yago tiene feeling.” In El bello arte de ser y otras obras, edited by Inés María Martiatu, 139–62. Repertorio Teatral Cubano. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005. González Pérez, Tomás. “La posesión (privilegio de la teatralidad).” In Rito y representación: los sistemas mágico-religiosos en la cultura cubana contemporánea, edited by Yana Elsa Brugal and Beatriz Rizk, 199–209. Madrid; Frankfurt: Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2003. Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492– 1797 . London: Methuen, 1986. Larramendi, Julio, José Antonio Martínez Coronel, and Rafael Acosta de Arriba. Vallas Y Carteles De Cuba: Cuban Billboards and Posters = Panneaux Publicitaires Et Affiches De Cuba. Ciudad de Guatemala: Ediciones Polymita, 2013.

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López, Armando. “Levitar en Santa Clara: Viaje a la semilla de Tomás González, dramaturgo que puso el dedo en la llago del racismo.” Cubaencuentro. April 18, 2008. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://www.cubaencuentro.com/cul tura/articulos/levitar-en-santa-clara-79506%20. Martiatu, Inés María. “El bello arte de ser de Tomás González.” In El bello arte de ser y otras obras. Edited by Inés María Martiatu, 5–25. Repertorio Teatral Cubano. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005. ———. El rito como representación: teatro ritual caribeño. Havana: Unión, 2000. ———. “Tomás González: El autor como protagonista de su tiempo.” Tablas 3–4 (July–December 2008), 139–43. Milián, José. “El rey negro.” Tablas 3–4 (July–December 2008), 191–92. Modenessi, Alfredo. “Afterword: Fat King, Lean Beggar?” In Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, edited by Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, 28288. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. ———. “‘Victim of Improvisation’ in Latin America: Shakespeare Out-Sourced and In-Taken.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, 549–67. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019 9687169.013.27. Ortega, Josefina. “Ese sentimiento que se llama … Filin.” La Jiribilla. Memorias. 2003. Accessed May 30, 2021. http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/2003/n095_03/ memoria.html. Raleigh, Walter. The Discovery of Guiana. Project Gutenberg, 2006. https:// www.gutenberg.org/files/2272/2272-h/2272-h.htm. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, 1–24. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Santiago, Silviano. “Latin American Discourse: The Space in Between.” In The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture, edited by Silviano Santiago, Ana Lúcia Gazzola, translated by Tom Burns, Ana Lúcia Gazzola, and Gareth Williams, 25–38. Latin America in Translation/En Traducción/Em Tradução. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Santos, Rick J. “Introduction: Mestizo Shakepseare: A Study of Cultural Exchange.” In Latin American Shakespeares, edited by Bernice W. Kliman and Rick J. Santos, 11–20. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Gordon McMullan. Third ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016.

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Subirats, Eduardo. Una última visión del paraíso: Ensayos sobre media, vanguardia y la destrucción de culturas en América Latina. 1a. ed. Sección De Obras De Filosofía. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004. Woodford-Gormley, Donna. “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser.” In The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Vol. 19, edited by Tom Bishop and Alexa Alice Joubin. 185–99. New York: Routledge, 2022.

CHAPTER 5

Ophelia Eats the Air: Consuming Voices in Piel de violetas

Cultural anthropophagy often functions on a global level, or perhaps a glocal level,1 uniting a work or idea from a distant place with a more local idea or performance. Probably the most famous Latin American example of anthropophagy and Hamlet is not from Cuba but from Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade’s “Cannibalist Manifesto,” in which he declares “Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question.”2 This statement links Hamlet’s famous soliloquy with the Tupi people of Brazil, among whom anthropophagy was sometimes practiced. As Refskou, Amorim, and Carvalho have noted, “Andrade’s transposition of Hamlet’s iconic line has itself become iconic and synonymous with cultural anthropophagy. On a fundamental level, the line incorporates the most cited ontological question in Western European literature into another and decidedly non-Western ontology: that

1 For more on this term see Anston Bosman, “Shakespeare and Globalization,” in The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 285–302; and Martin Orkin, “Local, Global, and ‘Glocal’,” in The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, Vol. 2, ed. Bruce R. Smith (New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2000), 1070–76. 2 Oswald de Andrade, “Cannibalist Manifesto,” trans. Leslie Bary, Latin American Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 42, 43.

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of the cannibal.”3 The declaration both alludes to Shakespeare and to Hamlet , and at the same time refers to something totally foreign to Shakespeare. It takes Shakespeare in and makes him part of the manifesto, part of the anthropophagic movement. It teasingly points in two directions at once. There are several examples of Cuban appropriations of Hamlet that consume Shakespeare’s text in a similar way, pointing simultaneously to Shakespeare, and to Cuba. Teatro Buendía’s Otra tempestad, though primarily an adaptation of The Tempest , includes Hamlet as one of the characters shipwrecked on the island of Cuba and interacting with orishas whom he mistakes for Ophelia and his mother, and Tomás González’s El camino del medio, though largely an adaptation of Othello, does make reference to Hamlet when Ote’s mother tells him to stop being so dramatic: Además, eso de estar llorando de rodillas delante de una madre está bueno para el teatro, para una de esas obras de William Shakespeare. ¡Recuerda que no te puse por nombre Hamlet y que además todavía no tengo la condición de fantasma! ¡Soy tu madre en vivo y en directo from Miami! [Furthermore, this business of crying on your knees in front of your mother is good for the theatre, for one of those works of William Shakespeare. Remember that I didn’t name you Hamlet and furthermore, that I am not yet a ghost. I am your mother, live and direct from Miami!]4

Though this reference is only a brief allusion to Hamlet , and an allusion which shows Ote’s mother confusing the roles of Hamlet’s mother and father, it does illustrate cultural anthropophagy that connects Hamlet to the common Cuban experience of an emotional interaction with a family member who left the island for Miami and has now returned to visit Cuba. González has also written another play which is a lengthier adaptation of Hamlet and a very Cuban adaptation. El bello arte de ser [The Beautiful Art of Being] makes many references to Cuba, and probably specifically dramatizes Gonzalez’s own difficulties with staging Hamlet 3 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, Global Shakespeare Inverted (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 3. 4 Tomás González, El bello arte de ser y otras obras, ed. Inés María Martiatu (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005), 186.

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during the quinquenio gris .5 The play incorporates Afro-Cuban spirituality, references to Cuban places, and specifically Cuban problems, while it tells the story of a director attempting to stage his version of Hamlet . Indeed, when asked why he wants to stage yet another performance of Hamlet , when there have been so many, the director insists that each Hamlet is a totally new play, and that the people are ready for his play, now: El Director: ¡Hay que estrenar Hamlet ahora! El pueblo está preparado para recibirlo. El Actor: Pero ¿a qué viene tanta cosa para poner un Hamlet ? En Wittenberg he visto dos Hamlet , representados al mismo tiempo, y eran distintos. El Director: Pueden haber tantos Hamlet como puestas y siempre será un Hamlet distinto. Las buenas obras son máquinas que estimulan a la especulación. Son como las piezas de jazz. Cada jazzista hace de la misma pieza una pieza suya, ejecutada en su estilo personal. [The Director: We have to perform Hamlet now! The people are ready to receive it. The Actor: But what is the big deal about putting on Hamlet ? In Wittenberg I saw two Hamlets , running at the same time, and they were different. The Director: There can be as many Hamlets as there are productions and each will always be a different Hamlet . The good works are machines that stimulate the speculation. They are like pieces of jazz. Each musician makes the same piece his own piece, executed in his own, personal style.]6

The jazz musicians in this analogy perform a sort of anthropophagy, taking a piece in and incorporating it into their own music. Likewise, the director suggests that he can consume Hamlet and turn it into what the Cuban public needs at that moment.

5 See Donna Woodford-Gormley, “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser,” The Shakespearean International Yearbook 19 (2021): 185–99. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003227359-19. 6 González, El bello arte de ser y otras obras, 87–88.

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Feminist Anthropophagy Piel de violetas [Flesh of Violets], a one-woman show retelling the story of Hamlet from the point of view of Ophelia (or Ofelia),7 demonstrates a different type of cultural anthropophagy. It is a Cuban appropriation of Hamlet created and performed by Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, and it also cannibalizes the lines of Hamlet (as well as those of other characters from Hamlet and from Romeo and Juliet ), but rather than using them to connect a European concept with a Latin American movement, as Andrade did, the anthropophagy of Piel de violetas is narrower and more internal. Rather than linking two continents, it consumes the speech of other characters within the play and from other works of Shakespeare in order to strengthen and magnify the speech of one often-silenced character, Ophelia. The interiority of Hamlet, with his soliloquies and contemplation, are cannibalized by Ofelia along with his speech, and it is her inner world to which this play gives voice. The play does devour Shakespeare’s Hamlet , incorporating it and creating something new, but more significantly the character of Ofelia, whose counterpart is so often silenced in productions of Hamlet and in much criticism of the play, devours the words of other Shakespearean characters, most of them male, and incorporates them into her own speech, creating a new voice and a new exploration of her own identity. Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara uses Hamlet like a piece of jazz, improvising and making it their own, but rather than consuming this text in order to create something that meets the needs of the Cuban community, as the director wants to do in El bello arte de ser, this play performs a feminist cannibalization, giving Ofelia a voice woven together from the voices she has consumed. In addition to cannibalizing Shakespeare, Piel de violetas also nourishes and is nourished by two other projects invested in giving voice to the voiceless, both of which are associated with the actress Roxana Pineda, who performed and helped to create the role of Ofelia. Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara has long been committed to exploring how to find a language in which to describe the ephemeral experience of theatre, and the Magdalena Project, with which Roxana Pineda has been deeply involved, has from its beginning been interested in women’s

7 In Piel de violetas her name is Ofelia. I will use the Spanish version of her name when referring to the character in Piel de violetas, and the English version when referring to the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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voices. Ofelia, in Piel de violetas , fits into both of these projects by “eating the air” as Hamlet claimed to do. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet , the prince declares that he consumes “the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air,/ promise-crammed” (3.2.85–86) and when Claudius replies with a puzzled assertion that he cannot understand Hamlet because “these words are not mine,” Hamlet replies, “no, nor mine now” (3.2.87–89). In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet is suggesting that Claudius’s promises are as insubstantial as air, and neither man is willing to take responsibility for the “words” that have passed between them. In Piel de violetas , Ofelia is also consuming the insubstantial, ephemeral words of others, but this makes her not a chameleon, blending into the background of her environment, but a cannibal, consuming and integrating the voices necessary to create her own interior monologue. While she might, like Claudius, state that “these words are not [hers],” they do become hers over the course of the play.

Estudio Teatral and the Language of Theatre Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara is a small theatre which was founded in 1989 by three graduates of the Instituto Superior del Arte (ISA): director Joel Sáez, actress Roxana Pineda, and actor Fernando Sáez.8 From their inception, they have focused on the training of actors and the inclusion of actors in the creation and writing of plays through a process of improvisation. In 1993 Fernando Sáez, along with two other actors, left the group. Joel Sáez and Roxana Pineda, however, remained in the group, training actors, writing and performing plays, and coauthoring their book Palabras desde el silencio. In their book, both authors discuss the importance and the challenge of finding a language to talk about what often goes unsaid and what might not easily be expressed in words. The very title of their book, Palabras desde el silencio, or Words from the Silence, points to this interest in giving voice to the unspoken. Sáez has observed that it is difficult to capture in words what happens in a live performance, which changes from night to night, and which involves something unspoken that passes between the actors, the director, and the audience. In describing the dramaturgy of their group, Sáez describes a creative,

8 Roxana Pineda, “Tejiendo memorias a modo de re/presentacion,” Conjunto 171 (2014): 34–39.

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collaborative process of discovering the language to discuss the often ephemeral, intangible experience of theatre: Nuestra concepción de dramaturgia espectacular sería la del largo proceso de acumulación de materiales diversos donde el grupo va exponiendo la más compleja variedad de elementos gestuales, objectuales, de comportamiento, elementos de diseño, y que concluye cuando el director, acompañado de sus actores, define y vertebra paso a paso cada comportamiento personal, escena, grupo de escenas y el espectáculo en su totalidad. [Our conception of theatrical dramaturgy would be that of the long process of accumulation of diverse materials where the group exhibits the most complex variety of gestures, objects, of behaviors, elements of design, and that concludes when the director, accompanied by his actors, defines and structures step by step each personal behavior, scene, group of scenes and the show as a whole.]9

The actors improvise a variety of gestures, actions, or props which might express an idea given to them by the director, and once many of these are gathered, they work together to select and structure them into a cohesive whole. Each actor thus takes part in “writing” the work, although they may do so without written, or even spoken words. Roxana Pineda likewise discusses how the actors use improvisation to create a text or to fill in the gaps and the unspoken voices in an existing text. With the play, Antígona, for example, Pineda mentions that the story of Antigone is told in several different works by Sophocles, pero nunca el autor griego asume la perspectiva de una biografía de la heroína que, inmersa en un mundo filial y político contradictorio, se ve obligada a tomar decisiones que suponen la alteración de sus ideales. Como todos los personajes que se relacionan con ella, Antígona está obligada continuamente a reordenar su perspectiva de vida, a encontrar soluciones que poco a poco van cerrando el alcance de sus sueños. Es su voluntad heroica, la fidelidad a los suyos y el desprecio por la injusticia lo que la lleva a trocar la dulzura por fiereza, su paciencia por la terquedad.

9 Joel Sáez and Roxana Pineda, Palabras desde el silencio (Santa Clara, Cuba: Ediciones Sed de Belleza, 2002), 82.

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[But the Greek author never assumes the perspective of a biography of the heroine who, immersed in a contradictory filial and political world, is forced to make decisions that involve the alteration of her ideals. Like all of the characters related to her, Antigone is continually obliged to reorder her perspective on life, to find solutions that little by little are narrowing the scope of her dreams. It is her heroic will, fidelity to her own family, and contempt for injustice that leads her to exchange sweetness for fierceness, her patience for stubbornness.10

Because nothing has been written about the biography of Antigone, the group’s improvisations had to imagine and create the journey she must have undergone. They gave voice to what was unspoken in the original texts. Similarly, in Piel de violetas they gave voice to Ofelia, whose counterpart in Shakespeare’s play dies in silence. In Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara’s version, she, like Antigone, exchanges “sweetness for fierceness” as she comes to understand that her voice and her life have been taken from her.

Nourishing Voices In 2014 Roxana Pineda left Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara and founded her own theatre, Teatro La Rosa, at which she has been dramaturge, director, and actor, and has continued to explore how to give voice to those who have not been heard. She has spoken about her belief that it is important to think in a feminine way, but without excluding the masculine, since that would be contrary to her understanding of feminine thinking. A theatrical company is like a microcosm, and she wants to allow each member of that microcosm a creative voice.11 This creation of networks that give voice to others has been an ongoing project for Pineda. While at Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara she was already deeply interested in the creation of networks, and she had a “profound faith in ... profound relationships.”12 To facilitate the creation of these profound relationships and networks that allow for artists to nourish and educate 10 Sáez and Pineda, Palabras desde el silencio, 45. 11 Roxana Pineda, interview with Yuslemey Escobar and Carmen Zareli Gamarra,

Podcast RadiOlavide. Miradas Feministas. Podcast audio. December 16, 2019. https:// upotv.upo.es/video/5df8a109abe3c6dc458b4567. 12 Itau Cultural, “Roxana Pineda – Seminário Arte, Cultura e Educação na América Latina (2018),” April 19, 2018. YouTube video, 15:59. https://youtu.be/-VVZs93doEc.

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one another, Pineda, while she was still part of Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, founded the Centro de Investigaciones Teatrales Odisea, which was her way of creating a “room of her own,” and which allowed her to organize many workshops and other projects which nourished underrepresented voices.13 One of these projects, with which she became actively involved was the Magdalena Project, and she has directed five Magdalena sin fronteras [Magdalena without borders] festivals. The Magdalena Project is a network of women theatre professionals which brings together women from many countries, continents, and theatrical styles. The many autonomous groups that are part of this network often hold festivals. Magdalena sin fronteras is one of these festivals, and it has taken place triannually since 2005, directed by Roxana Pineda. While the women involved in the Magdalena Project bring a wide variety of talents and interests to the festival and their network, one overriding interest seems to be in giving voice to women whose voices have not been heard before. The very name of the Magdalena Project alludes to a silenced woman. Jill Greenhalgh, one of the founders of the Magdalena Project, notes that she chose the name because she had long been fascinated and inspired by the figure of Mary Magdalene, and she notes that part of that fascination was the fact that the Magdalena had been silenced when the church canonized certain texts and excluded others from the canon: “The testaments of Mary Magdalene disappeared ... leaving the now received notion of her part in the story of Christ related, not in her own words, but by others, predominantly men.”14 In her investigations into Mary Magdalene, Greenhalgh noted, “She became a symbol of the silencing of womanhood, and the essential nature of womanhood – the silenced story, the other side of the story. The female side of the story which, remaining untold and unassimilated, allowed the rise of unbalanced and repressive social structures.”15 Magdalena, a documentary film about the Magdalena Project produced by Jill Greenhalgh and Sara Penrhyn Jones, features several women from around the world expressing this interest. Gilly Adams, a theatre maker from Wales, observes that it is very difficult to define what the Magdalena Project is, but states, “what you can say is that this ... is a network ... for women who, for whatever

13 Itaú Cultural, “Roxana Pineda.” 14 Jill Greenhalgh, “Women in Red,” The Open Page 8 (2003): 131. 15 Greenhalgh, “Women in Red,” 133.

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reason, want to make theatre to articulate and express the most powerful experiences of their lives.” July Varley, of Odin Teatret in Denmark, asserts “Magdalena has given me the opportunity but also the responsibility, by responsibility I mean it has forced me, to speak in first person as a woman.” Mercedes Hernandez, a performer from Mexico, declares, “We have a saying in Mexico, which is, ‘be quiet and you’ll be more beautiful.’ It’s a clear allusion to the censorship, to the insistence that women be quiet. If you are pretty and smiling, you’re better. My performance is working from an opposite model, that we have things to say.” Raquel Carrió, dramaturge for Teatro Buendía in Havana says that what she loves about The Magdalena Project is “not just that it defends the rights of women, but that it defends them in a language that is about her work, her theatre. It is a beautiful thing, defending her vulnerability, her intimacy, so that being a woman can also be a particular way of expressing oneself.” And Roxana Pineda herself observes, “Working and living with Magdalena these ten years, many things have profoundly moved me … I am profoundly moved by the immense capacity for dialogue and the immense generosity of support for projects when needed, of the creation of a space where the silenced voices of many women in many parts of the world can have this space to learn to speak out loud.”16 Piel de violetas , Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara’s adaptation of Hamlet , which has been performed at multiple Magdalena festivals, both in Cuba and elsewhere, delves into these ideas of the silencing of women and the recovery of voices.17 The play gives a voice to Ofelia, who, like Mary Magdalene, has often had her story “related, not in her own words, but by others, predominantly men.” It assumes that Ofelia “has things to say” and that she can find “a particular way of expressing herself.” It gives Ofelia, a chance to “speak in the first person,” and to “speak out loud” the thoughts and feelings that her Shakespearean counterpart never expresses. Voice is, of course, a prominent theme in Hamlet . Hamlet’s own voice rings through the text. He speaks seven soliloquys, engages in various witty repartees, chides his mother, swears to the ghost of his father, and 16 Sara Penrhyn Jones, Magdalena. Jill Greenhalgh. The Magdalena Project, August 28, 2013. Vimeo video, 31:40. https://vimeo.com/73296438. 17 Piel de violetas has been performed at Magdalena sin fronteras festivals in Cuba in 2005 and 2011. It has also been performed at the Transit V—Stories to be told festival in Denmark in 2007, and at the Tantidhatri festival in India in 2012.

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speaks so much at the performance of The Mousetrap that it is difficult to determine whether Claudius is responding to the play or to his mad and talkative nephew. In his final moments, Hamlet gives his “dying voice” to Fortinbras and urges Horatio to live on so that he can continue to speak for Hamlet after Hamlet’s own voice has finally been silenced. But in spite of passing his voice on to two other men, Hamlet’s final words are “the rest is silence,” as though all speech ends once he is dead; however, other voices in the play have already been silenced, most notably Ophelia’s. Director Joel Sáez and actress Roxana Pineda chose to write Piel de violetas not because they specifically wanted to cannibalize Hamlet but because they were attracted to the character of Ophelia. They were looking for a compelling character on which to base a one-woman, character-driven show, and they felt that “Ophelia is one of those characters who live in your memory.”18 However, once they started looking at Ophelia’s character, they quickly discovered what anyone who studies Ophelia carefully learns: For a character who lives in your memory after you read or see the play, she doesn’t actually say that much. In order to create the text of their play, they had to weave together her lines with lines of other characters in the play, with lines from other Shakespeare plays, and with songs and quotations from elsewhere. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet , Ophelia appears in only five scenes of the play and is mentioned in three others. She appears first in act one, scene three, when Laertes and Polonius both advise her not to believe Hamlet’s protestations of love. We next see her in act two, scene one, when she tells Polonius of Hamlet’s visit to her closet and his disturbing behavior. She is mentioned in the following scene when Polonius reports to Gertrude and Claudius that Hamlet may have been driven mad by love of her. She speaks with Hamlet in act three, scene one, when Polonius and Claudius spy on Hamlet, and this is the scene in which he first denies that he loved her, then says he did love her once, and finally tells her to “get thee to a nunnery” (3.1.119). It is also the scene in which she delivers her only soliloquy, mourning the change she has seen in Hamlet. In the next scene, Hamlet sits near her during the performance of the mousetrap, and subjects her to many crude, sexual comments about how fickle women are. We then do not see or hear of her until act four, scene five, in which she appears singing her mad songs and distributing flowers. Two scenes 18 Roxana Pineda and Joel Sáez, interview by Donna Woodford-Gormley, Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, March 2013.

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later Gertrude tells Claudius and Laertes of Ophelia’s drowning, and in the first scene of act five, she is buried, and Hamlet and Laertes fight over who loved her more.19 Some of these scenes are very brief appearances in which she says relatively little, and in most of them, she is fairly docile, accepting the orders, advice, or abuse of the powerful men in her life. While many Shakespearean heroines rebel against the dictums of conduct books that state they must be chaste, silent, and obedient, Ophelia is at the very least silent and obedient, and she pays for it with her mind and her life. Her death scene, of course, silences her completely. 400 years after Shakespeare, however, on the other side of the world, however, Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara has given Ofelia a voice. They have done this by not only giving her back her own words, but also by weaving them together with the words spoken to and about her, with the words of other Shakespearean characters from other plays, and with occasional songs. Alone on stage, she speaks all of the parts for a 45minute, one-woman show that retells the story from her point of view. She is given the interior thought usually given to Hamlet, and she moves from remembering her life and love, her troubles and losses, and her fears of death, to grieving her own death. By giving her words borrowed from other speakers, plays, and songs, Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara finally gives Ofelia a chance to speak up for herself.

Piel de violetas When performed in Santa Clara at Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, the play was staged in a black box theatre. The program contains Rimbaud’s poem, “Ophelia,” and the play appears to devour this as well as Shakespeare’s play. Rimbaud’s poem begins with: In the calm black stream where stars sleep, White Ophelia floats like a great lily; Very slowly floats, lying in long veils…20

19 In contrast, Hamlet appears in 13 scenes, and in seven of these he has soliloquies. He is mentioned, sometimes at length, in every other scene in the play. There is only one scene, act 4.5, in which he is not mentioned by name, but he is still referred to as Gertrude’s son. 20 Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems, trans. Martin Sorrell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 29.

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Piel de violetas similarly opens with Ofelia lying on a black stage, her long, dark hair spread out around her, as though she is floating on the water, on a “calm black stream.” Ofelia, however, is not in white. She wears a long, dark dress, and almost seems to disappear into the black stage on which she lies. At one side of the stage hangs a white curtain, with a light behind it. Lying on the stage near Ophelia is a red cloth that alternately serves as a picnic blanket, shawl, sarong, and veil. Other items on the stage include a teapot and cups, flowers, a log, an axe, a box of sand, a skull, and lily pads scattered around her on the stage. The image of her lying on the stage, surrounded by lily pads, evokes Rimbaud’s poem and Gertrude’s description of Ophelia’s death: There is a willow grows askant the brook That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream. Therewith fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long-purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them. There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like a while they bore her up; Which time she canted snatches of old lauds, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and endued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (4.4.165–82)

It is a scene that has captivated the imagination of many artists, inspiring Rimbaud’s poem, the well-known painting by John Everett Millais, and Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara’s Piel de violetas , among others. The Ofelia in Piel de violetas , in addition to floating on the dark waters, does often sing “snatches of old lauds” and does appear “incapable of her own distress.” In fact, initially, she does not seem to realize that she is dead, but over the course of the play, as her cannibalized lines move us from the early scenes of Hamlet through her burial, there are moments in which she has brief, painful realizations about her state, until finally she accepts that she is dead.

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After the first few seconds of lying silently on the stage, Ofelia gradually rises, and begins to speak. She initially quotes not from Hamlet , but from the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet , incorporating the archetype of the young hopeful lover rather than of the tragic young woman driven mad by her father’s murder and her abandonment by her lover. It is initially Romeo’s lines she consumes, though she first changes the gender of the pronouns, and then changes to second person, as though she is speaking to her own beloved, Hamlet: Dos de las más resplandecientes estrellas de todo el cielo ruegan a tus ojos que brillen hasta su retorno. ¿Y si los ojos de él estuvieran en el firmamento y las estrellas en su rostro? Tus ojos lanzarían unos rayos tan claros que cantarían los pájaros creyendo la llegada del alba.21 [Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, do entreat his eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if his eyes were there, they in his head? Your eyes would stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night.] (Romeo and Juliet 2.1.57–60; 63–64)22

Her next line evokes both the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet , in which Romeo asks Juliet to “speak again, bright angel” (2.1.68), and Hamlet , when Hamlet asks the ghost of his father why he visits him (1.4.39–57). “¡Habla otra vez! Porque esta noche apareces frente a mí…” [Speak again! Why this night do you appear before me...] She begins this line by stepping from the shadows into the light, her face upturned as

21 All quotations from Piel de violetas are from the unpublished script, unless otherwise noted. Joel Sáez, “Piel de violetas” Unpublished play, 1997, typescript. 22 When the Spanish text is a clear incorporation of the Shakespearean text, I have chosen to translate by translating back, returning to the Shakespearean English. I have done this even when a literal translation of the Spanish might have created a slightly different wording. When a word or phrase is added to the Shakespearean text, or changed in way that seems an intentional adaptation for this play, such as the changing of the pronouns above, I have marked it in bold. Translating in this manner makes it more obvious when something is added to the Shakespearean script, or when a very nonShakespearean text is included. Because I am translating from Piel de violetas, which makes sparing use of line breaks and which weaves together lines from different scenes and plays, I have not indicated line breaks or omissions from the Shakespearean texts in my translation; I have adhered, instead, to the formatting of Piel de violetas. However, I have included citations of the Shakespearean lines parenthetically.

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though looking up at a balcony, but then as she begins to ask her question, she turns and searches the stage, peering apprehensively behind the white curtain, as though looking for an unseen presence. She quickly, however, reverts to speaking to her beloved, and she addresses him, making it clear to whom she speaks, although she continues to consume the speech of a young lover, this time Juliet: ¡Querido Hamlet¡ Si tus pensamientos amorosos son honestos y tu fin el matrimonio, te seguiré por el mundo como a mi dueño y señor. Pero si tus intenciones son perversas te suplico ceses tus galanteos y me dejes abandonada a mi dolor. [Beloved Hamlet! If that thy bent of love be honourable, thy purpose marriage, I’ll follow thee my lord throughout the world. But if thou mean’st not well I do beseech thee to cease thy suit and leave me to my grief. (Romeo and Juliet 2.1.185; 190–93)]

Ofelia then proceeds to embody a brief dialogue between the two lovers, consuming both of their lines as they make plans to meet again. In this brief, opening passage, Ofelia thus incorporates the words of both young lovers, and of her own love when confronting the ghost of his father. She alters them slightly, making them her own, addressing them to Hamlet, and creating a dialogue she might have wished to have with her lover. Her cannibalizing of these lines creates a scene we never saw in Hamlet , the scene in which Hamlet and Ophelia were newly in love, untouched by the tragedies that would befall both of them, and still promising to be faithful to each other. However, she quickly emerges from this romantic fantasy to consume a very different source text, John Lennon’s “I Don’t Wanna be a Soldier Mama.” She moves from laughing, pouring tea, and wearing the teacup on her finger as though it is a wedding ring while she embodies the joyful conversation between two young lovers, to an exaggerated, hip-swaying march as she sings Lennon’s song about not wanting to die. Ofelia then speaks, very earnestly, in English, to say, “I don’t wanna die!” Even as she is remembering her early, romantic moments with Hamlet, moments we, the audience, never saw, she is also beginning to realize that death threatens, and that she does not want to die. After this opening anthropophagy of Romeo and Juliet , Ofelia begins to consume scenes from Hamlet . The first scene she cannibalizes in this

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way is act one, scene three of Hamlet , which is the first scene in which Ophelia appears in Shakespeare’s play. In the scene in Hamlet , both Laertes and Polonius advise her not to trust Hamlet’s professions of love. Pineda speaks all parts of both conversations, but her voice as Ofelia is soft, feminine, and natural sounding, whereas both Laertes and Polonius speak in harsh, distorted, gravelly voices. Laertes does not behave like the loving brother concerned for his sister’s well-being. Pineda’s actions while portraying him are sharp and violent. He even slaps Ofelia. Polonius’s speech is likewise spoken in a harsh voice, which Ofelia does not answer. She consumes the voices of both the brother and father who lectured her and advised her against trusting Hamlet, but she is not yet able to incorporate their speech into a voice of her own. Ofelia’s still undeveloped voice is also evident in her cannibalized version of act two, scene one of Hamlet . In Shakespeare’s play, this is the scene in which Ophelia has one of her longer speeches, describing to her father how Hamlet came to her, distraught and so upset that he could not speak, but took her by the wrist and stared at her as if he wanted to draw her face. In Piel de violetas , Ofelia does repeat some of these lines, but then she interrupts her own speech with Hamlet’s questions to her from a later scene: “Me cogió la muñeca y la apretó fuerte, y comenzó a escudriñar mi rostro como si fuese a dibujarlo. Eres honesta? Eres hermosa?” [He took me by the wrist and held me hard ... and he falls to such perusal of my face as ‘a would draw it. Are you honest? Are you fair? (2.1.84, 86– 88; 3.1.102, 104)]. As these lines are spoken, Pineda grabs her own hair and pulls it, as though Hamlet were dragging her. She then returns to her speech from act two, scene one but also incorporates Hamlet’s love letter that Polonius read to Gertrude and Claudius: “Duda que en las estrellas haya fuego. Duda que el sol sea capaz de calor. Duda que la verdad no sea más que un juego. Pero no dudes nunca de mi amor” [Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.” (2.2.116–18)] She moves from a description of Hamlet being perceived as “mad for [her]love,” (2.1.82) to a memory of his harsh denial of his love for her, and then to a quotation of his earlier vows of love. Her own speech from Hamlet does not seem sufficient, and she needs to interrupt herself with the voices of others. She then returns to Juliet’s lines from the balcony scene, but her voice is no longer so soft and gentle. She is shouting as she says that she wishes for a falconer’s voice to call back her love, and rather than simply naming

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him, she shouts the series of insults that Juliet will later use to describe Romeo when she learns he has slain her cousin: ¡Quién tuviera la voz del halconero para traer aquí de nuevo a mi amor! La juventud ha enronquecido y no puede hablar en voz alta. De otro modo se estremecería la caverna donde habita Eco y pondría su lengua más ronca que la mía con la repetición del nombre de mi amado. Corazón de serpiente oculto bajo un semblante de flores. ¡Hermoso tirano! ¡Demonio angelical! ¡Cuervo con plumas de paloma! ¡Cordero con entraña de lobo! Que habite la falsía en palacio tan suntuoso. [O, for a falconer’s voice, to lure this tercel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, and make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine, with repetition of the name of my beloved: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven! Wolvish-ravening lamb! Oh that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace! (Romeo and Juliet 2.1.200–5; 3.2.73, 75–76, 84–85)]

She uses Juliet’s words to compare herself to Echo, the mythological figure who was unable to speak for herself and wasted away from unrequited love. And whereas Ofelia previously consumed the words of both Romeo and Juliet to express her love for Hamlet, she now devours Juliet’s words and rage to describe her confusion and betrayal, since she, like Juliet, knows that her lover has killed her kinsman. In the early scenes in which Ofelia is interacting with Laertes, Polonius, or Hamlet, Pineda speaks all the parts, but it is easy to tell when it is Ofelia speaking and when it is her reciting someone else’s words. Her voice and behavior change when she is speaking the lines of her father, brother, or lover. As Ofelia she is the demure, obedient maiden, while as Laertes, Polonius, or Hamlet her actions are crude, vulgar, and violent. When she is performing both parts of the “get thee to a nunnery” dialogue from act three, scene one of Hamlet , the transformation is particularly obvious. When she speaks her own lines her face is always hidden. She turns away from the audience, or she holds a bouquet of flowers or a tambourine in front of her face. When she recites Hamlet’s lines, however, she shows her face, looking directly at the audience. Her voice changes as well. When she is speaking her own lines, her voice is soft and feminine. When she recites Hamlet’s lines, her voice is lower, harsh, and distorted. So, although she

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is speaking other people’s lines, she has not yet taken them into herself. She is speaking in quotations. This use of quotation and sampling to give Ofelia voice is interesting since some of Ophelia’s more memorable speeches in Hamlet are already made up of quotations. Once she goes mad, her speech consists of quotations of others, a fact that more than one Shakespeare scholar has noted. Ivo Kamps observes that “when Claudius says of Ophelia that she has been ‘divided from herself and her fair judgment’... what he means is that Ophelia no longer has access to the identity by which they knew her. She now speaks with the words of others.”23 Similarly, Carol Thomas Neely has noted: Shakespeare ... dramatizes madness primarily through a peculiar language ... This characteristic speech is both something and nothing, both coherent and incoherent. Spectators, onstage and off, read this language, trying to make ‘sense’ of it, translating it into the discourse of sanity. Shakespeare’s language of madness is characterized by fragmentation, obsession, and repetition, and most importantly by what I will call ‘quotation’ ... The mad are ‘beside themselves’; their discourse is not their own. But the voices that speak through them are not ... supernatural voices but human ones.24

In Shakespeare’s play, this practice of quotation can best be seen in Ophelia’s “mad songs”: Larded with sweet flowers, Which bewept to the grave did not go With true-love showers. ... They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. (Hamlet 4.2.38–40; 42–44)

She strings together folktales and songs, occasionally inserting a word of her own, such as the “not” above, to make it better fit her own situation and the burial of her father, who was not “bewept to the grave.” 23 Ivo Kamps, “Madness and Social Mobility in Twelfth Night,” in Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays, ed. James Schiffer (London, England: Routledge, 2011), 233. 24 Carol Thomas Neely, “Documents in Madness,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1991): 323.

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Though her mad songs are not understood by her brother, Claudius, or Gertrude, they do allow Ophelia a partial means of expressing herself. Laertes declares, “Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,/ It could not move thus” (4.2.164–65), and he adds, “this nothing’s more than matter” (4.2.169). But while her speaking in quotations may be moving, it only moves Laertes to the revenge he had already been planning. It does not allow Ophelia to speak in the first person, to tell her own story. In Piel de violetas , Ofelia, like her Shakespearean counterpart, speaks in quotations. She strings together lines from Hamlet , and Romeo and Juliet , along with songs in English and Spanish, and occasionally she inserts words of her own. The most notable example of this is when she vocalizes a scene in which she is neither present nor mentioned in Shakespeare’s play. And yet, while she is not in the original scene, it is clearly a scene she must have imagined, with horror, as it is the scene in which Hamlet kills her father: ¡Madre, madre, madre! ¿Qué sucede? Hamlet, tienes muy ofendido a tu padre. Madre, tienes muy ofendido a mi padre. Respondes con lengua necia Preguntas con lengua infame ¿Qué es esto? Siéntese y no se mueva, no os iréis hasta que os haya puesto un espejo donde pueda verse lo más íntimo. ¿No irás a matarme? ¡Socorro! ¿Qué has hecho? No lo sé. ¿Es el rey? Acción sangrienta, casi tan mala madre como matar a un rey y casarse con su hermano. Eso he dicho. Y tú, bufón intruso, desgraciado, imprudente Polonio, te tomé por tu superior, pero no, eres el padre de Ofelia. [{Hamlet}25 Mother, Mother, mother! What’s the matter? {Gertrude} Hamlet, thou hast your father much offended. {Hamlet} Mother, you have my father much offended. {Gertrude} You answer with an idle tongue. 25 I have identified in the translation who would have been speaking in Shakespeare’s play. These identifications were not present in Piel de violetas, although Pineda often makes it easy to tell who is speaking.

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{Hamlet} You question with a wicked tongue. {Gertrude} Why, how now, Hamlet? {Hamlet} Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you. {Gertrude} Thou wilt not murder me? Help, ho! What hast thou done? {Hamlet} Nay I know not. Is it the King? A Bloody deed--almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king and marry with his brother. It was my word. Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, Polonius, I took thee for thy better, but no, you are the father of Ophelia. (Hamlet 3.4.5, 8–13, 18–21, 25–26, 28–29, 30–32)

Ofelia’s vocalizing of the scene eliminates some of Gertrude’s lines and her father’s cry for help, but it includes one line that is never spoken by Hamlet or his mother: “you are the father of Ophelia.” She inserts that line, making the scene more relevant to her, and creating a scene in which Hamlet kills her father and then realizes, at least for an instant, the impact this will have on her. In adding to his speech, she gives voice to a version of Hamlet she might have wanted to believe in, one who would at least regret the pain he caused her. But while Ofelia in Piel de violetas and Ophelia in Hamlet both at times speak in quotations but insert the occasional phrase of their own into their quoted lines, Piel de violetas also makes a very different use of quotations. In Hamlet Ophelia moves from having a sometimes timid, quiet voice of her own, to speaking in the voice of madness, which is to say in the voice of others, and finally, to the silence of death. In Piel de violetas , however, this progression is reversed. Initially, she is quoting from others, and when she speaks the words of Hamlet, Laertes, or Polonius, it sounds very much like a quotation. Her voice changes. Her gestures change. There is no difficulty in distinguishing what is Hamlet’s line and what is hers, even though she speaks them all. But by the end of the play, she speaks Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy, sprinkled with other lines of Hamlet’s, and, according to Roxana Pineda, this speech is “muy, muy Ofelia” [very, very Ofelia]26 :

26 Sáez and Pineda, interview with Donna Woodford-Gormley. Director Joel Sáez and Actress Roxana Pineda had a disagreement about this. Sáez feels that whether it is Ofelia speaking these lines or whether we are hearing the voice of Hamlet through her is open to interpretation. Pineda felt very strongly that this is Ofelia speaking these lines for herself.

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Ser o no ser es la opción. ¿Es más noble sufrir mentalmente las flechas de la fortuna, o alzarse contra las dudas y en el ataque terminar con ellas? ¡Yo te amaba antes Ofelia! Morir, dormir, tal vez soñar. ¿Quién soportaría el denigrante azote de los tiempos, la ofensa del soberbio, la angustia del amor menospreciado, la tardanza en la ley, el poder arrogante pudiendo con un simple puñal liquidar cuentas? ¡La muerte, ese salvaje país de cuyos límites ningún viajero vuelve! El raciocinio nos hace cobardes y el color de la audacia se empaña con los tintes sombríos del pensamiento. Los proyectos de altura y magnitud tuercen su curso y dejan de llamarse acciones. ¡La hermosa Ofelia! ¡La hermosa Ofelia!¡Algo hay podrido en Dinamarca! ¡Cállate ahora! [To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. I did love you once, Ophelia. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns! Thus conscience does make cowards. And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. And enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action. The fair Ophelia! The fair Ophelia! Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Be quiet now! (Hamlet 3.1.55–59; 3.1.113; 3.1.63–64; 3.1.69–71; 3.1.74–75; 3.1.77–79; 3.1.82– 88; 1.4.90; 5.2.336)]

She begins this final speech by picking up the skull on the stage and appropriating both the iconic image of Hamlet conversing with Yorick’s skull and Hamlet’s most famous lines: “To be or not to be, that is the question/ Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?” (3.1.55–59). Like Oswald de Andrade in his “Cannibalist Manifesto,” Ofelia “incorporates the most cited ontological question in Western European literature,”27 but her consumption of this question is much more intimate and personal. She is not connecting a Western ontology with a non-Western one but applying the question raised by the man she loved to her own tragic life. She emphasizes this

27 Refskou, Amorim, and Carvalho, introduction to Eating Shakespeare, 3.

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by interrupting this line of questioning to shout his statement to her, “I did love you once Ofelia!” but it is unclear at this point whether she is remembering his declaration of love, making her own assertion that she once loved herself, or angrily recalling the way he toyed with her by alternately declaring and denying his love. Regardless the statement brings tears to her eyes, which she wipes away with one hand while she covers the empty eyes of the skull with the other, as though shielding it from what it might see. Then she returns to Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “to die, to sleep, perchance to dream. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?” Throughout this speech she sometimes places the skull on her shoulder, next to her own head, and at other times she wears it on her hand like a ring, while she sways and dances. Finally, with her back to the audience, she places the skull reverently on the log, as though she is placing it on an altar. She kneels before it, then rises, picks the red shawl off the ground, and swings it around as she continues: “Death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns! Thus conscience does make cowards. And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. And enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.” Her voice at this point is no longer the soft, feminine voice she earlier used to indicate Ophelia’s speech, but neither is it the coarse, distorted speech she sometimes used to indicate the speech of Hamlet or Polonius. It is forceful and angry. If, as Roxana Pineda suggests, this is “muy, muy Ofelia,” then Ofelia has found not only her own voice, but also her anger at the way she has been treated, manipulated, and silenced. When she speaks again it is to repeat, twice, “The fair Ofelia,” as she stands behind the skull, wraps it in the red shawl, and embraces it. Rather than simply repeating Hamlet’s own speech, “The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons/ Be all my sins remembered” she seems to be grieving her own death, the passing of the beautiful, fair Ofelia. She then stands and states, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” consuming a line she would never have heard in Shakespeare’s play, but which may exactly express her feelings about the rotten state that has deprived her of her voice. Finally she declares, “be quiet now!” She moves quietly about the stage for a moment, pouring tea out of the teapot, and then finishes by

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reverting back to lines from Romeo and Juliet : “Dos de las más resplandecientes estrellas de todo el cielo ruegan a tus ojos que brillen hasta su retorno”28 [Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven ... do entreat your eyes/ To twinkle in their spheres till they return. (2.1.57–59)] But unlike her use of these lines at the beginning of the play, here she does not refer to “los ojos de él” [The eyes of him]. With the gender-neutral “tus ojos” [your eyes], she could be speaking to Hamlet, or to herself. She then moves the shawl-wrapped skull center stage and lays back down on the stage, curled around it, as the lights dim. By the end of Piel de violetas , Ofelia has found her voice, even though she is speaking Hamlet’s lines. Even her final realization of and acceptance of her death leaves her with more of a voice than did her narrated, offstage drowning in Hamlet. And significantly the final words in the printed script are “¡callate ahora!” which could be the equivalent of Hamlet’s final words, “The rest is silenceS” (5.2.336), or which could be read as a command, “Be quiet now!” Having consumed the voices that overpowered her in Shakespeare’s play, she now has a strong enough voice that she can herself silence the other voices that have been speaking through her.

Bibliography de Andrade, Osward. “Cannibalist Manifesto.” Translated by Leslie Bary. Latin American Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 38–47. Bosman, Anston. “Shakespeare and Globalization.” In The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, 2nd ed., edited by Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells, 285–302. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, “Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara: Piel de violetas 2009,” September 4, 2017. YouTube video, 41:49. https://youtu.be/lVc4_l pgxak. González Pérez Tomás. El bello arte de ser y otras obras, edited by Inés María Martiatu. Repertorio Teatral Cubano. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2005. Greenhalgh, Jill. “Women in Red.” The Open Page 8 (2003): 130–35. Itau Cultural, “Roxana Pineda – Seminário Arte, Cultura e Educação na América Latina (2018),” April 19, 2018. YouTube video, 15:59. https://youtu.be/VVZs93doEc.

28 This line does not appear in the written text of the play, but it is spoken in the performance.

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Kamps, Ivo. “Madness and Social Mobility in Twelfth Night.” In Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays, edited by James Schiffer, 229–43. London, England: Routledge, 2011. Neely, Carol Thomas. “Documents in Madness.” Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1991): 315–38. Orkin, Martin. “Local, Global, and ‘Glocal’.” In The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, Vol. 2, edited by Bruce R. Smith, 1070–76. New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2000. Penrhyn Jones, Sara. Magdalena. Jill Greenhalgh. The Magdalena Project, August 28, 2013. Vimeo video, 31:40. https://vimeo.com/73296438. Pineda, Roxana. Interview with Yuslemy Escobar and Carmen Zareli Gamarra. Podcast RadiOlavide. Miradas Feministas, podcast audio, December 16, 2019. https://upotv.upo.es/video/5df8a109abe3c6dc458b4567. ———. Interview with Yuslemy Escobar and Carmen Zareli Gamarra. Podcast RadiOlavide. Miradas Feministas, podcast audio, January 15, 2020. https:// upotv.upo.es/video/5e1efc02abe3c628048b4569. ———. “Tejiendo memorias a modo de re/presentacion.” Conjunto 171 (2014): 34–39. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, 1–24. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Rimbaud, Arthur, and Martin Sorrell. Collected Poems. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Rodriguez Martinez, Carlos A. “Roxana Pineda: ‘Siento Que Soy Infinita’.” Vanguardia, Villa Clara, Cuba, February 2, 2017. http://www.vanguardia. cu/cultura/8257-roxana-Pineda-siento-que-soy-infinita. Sáez, Joel. Piel de violetas. Unpublished play, 1997, typescript. Sáez Joel, and Roxana Pineda. Palabras desde el silencio. Ensayo. Santa Clara, Cuba: Ediciones Sed de Belleza, 2002. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Gordon McMullan. Third ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. Woodford-Gormley, Donna. “Possessed by Shakespeare: Hamlet and Tomás González’s El bello arte de ser.” In The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Vol. 19, edited by Tom Bishop and Alexa Alice Joubin. 185–99. New York: Routledge, 2022.

CHAPTER 6

Shakespeare as Cultural Bridge: Incorporating the Other

Shakespeare, as this book has shown, is often consumed, digested, and incorporated into new Cuban works that have the potential to nourish both the Cuban adaptations and the Shakespeare plays. One of the benefits of cultural anthropophagy as a theoretical approach for understanding global Shakespeares is that it is an inclusive theory. Like the anthropophagic ritual among the Tupinambá, cultural anthropophagy can be “a complex ... way of incorporating otherness.”1 It can bring together members of different cultures. But while this theory allows for a more inclusive approach to global Shakespeares, it also raises questions about how inclusive the ritual can be and about who can partake in the feast. This inclusive model is complicated when extended to collaborative efforts between American, Cuban, and Cuban-American artists. For Cuba, in recent decades, one of the clearest others has been its near neighbor, the United States, and Cuba has likewise served as the other for the United States. The relationship between Cuba and the United States has been characterized by missile threats, military interventions, travel restrictions, and trade embargoes. Even within the United States, there has been a deep division between those Cuban-Americans who fiercely oppose the communist regime in Cuba and want the U.S. government 1 Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology (London: Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2019), 5.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Woodford-Gormley, Shakespeare in Cuba, Global Shakespeares, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7_6

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to continue the trade embargo, and those who favor normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. Political relations between the two countries have fluctuated as political leaders have come and gone, but while political divides remain difficult to span, cultural bridges have been attempted, and Shakespeareans have been the builders of some of these bridges. Two examples of such Shakespearean bridge building are Company HavanaBama, which has performed Shakespeare plays and other plays in Havana and the United States, using a combination of Cuban and American actors, and Asolo Repertory Theatre’s Hamlet, Prince of Cuba, which was performed in Florida in both Spanish and English. Both groups have been attempting to ease tensions between feuding groups, although each focuses on a slightly different cultural divide. Seth Panitch and Company HavanaBama have worked to bring Cuban and American actors together, while Michael Edwards and Asolo Repertory Theatre used Hamlet, Prince of Cuba in an attempt to bridge the divide between Anglo and Latino communities in Florida and to prompt viewers to rethink revenge. Both, however, consume Shakespeare in their attempts to bring cultures together. This chapter explores the attempts of Cubans, Americans, and Cuban-Americans to bridge cultural divides through the use of Shakespeare. At the same time, it explores whether cultural anthropophagy is an inclusive enough theory to allow outsiders and others to be brought into the conversation and whether Shakespeare is a communal meal that can bring two cultures together. Though cultural anthropophagy and global Shakespeares make claims of inclusivity, pressure is placed on those claims when they involve not only one culture’s consumption and embodiment of Shakespeare, but also a third, Anglophone culture engaging in the process and potentially asserting its views on how Shakespeare can and should be embodied. Writing of the 2012 Globe to Globe festival, which showcased 37 plays in 37 languages, all performed in a six-week period at the Globe Theatre in London, Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin noted: Globe to Globe suggested the ethical aspirations of such ambitious Shakespearean events as well as their conflicts and contradictions … By giving expression to marginalized, oppressed, and disenfranchised cultural voices, Shakespeare becomes a vehicle of empowerment, an agent to foster the multicultural good. Yet, the global reach of this festival and others of its kind also invited pressing questions: how does Shakespeare make other

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cultures legible to Anglo-American audiences? … To what extent do nonWestern Shakespeare productions act as fetishized commodities in the global marketplace?2

While festivals such as the Globe to Globe have the goal of fostering the “multicultural good,” they also raise questions about the ethics of a multicultural endeavor in which a “Western”3 culture interprets, judges, or fetishizes another culture’s appropriation of Shakespeare. The ethics of such endeavors still need to be interrogated, especially in “an age when Shakespeare is increasingly globalized, diversified, spread thin, and applied in service of a multitude of agendas.”4 The already complex ethical issues involved in global consumptions of Shakespeare become even more complex when another guest comes to the table. The complicated ethics of global Shakespeares are evident even in the language often used to discuss them. Huang and Rivlin note that the term “appropriation” carries with it a history of “aggressive seizure and forced possession,” and of course, cannibalism and anthropophagy are also terms that carry connotations of violence and even savagery, which need to be considered when probing the ethical implications involved in Cuban appropriations of Shakespeare and cultural anthropophagy as a lens for understanding those appropriations.5 Appropriation also carries with it the idea that something is being done “against Shakespeare’s will,” but in the case of the works explored in this chapter, there is another party concerned.6 It is not simply a question of who has the right to consume or appropriate Shakespeare, but who has the right to explore or produce Cuban or Cuban-American Shakespeares. The same questions and considerations raised by Huang and Rivlin can and should be 2 Alexa Alice Huang and Elizabeth J. Rivlin, Introduction to Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1. 3 I use this term with some reservations since Cuba is as far west as the United States and further west than Europe. 4 Huang and Rivlin, Introduction to Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, 2. 5 Huang and Rivlin, 2; For more on the violence associated with the terms “cannibal-

ism” and “anthropophagy” see Koel Chattejee, “De-centring Shakespeare, Incorporating Otherness: Diana Henderson in Conversation with Koel Chatterjee,” in Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology, ed. Anne Sopie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho (London: Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2019), 121–35. 6 Huang and Rivlin, 2.

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applied to anthropophagic efforts that involve not only Cuban artists but also American actors and directors consuming Shakespeare as a means of creating a cultural bridge. Rather than viewing global Shakespeares as violent appropriations, however, it is possible to see Shakespeare and cross-cultural appropriations in a dialectic: “In other words, both Shakespeare and its appropriations can be the actors and the acted upon, the self and the other, sometimes in the space of a single creative act. Most importantly, each party can be held ethically accountable in its reception of, and receptivity to, other works.”7 This dialectic is similar to cultural anthropophagy in that it places the parties involved on the same level, and shows those participants frequently shifting between insider and outsider, actor and acted upon, consumer and consumed. These theories are applicable to the performances discussed in this chapter, which show a similar interchange. Because the motivation for these productions is to bridge cultural divides, the parties involved are constantly conscious of the other with whom they interact, of their own shifting between self and other, and of the need to interact ethically with each other and with the texts they read, write, direct, and perform, consume, and embody. Seth Panitch, a theatre professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, began his work with what would become Company HavanaBama in 2008 when he became the first American to direct a play in Cuba since the start of the U.S. embargo. The play was performed by a combination of Cuban and American actors, as was Company HavanaBama’s next project, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was performed both in Havana and in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The company then staged Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy and finally they performed a piece written by Panitch himself, a bilingual rock musical version of the myth of Alcestis, Alcestis Ascending . Throughout his work with the bicultural company, Panitch was working to bridge the divide between the two cultures while drawing on the strengths of each. Like Panitch, Director Michael Edwards wanted to stage a Shakespeare play in a way that created a “cultural bridge,”8 though he was interested in bridging not the divide between Cuba and America but the divides

7 Huang and Rivlin, 4. 8 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep- Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” Asolo Rep, March 21,

2012. YouTube video. 5:01. https://youtu.be/L4vN8kLgeFI.

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between Latino Americans and Anglo Americans and between CubanAmericans on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He chose Hamlet because he wanted to look at the idea of revenge and how that differs from a desire for justice. He directed Hamlet , Prince of Cuba, which was set in Cuba in 1898, and the bilingual actors performed it in English and, on certain nights, in Spanish with English supertitles.

Company HavanaBama: “We Want to Work Something Out” Panitch chose Shakespeare as the starting point for this bicultural company for multiple reasons. Since he is not fluent in Spanish, he needed to work with a play with which he was extremely familiar, and he had acted in and directed The Merchant of Venice in the past. He also wanted something that both the Cuban and American members of the cast could understand, and he felt that Shakespeare was “universal, theatrical language” and “something they would be able to connect with.”9 He specifically chose to begin with The Merchant of Venice because it is a play about outsiders and a work that really mirrors the complicated relationship between the United States and Cuba. As he explained to Bárbara Rivero, vice president of the CNAE (National Council of Scenic Arts): “the reason I picked this play is that it can be used in such an educational way. It’s about what happens when we mistreat people.”10 He elaborated on this idea in an interview, saying, “Merchant is about the outsider, about how we create outsiders. And how we dehumanize people and how it comes back to haunt us.”11 The relationship between outsiders and insiders, between Americans and Cubans, has been a theme running through all of the productions he has directed with Company HavanaBama. Panitch himself was the linguistic and cultural outsider when he began directing in Cuba. In a short video documenting Panitch’s journey to become the first American to direct a play in Cuba in 50 years, the

9 Adam Schwartz, Company HavanaBama: Bridging the Gulf , July 13, 2013. Vimeo. 31:24. https://vimeo.com/70350986. 10 Seth Panitch, “Merchant in Havana,” October 15, 2009. Vimeo. 5:32. https:// vimeo.com/7077708. 11 Seth Panitch, interview with Donna Woodford-Gormley, October 30, 2013.

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voiceover announces, “Seth Panitch plans to bring The Merchant of Venice to the Havana stage. All he needs is a theatre, a cast, and government permission. He has five days. He speaks no Spanish.”12 In a second video we see him studying the Spanish script and noting that while he would normally know the text of a play very well before he began directing it, he would, in this case, know the plot very well, and know the lines, but not know exactly where an actor was within those lines.13 As the outsider coming into Havana, he also had to adjust to different acting techniques and to different government regulations. The Cuban Ministry of Culture, he notes, was very generous in paying the salaries of the Cuban actors who worked with him, but these actors were already engaged in other projects, and so they had to work his rehearsals in among their other commitments. At the same time the Cuban actors, who were used to spending ten to fourteen months rehearsing a play and discovering it through rehearsal, had to adjust to a very different American style of rehearsal to accommodate the approach of the American director and also the limited time the bicultural company had together when the Americans could travel to Cuba. They all had to learn to work together, to help each other, and to accept different approaches. Working together and learning each other’s techniques became a means of building bridges, with each group consuming and ingesting the techniques of the other culture. This idea of working together, despite obvious differences, to overcome problems was another theme that Panitch found in The Merchant of Venice: What I love so much about Merchant of Venice is that you see these couples in the play. Everybody has a couple, except for Shylock and Antonio, which to me states that that is the couple, that there is something about the relationship that Shakespeare is making a comment on … Ultimately it was an investigation of how we have alienated ourselves from each other when ultimately, we are a couple. Cuban society and American society developed very close together. It’s a shorter trip for me to get to Havana than it is for me to get to New York if I went direct. And now we’re trying to develop apart, but that wasn’t how it was for a very long time, so it’s artificial,

12 Panitch, “Merchant in Havana,” October 15, 2009. 13 Seth Panitch, The Merchant in Havana,” July 21, 2009. Vimeo. 12:09. https://

vimeo.com/5700514.

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in some respects, what we’re asking ourselves to do, because there is this desire to collaborate…. We sort of naturally collaborate and there has been this wall between us.14

That desire to collaborate and to find connections between the two countries and two cultures has been a motivation throughout the projects undertaken by Company HavanaBama, and each work they have undertaken has asked the participants to blur the line between self and other to facilitate collaboration and connection. At first glance, The Merchant of Venice might not seem like the most promising play for an American-Cuban collaboration. While it is classified as a comedy, it is a fairly disturbing comedy for modern audiences to watch. The devastating end for Shylock, and the grim realizations that the couples all come to are not the merry resolutions that might be found in a more traditional comedy. However, Panitch noted that while the play certainly has its disturbing moments, it is also hopeful: I also chose it because it is a comedy. There are aspects of tragedy in the play. … It’s a problem comedy in that nothing is solved at the end, only the questions are finally brought forth, and that to me seemed to be very appropriate for our relationship, but also I wanted to make sure that there was hope at the end of the play … A play that is bleak, like King Lear, I don’t think that is a good first work to do with a country that you don’t have an official peace treaty with …. The hope of the play [Merchant ], ultimately, and the reason why the fifth act is so important, is that Shylock and Antonio support the main story, which is how are Bassanio and Portia going to live together? With what Portia learns about Bassanio in the trial scene, how he gives up his wedding ring, how on earth are these two people going to live together? … Of course [Shakespeare’s] making that statement about Shylock and Antonio. How are these people going to live together? How are Lorenzo and Jessica going to live together with what Jessica has done to her father? Is she going to eventually see that she’s destroyed him, and is she going to take that out on Lorenzo or on herself? How is Graziano going to live with anyone? These are sort of the questions you are left with at the end of the play, but there is the hope that at least we want to work something out, which is sort of a theme throughout the plays that I have chosen down there.15

14 Panitch, interview. 15 Panitch, interview.

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It is exactly the problematic, unresolved nature of this “comedy” that makes it ideal for exploring the problematic, unresolved relationship between Cuba and the United States. If Portia had not just learned that her husband was willing to give away the wedding ring he had sworn to keep, and if Bassanio had not just learned that his wife had tricked him and risked his friend’s life to prove her cleverness, the ending would be simpler, but there would be less to learn from it. As it is, when the comedy ends, the real work of the play begins. That is when the relationships really must be worked on and lived through. The same can be said for the relationship between the two countries and their people. When the play is over and the questions have been raised, the actors and the audience must decide if they “want to work something out.” By consuming this problematic comedy, Panitch and Company HavanaBama were able to digest the complicated American-Cuban relationships without doing so in an overtly political way. Instead of consuming politics, they consumed Shakespeare. The connection between the play and the American-Cuban relationship could, Panitch admits, have been made even stronger if he had cast an American actor as either Shylock or Antonio, and had them play opposite a Cuban, but in the case of this first play he had a largely Cuban cast with only a few Americans. Also, he noted, this would have raised the question of who should be Shylock and who Antonio. The two sides might disagree. Even that question, though, is part of what makes this project useful as a means of exploring the American-Cuban relationship. To ask which of us is Shylock and which Antonio means to really examine which of those characters is a hero, which is a villain, and in what ways they resemble each other. Portia’s question in the trial scene, “Which is the Merchant and which is the Jew?” (4.1.172) points to the fact that the two men are in some ways indistinguishable, and today we might usefully ask, “which is the Cuban and which the American?”. Panitch’s second play with the burgeoning company was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he chose both because it is another play that allowed for the exploration of the complicated and fraught relationship of Cuba and the United States, but also because it was a play that allowed for more of the strengths of the Cuban members of the company. Panitch learned from The Merchant of Venice that the Cuban actors were “much quicker and much more courageous” than the American actors when it came to physical choices. He felt that the Company’s Merchant of Venice had probably “existed more toward American acting than Cuban acting.”

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He was “asking [the Cubans] to cross farther than [the Americans] were crossing.” With this second play, he wanted to “work where the Cubans were strong” and find a play that would allow him to merge the strengths of the Americans with the strengths of the Cubans while asking both groups to stretch themselves and to explore different techniques. He chose Shakespeare again, but he chose a Shakespeare play into which he could incorporate “more aggressive physical choices.” One way to have done this would have been a combat scene with swords, but he decided against that both because it would have taken too much time to stage properly and because the image of Cubans and Americans facing each other across the stage with swords would have worked against the idea of building a cultural bridge. He chose, instead, to direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream because the fairies and the magical world of the forest allowed for incorporating dance, movement, and music, thus creating a piece in which all members of the company could bring their strengths to the production: “Midsummer seemed closer to the center, in terms of us meeting together and coming up with a common way to be able to work together as a company. For it to be less an American company teaching Cubans, or even Cubans teaching Americans, but us teaching each other.”16 The shifting back and forth between self and other in this case helped to create a company, a community, and even what Panitch describes as a theatrical family. The company did have to work together to turn “the bard into a modern-day diplomat.” In addition to learning different techniques from each other, both Cubans and Americans were each at times working in a language in which they were not fluent, and this forced them to rely on each other and to be aware of the needs of the others. Panitch admitted that this was terrifying for the Americans, as they worked to memorize lines and recognize cues in a language they did not speak, but Alianne Portuando, the Cuban actress who played Hermia said, through a translator, “We can communicate with each other by physical actions and emotions ... The American actors we are working with are always aware of the work of the Cubans, and the Cubans are always taking care of the

16 Panitch, interview.

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Americans.”17 This sort of collaboration was of course one of the aims of the production. As an outsider, an American working in Cuba, Panitch was continually aware of the need to bring actors from the two countries together, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was an excellent play for this project not only because it allowed for the incorporation of the strengths of both groups, but because it thematically emphasized the need to build and work on relationships: Midsummer does have that aspect … I talked to the cast about this, that the lovers, as opposed to Romeo and Juliet where they kill themselves like idiots, the lovers in Midsummer run away to be together, and the only place they can run together is this kind of mysterious forest, and what I was able to explain to the cast is that that is what the project is. The project is this forest, where we are able to meet away from the prying eyes of our parents and the Dukes, and to be able to work out our relationship issues, which is what happens in the play, it all gets worked out in this neutral zone, on the periphery of reality, which is sort of what we were doing as a company. And ultimately you are left with all of this will be a dream, has the possibility of being a dream, or it could be a reality, which is what Puck says at the end of the play.18

The forest of this project became a place in which Cuban and American actors could meet, could share techniques, could learn from each other, and could help each other to grow as artists. To emphasize the importance of this type of collaboration and communication, Panitch had Puck’s final speech, entreating the audience to “give us your hands, if we be friends” (5.1.423) delivered in English when the play was performed in Alabama and in Spanish when it was performed in Havana. He wanted to make sure that the audience could understand that speech, which he hoped would drive home that idea that this friendship could be “no more yielding, but a dream” or that it could, if nurtured, become a reality (5.1.414).

17 Jay Reeves, “Diplomatic drama: Cuban actors in US perform Bard,” The Associated Press State & Local Wire, August 5, 2009. Nexis Uni. 18 Panitch, interview.

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“We Met in Shakespeare” Speaking of the relationships and bonds formed between the two groups of actors, Panitch stated, “we met in Shakespeare … we knew each other best through the transformative power of theatre.”19 But having met in Shakespeare, the company wanted to see what would happen if they culturalized things a bit more. They were interested to see if the work of an established American playwright, Christopher Durang, would be something that Cuban actors and audiences would understand and appreciate. Many of the Cuban actors said that the play was something different than what they had worked on, and that it was very American and like an American T.V. show; however, they and the Cuban audience also seemed to find it very funny.20 And what connected this work to the previous two plays was the continued exploration of relationships. Beyond Therapy, says Panitch, looks at how crazy and absurd relationships are, and how the people who should be helping us with them are the least helpful, but also at how we desperately want and need those relationships. In that respect, it was a natural next step for a company that had been exploring the absurdity of the relationship between Cuba and the United States and the desire to have a better relationship. The appropriate next step in this project, Panitch admits, might have been to do a play by a Cuban playwright; however, his lack of fluency in Spanish made that impossible. Instead, he wrote a play he had been working on for some time, a rock music version of the myth of Alcestis, performed by Cuban and American actors in Spanish and English and in New York City and Havana. Once again, the central theme of the piece was relationships. In this case, the focus was a wife, Alcestis, who was willing to die to save her husband, and a self-centered husband, Admetus, who, in Panitch’s version, finally shows himself capable of a selfless act when he goes down to Hades to get Alcestis back. Panitch again saw this as a metaphor for the American-Cuban relationship, though he admits that people might disagree which country is Alcestis and which Admetus. Just as their first play, The Merchant of Venice, asked them to think about “Which is the merchant in which is the Jew,” so this play required them to think about which role each country plays in the troubled relationship between Cuba and the United States. True to the spirit of cultural 19 Panitch, interview. 20 Schwartz, Company HavanaBama: Bridging the Gulf.

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anthropophagy, their work is constantly blurring the line between self and other. While all four of Company HavanaBama’s productions have explored the fraught relationship between Cuba and the United States, they have not revealed the sort of cultural divide one might have expected to find in such a situation. The actors certainly had different training and brought different strengths to the performances, and the complicated logistics added challenges to the productions, but politics, according to Panitch, were not really an issue: I can’t say that politics ever came up. The way that we looked at a human moment on stage, to be honest with you, and this is what was so interesting about it, there wasn’t the sort of differences that you might expect. I think if we’d done a modern play about Cuban and American relations, yeah, I think they would have been approaching it from a different standpoint and they would have brought different things to the table. But because we were looking at loneliness and love and loss and forgiveness, they brought the same things that we brought to it. I mean in terms of their training, it’s true, it’s very physical. But the training for an actor is not just what you learn in a class. It’s your life. It’s your life experience that is your training. That’s what you draw on. And their life experience, although much harder than ours, is the same.21

What this example of Shakespearean diplomacy accomplished was not a huge change in international policy, but a series of more personal changes. The actors, both Americans and Cubans, learned new techniques, learned about another culture, and grew as actors. The audiences, which grew in size with each production, came away both with the experience of having seen a memorable play, and with the knowledge that not only is communication between the two cultures possible, but that cross-cultural collaboration is possible and can result in something both real and beautiful. That is perhaps the strongest bridge that these productions have built. They demonstrated how art, theatre, and Shakespeare can succeed where politicians and embargoes have failed.

21 Panitch, interview.

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Asolo Repertory: Bridging the Linguistic Divide Like Seth Panitch and Company HavanaBama, Michael Edwards and Asolo Repertory Theatre consumed Shakespeare in an effort to build a “cultural bridge.”22 The communities they were trying to bring together, however, were slightly different. Edwards wanted to serve the community he found himself in Sarasota, Florida, which included many bilingual Latino actors. He wanted to stage a play that would help bridge the linguistic divide between English and Spanish speakers. He felt a responsibility as a member of “one of the great cultural institutions of the state of Florida and the southeast” and he asked himself, “how can we not participate in building a cultural bridge between the Anglo and Latino communities?”23 In the process of working on the play he also came to realize the deep divide between Cuban-Americans on opposite ends of the political spectrum, and he wanted to use the complicated revenge story of Hamlet to bridge that divide, as well. Edwards came to his production of Hamlet , Prince of Cuba with much experience of directing Shakespeare. However, he was not always a fan of Shakespeare. The first time he was asked to direct a Shakespeare play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, he told the artistic director that he did not want to do it because he felt excluded from Shakespeare. He felt that Shakespeare had consumed enough, and he did not wish to be consumed himself. He declared, “I’m an Australian. I don’t like Shakespeare. I regard it as an act of imperialism that we all have to play Shakespeare, that Shakespeare can only be spoken with that British perceived pronunciation, and there’s no room for my voice.”24 His artistic director, however, asserted that this was not true “that the whole point about Shakespeare is it’s a transcendent work of art that takes on the voices and personalities of anyone who is doing it.” Edwards found this a “liberating idea” and, as he explained in a roundtable discussion, it changed his perception of Shakespeare: from an anti-British, anti-Shakespeare Australian, of course I became a passionate Shakespearean. I feel like I have a personal relationship with 22 Asolo Rep. “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” 23 Asolo Repertory Theatre, “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” Spring Program, 2012, 15.

https://www.Asolorep.org/assets/doc/ham-playbill-english-60a0f0217a.pdf. 24 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.”

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him. I’ve been directing Shakespeare now for over 25 years. I feel like I understand how his mind works, and I’ve read all the biographies. And really, it’s time for people to realize about Shakespeare that he was, in fact, an Australian.25

After the first performance of the Spanish version of his Hamlet , Prince of Cuba, Edwards suggested that perhaps Shakespeare was actually Cuban. Ironically, given Edwards’ initial fears of being consumed by Shakespeare, he now feels that Shakespeare is consumed by the cultures that perform his plays. Edwards was interested in producing a Shakespeare play that could take advantage of something he saw happening in American theatre, and something he saw as uniquely American: the growing number of Latino American artists that are fluent and comfortable in both Spanish and English, that are “passionately American,” but also very proud of their Latino heritage.26 He wanted to do a version of Hamlet that would incorporate that pool of artistic talent. In addition to wanting to showcase the talents of the bilingual actors he was encountering, he also wanted to bring to the theatre an audience that might otherwise feel excluded from Shakespeare. He noted that “The Cuban relationship to Hamlet came out of being in Florida right now, and feeling like there is a great disconnect between the Anglo and the Latino communities. That disconnect is language, so I thought what can we do as an institution to help bridge our reality right now?”27 The bilingual production of Hamlet was an attempt to bridge this divide. Edwards and Asolo Repertory Theatre are certainly not the only practicioners in the U.S to perform Shakespeare in Spanish. As Carla Della Gatta has noted, “the Spanish voice (or the Spanish language) is a key signifier used to convey Latino culture. Spanish is used to overcome the challenge of recognizing an “authentic” Latino body onstage.”28 In the case of Hamlet , Prince of Cuba, the language was used both to signify 25 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” 26 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” 27 Asolo Repertory Theatre. Press Release: “Asolo Repertory Theatre Presents Hamlet,

Prince of Cuba,” February 28, 2012. https://www.asolorep.org/assets/doc/71_HAM LET-PRINCE-OF-CUBA-f337d4774d.pdf. 28 Carla Della Gatta, “From West Side Story to Hamlet, Prince of Cuba: Shakespeare and Latinidad in the United States,” Shakespeare Studies 44 (2016): 153.

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Latino, Cuban culture (even though some of the actors were Cuban, some were Latino but not Cuban, and some were non-Spanish speaking and non Latino), but also to reach out to an audience that, Edwards feared, had felt excluded from the theatre. Edwards noted that one of his challenges in the project was “ensuring that people who speak Spanish feel respected, and that we’re doing this with absolute commitment and skill ... That’s the biggest challenge – getting people to feel that we know what we’re doing in both languages.”29 In order to accomplish this, Edwards enlisted the talented Cuban-American playwright, Nilo Cruz, to translate Hamlet , and a bilingual voice and dialect coach, Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, to work with the actors. Ocampo-Guzman was the first to translate the Linklater voice method to Spanish, and he has used bilingual and Spanish voice methods in other Shakespeare plays, so he was well-equipped to work with the actors, bilingual and monolingual, of Asolo Repertory.30 Likewise, Nilo Cruz, a bilingual, Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright, was well-suited to create a script that “lends new passion and intensity” to the play.31 Asolo Repertory Theatre was successful in attracting a new audience to Shakespeare, and to making that audience feel welcome and respected. Andhy Mendez, the actor playing Laertes, commented on how he felt this production allowed everyone to feel a connection to Shakespeare and to Hamlet . After one performance, he was approached by two older gentlemen from Mexico who didn’t speak English and one of them said to him, “thank you for showing me Shakespeare, because I had never read it, heard it, or seen it.’”32 The cast also commented on the fact that Nilo Cruz’s translation released the comedy in Hamlet , and allowed them and the audience to put aside their reverence for Shakespeare and to realize that Hamlet is always telling jokes. This comedy also attracted audience members, who were surprised to learn that Shakespeare could be

29 Asolo Repertory Theatre, “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” Spring Program, 2012, 15. 30 Della Gatta, “From West Side Story to Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” 154. 31 Jay Handelman, “In Spanish, ‘Hamlet’ is passionate,” Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba, directed by Michael Donald Edwards, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Sarasota, FL. Herald Tribune, May 5, 2012. https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20120505/in-spa nish-hamlet-is-passionate. 32 Aleksandr Gleyzer, “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 1),” May 6, 2012. YouTube video. 13:53. https://youtu.be/LLdw-7bqR7A.

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funny and alive.33 This consumption of the Spanish language reached an audience that had not previously been included, and this effort at bridge building was continued when Asolo Repertory Theatre made the Spanish recording of this play available to schools during the pandemic, reaching a group of students who might have been excluded both by language and by the closures of theatres and schools.

Consuming Revenge: Embodying Cuba Though Edwards wanted to direct a play that would “capture the bilingual power” of the young, Latino actors he was meeting, and bridge the linguistic divide between English and Spanish speaking audience members, he was also interested consuming and embodying other aspects of Cuban culture. His choice to do Hamlet preceded the choice to set it in Cuba. He had always believed that Hamlet was a young person’s play, a play that looks at three young men, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras, “who are wrestling with how to be men, and how to deal with the very profound idea of the loss of their fathers and what to do about it if their father has been wrongfully killed – how they deal with vengeance.”34 After meeting a number of talented young Cuban-American actors and hearing their stories, he wanted to set Hamlet in Cuba, and stage it as a critique of revenge. He was, however, very conscious of being an outsider, and he worried about the ethics of his directing this play. With this in mind, he met with many Cuban-American artists and scholars and admitted to them that he did not speak Spanish and that he was an Australian-American and a “rather naïve newcomer” to the CubanAmerican story, and he asked whether they thought he had a right to stage a production of Hamlet set in Cuba. Edwards reports that “to a person they all said, “you must do this.”35 With their blessing and support, he began to work on the design of the project, which still went through many transformations and took over three years to come to fruition.

33 Gleyzer, Aleksandr. “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 1).” May 6, 2012. 34 Aleksandr Gleyzer. “Michael Edwards Talking About ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’

During a Panel at Asolo Theater.” May 6, 2012. YouTube video. 10:48. https://youtu. be/jUgtTm52guk. 35 Aleksandr Gleyzer. “Michael Edwards Talking About ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’ During a Panel at Asolo Theater.”

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Simply receiving the blessing of members of the Cuban-American community did not resolve all ethical dilemmas with the project. When Edwards began working on a Cuban Hamlet what he knew best about Cuba was the Revolution in 1959. He began to work on a design based around that but realized after a rather explosive argument between two Cuban emigres on opposite ends of the political spectrum that this was a “politically fraught” idea and that “the potential for alienating somebody was fairly high.”36 Since he had hoped to create a Hamlet that would be a cultural bridge, this was not what he wanted. Furthermore, he realized that such a production could easily become rather reductive, with audience members simply thinking, “Oh, yes, that person is Batista, and that is Che, and that is Fidel” and that could result in the play being reduced to very easy political ideas that, rather than helping people to rethink Shakespeare, Cuban-American identity, or revenge would actually prevent them from really seeing the play at all.37 After further research, Edwards adjusted to the needs of the community and discarded his initial idea. He decided to set the play in 1898, which was the year in which the U.S. troops, including Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, participated in the Spanish-American War in Cuba. This historical moment was still culturally relevant, but also was a point remote enough in history that it would not carry the emotional weight of 1959. It would, Edwards hoped, allow an insight into Cuba and into Hamlet without stirring up so much emotional energy that the play could not be seen. The “cheeky” title, Hamlet , Prince of Cuba, would still catch people’s attention and make them look twice, and the setting in Cuba would still, he hoped, make people rethink the play and rethink their notions of what it is to be Cuban or Cuban-American, but without it being overly emotional or reductive.38 In spite of the decision to set the play in 1898 rather than 1959, some audience members still saw the play and drew political analogies, albeit different ones than Edwards had anticipated. He related how one CubanAmerican in the audience responded to the play: 36 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. (Part II). March 27, 2012. YouTube video. 6:24. https://youtu.be/uK-miUkVXZw. 37 Aleksandr Gleyzer. “Michael Edwards Talking About ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’ During a Panel at Asolo Theater.” 38 Aleksandr Gleyzer. “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 2).” May 6, 2012. YouTube video. 9:42. https://youtu.be/9tD_Jgqo3fQ.

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We have had a number of important thinkers and leaders in the CubanAmerican community that have come to see the play, and one of them, who runs the Cuba institute in Miami had a very strong reaction to seeing it in Spanish, and felt very strongly that He was Hamlet, that this was his story. That he’s now in his 60s and he left Cuba as a young man and felt so powerfully moved by what was going on, and he saw Gertrude as Cuba. He said, Gertrude is Cuba, Cuba is a woman, and she has betrayed me. She made the wrong choice. He thought Claudius was Fidel Castro. And he feels that pain and hurt that his mother made the wrong choice when he was a young man. So, this story was deeply personal for him.39

This was not the analogy Edwards originally had in mind, but part of cultural anthropophagy is allowing the audience to consume what they need from the play, even if the nutrients they draw are not what the artist intended to serve. This man was able to see himself in Hamlet and to place his sense of self in a place he had previously thought of as other. In addition to including performances in Spanish, Edwards incorporated Cuba in several other ways. The title, of course, suggested that the play was in Cuba. The set was intended to evoke a feeling of Cuba. The scenes in which Hamlet sees the ghost of his father were performed in a uniquely Cuban way, involving a Santería priest and spiritual possession, and there were a couple of references to the Spanish-American War, including the appearance, at the end of the play, of Fortinbras/Teddy Roosevelt. There were, however, limits to the effectiveness of this cultural anthropophagy. More than one reviewer noted that the Cuban setting of the play had not been thoroughly consumed and digested. Marty Clear commented that “the disappointment ... is that not more is made of the late nineteenth century Havana setting of this new but familiar work titled ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’” He praised much about the performance, but noted that “the play could’ve accomplished more, and really made a statement, by further exploring the Cuba connection.”40 The set design, a wall that was the backdrop to every scene, was one aspect that was supposed to embody a Cuban atmosphere. According to 39 Aleksandr Gleyzer. “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 1).” May 6, 2012. YouTube video. 13:53. https://youtu.be/LLdw-7bqR7A. 40 Marty Clear, “Asolo Rep’s ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’ is highly entertaining but could have accomplished more,” review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. Asolo Repertory Theatre, Sarasota, FL. Buzz Worthy, Bradenton Herald, April 11, 2012. http://heraldbuzzworthy. blogspot.com/2012/04/review-asolo-reps-hamlet-prince-of-cuba.html.

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the program for the play, “the set design for Hamlet , Prince of Cuba attempts to capture a highly detailed piece of iconography held in an existential, memory space. The wall is an expression of Cuba’s unique transience; architecture that exists across time periods and cultural influences and a ghost that haunts every moment of the play.”41 However, Clear observed that the set, “a dilapidated wall with three dysfunctional fans that appear broken, doesn’t give the audience much direction as to where the action takes place.” Likewise, he stated, the costumes “while uniformly handsome, could largely pass for attire worn by nineteenth century aristocrats from Cuba, Spain, England, the U.S., etc.”42 Thus these allusions to Cuba fail to thoroughly consume and embody Cuban culture. Another way in which Edwards and Asolo Repertory Theatre attempt to consume Cuban culture is through the scene in which Hamlet speaks with the ghost of his father. Rather than having Hamlet face his father’s ghost, played by another actor, Asolo’s Hamlet visits a Santero, or a priest of Santería, who enables Hamlet’s possession by his father’s spirit. Frankie J. Alvarez moves back and forth between playing the young Hamlet and then having his body possessed by the spirit of his dead father. Alvarez and Edwards, in discussing this scene, explained that the key to understanding the scene is that Hamlet is trying to avenge his father without himself becoming a monster.43 He wants vengeance but tries to follow his father’s instructions to “taint not [his] mind” (1.5.85). The performance of the scene, however, is somewhat troubling. In the English performance, the Santero is played by James Clarke, a white actor, who dons an oversized black “tribal mask” and walks in circles around Hamlet, smoking a cigar. In the Spanish performance, the Santero is played by Gonzalo Madurga, and he does not wear the mask, which one reviewer says “removes much of the mystery of the character,”44 but he does still smoke a cigar. Though the inclusion of the Yoruban ritual is intriguing and provides interesting insight into Hamlet’s motivation to avenge the father who has literally possessed him, the incorporation of these few Cuban elements, including

41 Asolo Repertory Theatre, “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” Spring Program, 2012. 17. 42 Clear, Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. 43 Asolo Rep, “From the Archives—Frankie J. Alvarez—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” Sept.

11, 2020. YouTube video, 6:48. https://youtu.be/7H7CQ2x1ZZo. 44 Handelman, Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.

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the caricatured mask and the Cuban cigar, in a play which otherwise does not proclaim its Cubanness, seems dangerously close to exotifying the Cuban culture, turning it into one of the “fetishized commodities” that Huang and Rivlin discussed.45 It differs from the inclusion of scenes of possession in the works of Tomás González, discussed in Chapter Four, or of Teatro Buendía, discussed in Chapter Two, because those works consumed a great deal of Cuban culture, and the possession was in context. In the case of Hamlet , Prince of Cuba, the slight touches give a flavor of Cuba without the Cuban culture being fully digested. This is not to say that Edwards and Asolo Repertory Theatre were intentionally exotifying Cuban culture. Their intentions were clearly to create a bridge between cultures, but the inclusion of only a few Cuban elements, with “no real sense of Cuba ... or a reason for transplanting the traditional Danish setting to the island nation,”46 makes those few elements look merely ornamental, not nourishing. Not enough Cuban culture has been consumed, and Asolo Repertory Theatre has not allowed themselves to be fully consumed by the culture with which they are engaged. Edwards also hoped that setting the play in Cuba would cause people to think about vengeance and justice. In his research into Cuba and Cuban-American relations, he began to realize that “the notion of vengeance is really at the heart of how a lot of people talk about losing everything and wanting it back, and the Cuban story is particularly intense for Americans.”47 However, as he thought about Hamlet in terms of Cuba and the Cuban-American story, he also realized how central the idea of vengeance is to the play; It became very clear to me that the play is about two families who are destroyed by the destructive power of vengeance. The desire for vengeance, as opposed to justice, can only be a dead end, it can only lead to more vengeance. Vengeance feeds on itself. But the desire for justice requires actually going, “You know what? I’m going to accept the decision of an objective opinion and it’s not going to be about my emotional need to get vengeance. It’s very hard to get to that point. Turns out that’s been the obsession of theatre since Aeschylus. That’s been one of our great obsessions. How do we challenge vengeance? In Hamlet Shakespeare wrote a 45 Huang and Rivlin, 2. 46 Handelman, Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. 47 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. (Part II), March 27, 2012.

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brilliant revenge story … we love revenge stories. We love to see them acted out and sometimes we get a great thrill when the villains are finally cornered and the person who has been victimized at the beginning gets to do horrible things to that person There is a visceral thrill in that. Well, Shakespeare critiques that. Shakespeare actually critiques that impulse in all of us. He’s gives us a revenge story but critiques it at the same time.48

In setting the play that is both a revenge story and a critique of a revenge story in Cuba, Edwards stages his own critique of revenge, showing both how it still fascinates us and how it leads to tragedy. This critique of vengeance, however, is another area in which the play is not entirely successful. Clear, in his review of the play, observes that though “Edwards notes in the program that ‘vengeance has also played a particularly destructive role in Cuba and in Cuban-American relations’ we never see this manifest on stage,” and he goes on to observe that “the only reference to the Spanish-American War of 1898 is a rather jarring surprise appearance at the end of the play.”49 That surprise appearance is a Fortinbras who looks like Teddy Roosevelt, who led the Rough Riders into Cuba to fight against Spain in the Spanish-American War. His appearance is actually one of two references to the Spanish-American War, the second being film scenes of American soldiers in the background. It is certainly true, however, that the critique of vengeance could have been more productive had there been a more thorough consumption and incorporation of the Cuban culture and of the setting during the SpanishAmerican War. Had more emphasis been placed on that setting, the closing appearance of Fortinbras/ Roosevelt might have had a different meaning. Fortinbras, after all, arrives after the deaths of the entire royal family and receives Hamlet’s “dying voice” (5.2.334). The United States entered into what had been a Cuban war for independence, fought against Spain, but then gained control of most of Spain’s colonies and occupied and controlled Cuba for years. Both Fortinbras and Roosevelt represent foreign forces entering and taking control, and certainly more could have been made of that connection, but as it is the play is lightly flavored with Cuban references but does not thoroughly consume and incorporate them.

48 Asolo Rep, “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. (Part II), March 27, 2012. 49 Clear, Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.

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Limits and Possibilities of Cultural Anthropophagy as Cultural Bridge The works of Company HavanaBama and Asolo Repertory Theatre’s Hamlet , Prince of Cuba shared a goal of bridging cultural divides. Both also placed participants, and audience members, in a dialectic in which they need to shift between the positions of self and other and remain aware of the need to interact ethically with the other. Both groups had some success with building their cultural bridges; however, that is not to suggest that cultural anthropophagy is a simple solution to overcoming cultural differences. There is still always the danger that one culture may feel consumed, but not seen and incorporated. There are also difficult challenges to overcome in the attempt to enter into this dialectic. Seth Panitch and his Company HavanaBama were in many ways successful in bridging the divides between the Cuban and American actors. However, there were limitations to their project. Panitch moved from directing two Shakespeare plays, which he felt would be universal, to directing a contemporary American play, and finally to directing his own bilingual Rock musical. This did require both an interest in consuming another culture and a willingness to surrender oneself to the process. Panitch observed that he was changed by the experience, as were all the actors involved. However, he was limited in some ways. Ideally, he admits, his project would have involved his directing a play by a Cuban playwright, but because he did not know Spanish and did not have a deep enough knowledge of Cuban theatre, he was not able to do that. That aspect of Cuban culture could not be digested in his project, but “meeting in Shakespeare,” knowing each other “through the transformative power of theatre,” did allow the members of this company to incorporate the other.50 Asolo Repertory Theatre and Michael Edwards, by consuming the “bilingual power” of the young, Latino actors, engaging a talented translator, and listening to the needs and desires of the community, did manage to bridge a cultural divide between the Latino and Anglo communities and did bring to the theatre an audience that had previously felt excluded. However, by failing to thoroughly digest and incorporate more of Cuban culture into the play, Edwards and Asolo missed the opportunity to create the critique of vengeance that they desired. It is not 50 Panitch, interview.

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clear, in this case, that Shakespeare “can make other cultures legible to Anglo-American audiences,”51 since an audience unfamiliar with Cuba prior to this performance would likely come away knowing little more about it. Instead, this production, despite some admirable goals and notable achievements, came closer to creating what Huang and Rivlin called “fetishized commodities in the global marketplace.”52 Ultimately, what Hamlet , Prince of Cuba and the works of Company HavanaBama may do best, is what Seth Panitch says that The Merchant of Venice does. They raise productive questions that may prove useful as the United States and Cuba restore diplomatic relations and as the people of these two countries try to repair their damaged relationship. How can we live together? Can we move beyond vengeance?

Bibliography Asolo Rep. “From the Archives—Frankie J. Alvarez—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” Sept. 11, 2020. YouTube video, 6:48. https://youtu.be/7H7CQ2x1ZZo. Asolo Rep. “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” March 21, 2012. YouTube video, 5:01. https://youtu.be/L4vN8kLgeFI. Asolo Rep. “Inside Asolo Rep—Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. (Part II).” March 27, 2012. YouTube video, 6:24. https://youtu.be/uK-miUkVXZw. Asolo Repertory Theatre, “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba,” Spring Program, 2012. https://www.Asolorep.org/assets/doc/ham-playbill-english-60a0f0217a.pdf. Asolo Repertory Theatre. Press Release: “Asolo Repertory Theatre Presents Hamlet, Prince of Cuba.” February 28, 2012. https://www.asolorep.org/ass ets/doc/71_HAMLET-PRINCE-OF-CUBA-f337d4774d.pdf. Chatterjee, Koel. “De-Centring Shakespeare, Incorporating Otherness: Diana Henderson in Conversation with Koel Chatterjee.” In Eating Shakespeare: Cultural anthropophagy as Global Methodology, edited by Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, 121– 35. Global Shakespeare Inverted. London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Clear, Marty. “Asolo Rep’s ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’ is Highly Entertaining but Could Have Accomplished More.” Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba. Asolo Repertory Theatre, Sarasota, FL. Buzz Worthy, Bradenton Herald. April 11, 2012. http://heraldbuzzworthy.blogspot.com/2012/04/reviewasolo-reps-hamlet-prince-of-cuba.html.

51 Huang and Rivlin, 1. 52 Huang and Rivlin, 1.

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Della Gatta, Carla. “From West Side Story to Hamlet, Prince of Cuba: Shakespeare and Latinidad in the United States.” Shakespeare Studies 44 (2016): 151–56. Gleyzer, Aleksandr. “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 1).” May 6, 2012. YouTube video, 13:53. https://youtu.be/LLdw-7bqR7A. Gleyzer, Aleksandr. “Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (part 2).” May 6, 2012. YouTube video, 9:42. https://youtu.be/9tD_Jgqo3fQ. Gleyzer, Aleksandr. “Michael Edwards Talking About ‘Hamlet, Prince of Cuba’ During a Panel at Asolo Theater.” May 6, 2012. YouTube video, 10:48. https://youtu.be/jUgtTm52guk. Handelman, Jay. “In Spanish, ‘Hamlet’ is Passionate.” Review of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba, directed by Michael Donald Edwards, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Sarasota, FL. Herald Tribune. May 5, 2012. https://www.heraldtribune. com/news/20120505/in-spanish-hamlet-is-passionate. Huang, Alexa Alice, and Elizabeth J. Rivlin, eds. Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, 1st ed. In Reproducing Shakespeare: New Studies in Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Panitch, Seth. “Merchant in Havana.” October 15, 2009. Vimeo, 5:32. https:// vimeo.com/7077708. Panitch, Seth. “The Merchant in Havana.” July 21, 2009. Vimeo, 12:09. https://vimeo.com/5700514. Reeves, Jay. “Diplomatic Drama: Cuban Actors in US perform Bard.” The Associated Press State & Local Wire. August 5, 2009. Nexis Uni. Reeves, Jay. “In a First Since 1959, Joint Cuban-American Acting Troupe to Perform off-Broadway; Cuban-American Troupe to Perform in NY, Havana.” Canadian Press. June 29, 2013. Nexis Uni. Refskou, Anne Sophie, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, Introduction to Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology (Global Shakespeare Inverted. London: Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2019), 1–24. Schwartz, Adam. Company HavanaBama: Bridging the Gulf. July 13, 2013. Vimeo, 31.24. https://vimeo.com/70350986. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd ed., edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus, and Gordon McMullan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Index

A Admetus, 145 AEDOS (Grupo de Experimentación Escénica), 58, 59, 65, 66, 69, 72, 73, 75, 76 AEDOS—El mundo en versos (Riondino), 46, 57–60, 65, 68, 73, 75 Afro-Cuban, 14, 26, 27, 31, 35, 40, 85–88, 96, 113 Alcestis, 138, 145 Alcestis Ascending , 138 Alonso, Alicia, 3 amateur, 12, 14, 50, 51, 56 Amorim, Marcel Alvaro de, 9, 11, 32, 33, 66, 84, 135. See also Eating Shakespeare Andrade, Oswald de, 9, 10, 84. See also “Cannibalist Manifesto” (Andrade) anthropophagi, 83, 84 anthropophagic movement, 8, 9, 84, 112

anthropophagy, 9, 33, 46, 66, 67, 69, 72, 84, 85, 90, 92, 101, 107, 111, 113, 124, 135, 137, 138. See also cultural anthropophagy Antonio, 140–142 appropriation, 10, 46, 49, 137, 138 Ariel (character), 19, 22, 24, 25, 29, 35, 38, 39, 41 Ariel (Rodó), 22, 24 Asolo Repertory Theatre, 147–150, 153, 154, 156. See also Edwards, Michael; Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Edwards) B Ballet, 3, 4, 7, 45 Bassanio, 141, 142 Batista, Fulgencio, 5, 151 Bay of Pigs Invasion, 6, 86 bello arte de ser, El (González), 85, 112, 114 Beyond Therapy, 138, 145 Biblioteca Nacional José Martí , 2, 4 bicultural, 138

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Woodford-Gormley, Shakespeare in Cuba, Global Shakespeares, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87367-7

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INDEX

bilingual, 15, 138, 139, 147–150, 156 Bloom, Harold, 19 Bosman, Anston, 111 Boudet, Rosa Ileana, 79 bridge, 136, 138, 140, 146–148, 150, 154, 156. See also cultural anthropophagy; cultural bridge Burnett, Mark Thornton, 48, 49, 72, 73 C Caliban (character), 10–14, 19–31, 37–41 “Caliban” (Fernández Retamar), 9, 10, 13, 20, 21, 23, 26 “Caliban ante la antropofagia” (Fernández Retamar), 10, 25 camino del medio, El (González), 80, 85, 89, 101, 105, 107, 112 cannibal(ism), 9–11, 13–15, 20, 24, 25, 32–34, 38–41, 82–85, 96, 101, 104, 112, 115, 137 “Cannibalist Manifesto” (Andrade), 9, 111, 130 Carrió, Raquel, 20, 26–28, 30–34, 38–41, 119. See also Otra tempestad (Carrió and Lauten); Teatro Buendía Carvalho, Vinicius Mariano de, 9, 11, 32, 33, 66, 84, 135. See also Eating Shakespeare Castro, Fidel, 5–7, 46, 48, 86, 151, 152 Castro, Raúl, 7, 8 CDR. See Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) Changó, 39 Cheo Briñas. See Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas Claudius, 115, 120, 121, 125, 127, 128, 152

collaboration, 141, 144, 146 Columbus, Christopher, 5, 24, 33, 83 comedy, 65, 68, 80, 141, 142, 149 Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), 6, 14, 46, 49–52, 55, 56 community, 6, 7, 14, 46, 47, 50–56, 72, 75, 76, 101, 143, 147, 151, 152, 156 Cruz, Nilo, 149 Cuban Missile Crisis, 6, 86 Cuban Revolution, 5, 21–23, 57, 86, 87, 96. See also Revolution cultural anthropophagy, 8–10, 14, 15, 32, 33, 46, 56, 58, 60, 73, 75, 76, 83, 84, 89, 101, 104, 111, 112, 114, 135–138, 146, 152, 156. See also anthropophagy cultural bridge, 15, 138, 143, 147, 151, 156. See also bridge D de Amorim, Marcel Alvaro, 111, 112, 130 de Andrade, Oswald, 111, 114, 130 de Carvalho, Vinicius Mariano, 111, 112, 130 décima(s), 46, 56–61, 63–67, 69–71, 73, 75 Della Gatta, Carla, 148, 149 Desdemona, 12, 80–82, 89, 90, 105, 106 Desdi, 89, 90–99, 102, 105–107. See also Desdemona D’haen, Theo, 19, 20 dialectic, 138, 156 dialogue, 20, 33, 34, 39, 41, 42 Díaz-Pimienta, Alexis, 3, 14, 46, 56–71, 74, 75. See also AEDOS (Grupo de Experimentación Escénica); Shakespeare in Avana: altri Romeo alter Giuliette

INDEX

[Shakespeare in Havana: Other Romeos, other Juliets] Dorr, Nelson, 4 Durang, Christopher, 138, 145 E Eating Shakespeare, 8, 9, 11, 32, 33, 66, 84, 135 Echu Elegguá, 37 Edwards, Michael, 138, 147–156. See also Asolo Repertory Theatre; Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Edwards) Elegguá, 35, 38–40. See also Echu Elegguá embargo, 2, 3, 6, 7, 62, 99, 135, 136, 138, 146 Escambray. See Teatro Escambray Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120–122. See also Piel de violetas (Sáez); Sáez, Joel ethics, 137, 138, 150, 151 F feeling, 79, 103–106 Fernández Retamar, Roberto, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20–22, 23–26, 28, 30, 33, 39–41, 83, 84. See also “Caliban” (Fernández Retamar); “Caliban ante la antropofagia” (Fernández Retamar) First Congress of Education and Culture, 6, 14, 47, 48 First National Seminar of Theatre, 47, 53 Flaherty, Jennifer, 1 Fortinbras, 150, 152, 155 Fowler, Agustín, 79, 94 G Galery, Maria Clara Versiani, 1

161

Gertrude, 36, 120, 121, 125, 128, 129, 152 global Shakespeare, 10, 11, 135–138 Globe Theatre, 3, 27, 31, 136 Goldberg, Jonathan, 23 González, Tomás, 79–82, 85–90, 92–97, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 112, 113, 154. See also bello arte de ser, El (González); camino del medio, El (González); Ote vino en un charter (González); Yago tiene feeling (González) Greenblatt, Stephen, 30 Greenhalgh, Jill, 118 Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas, 51, 55, 56. See also Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó (Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas) Gutiérrez, Héctor, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75 H Hamlet (character), 15, 27, 29, 34–38, 40, 41, 94, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119–121, 123–126, 128–132, 150, 152, 153, 155 Hamlet (play), 13–15, 34, 35, 85, 88, 111–115, 119, 120, 122–130, 136, 139, 147–154, 156, 157 Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Edwards), 15, 136, 139, 147, 148, 151–154, 156, 157 Havana, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 46, 49, 50, 55, 57, 59, 62, 76, 88, 90, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 119, 136, 140, 144, 145, 152 HavanaBama (Company), 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 146, 147, 156, 157. See also Panitch, Seth Hermia, 143 Huang, Alexa, 136–138, 154, 157 Hulme, Peter, 28, 29, 83

162

INDEX

humor, 65, 66, 68, 71, 75

I Iago, 12, 65, 79, 85, 89, 90, 93, 94 inclusive, 10, 11, 69, 75, 107, 135, 136

J Jáuregui, Carlos A., 10 Jessica, 141 Jones, Sara Penrhyn, 118 Juliet, 12, 49, 62–68, 69–72, 123–126. See also Julieta Julieta, 46, 62, 67. See also Juliet

K Kamps, Ivo, 127 Kliman, Bernice W., 1, 45. See also Latin American Shakespeares Kuster, Ted, 54

L Lady Macbeth, 27, 37, 40 Laertes, 15, 120, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 149, 150 Lamming, George, 22 language, 10, 14, 20, 22–25, 28, 30–32, 38, 40, 49, 65, 72–74, 136, 137, 139, 143, 148–150 Latin American Shakespeares , 1, 8, 45 Lauten, Flora, 20, 26–29, 31, 32, 38, 39, 41, 54, 55. See also Otra tempestad (Carrió and Lauten); Teatro Buendía; Teatro Escambray La Yaya. See Teatro La Yaya Leal, Rine, 46–48, 53 Lie, Nadia, 19, 20 López, Armando, 79

López, Yunet, 64–66, 68, 70, 71, 73 Lorenzo, 141 Luyanó, 50. See also Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó (Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas)

M Macbeth (character), 27, 30, 36–38, 40, 41, 94 Macbeth (play), 37 Magdalena, 118, 119 Magdalena Project, 114, 118, 119 Magdalena sin fronteras , 118, 119 Maggi, Beatriz, 23 Mannoni, Octave, 22, 23 Martiatu, Inés María, 79, 80, 85, 87–89, 96, 105, 107 Mary Magdalene, 118, 119 Merchant of Venice, The, 139–142, 145, 157 Mercutio, 58, 65, 66, 68, 69, 74 Miami, 51, 52, 57 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, 138, 142–144 Milián, José, 89, 97 Miranda, 26, 27, 29, 37–40 Modenessi, Alfredo Michel, 1, 11, 45, 46, 48, 56, 58, 84 Montaigne, Michel de, 33, 39. See also “On Cannibals” (Montaigne) Morales-Diaz, Enrique, 2 movement of amateur artists, 14. See also amateur; movimiento de artistas aficionados movimiento de artistas aficionados, 47, 50. See also movement of amateur artists

N Neely, Carol Thomas, 127

INDEX

O Ocampo-Guzman, Antonio, 149 Ofelia, 36, 114, 115, 117, 119, 121–132 “On Cannibals” (Montaigne), 11 Ophelia, 12, 15, 27, 35, 36, 40, 41, 112, 114, 120–122, 124, 125, 127–131 orisha(s), 26, 27, 35–40, 112 Orkin, Martin, 111 Oshún, 27, 35, 36, 38, 40 Ote, 89–107, 112 Otello all’improvviso (Riondino), 57, 59, 65 Ote vino en un charter (González), 85, 89–91, 99, 103, 106, 107 Othello (character), 12, 27, 38, 40, 80–84, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 99, 105 Othello (play), 4, 12–14, 57, 59, 65, 79–82, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 101, 104, 107, 112 other(ness), 10, 14, 15, 33, 83–86, 100, 135, 136, 138, 141, 143, 146, 152, 156 Otra tempestad (Carrió and Lauten), 20, 26, 27, 29–34, 37–41, 112. See also Teatro Buendía outsider(s), 82, 83, 85, 93, 99, 100, 136, 138–140, 144, 150 Oyá, 27, 35–37, 40

P Padilla, Heberto, 6, 86 Panitch, Seth, 15, 138–147, 156, 157. See also HavanaBama (company) parameters, 6, 7, 86, 90, 96, 100 parasite(s), 85, 101, 102, 104, 106 parasitic, 14, 84, 85, 101, 103, 104 Pavón Tamayo, Luis, 88 pie forzado, 57, 58, 60, 61

163

Piel de violetas (Sáez), 15, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 122, 125, 128, 129, 132. See also Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara; Pineda, Roxana Pineda, Roxana, 114–120, 125, 126, 129, 131. See also Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara Polonius, 15, 120, 125, 126, 129, 131 Portia, 141, 142 Portuando, Alianne, 143 possession, 87, 94, 101, 152–154 Prospero, 11, 12, 19, 22, 23, 25–27, 31, 35–41 Puck, 144

Q Quesada, Armando, 88 quinquenio gris , 6, 14, 85, 87, 88, 107, 113

R race, 14, 80, 89, 92, 93, 96 racism, 14, 80, 87, 96, 101 Refskou, Anne Sophie, 9, 11, 32, 33, 66, 84, 111, 112, 130, 135. See also Eating Shakespeare relationship, 135, 139–142, 144–148, 157 Renan, Ernest, 22, 23 repentismo, 14, 56–61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 73–76 repentista(s), 14, 57–62, 64–66, 68–75 Retamar, Roberto Fernández. See Fernández Retamar, Roberto revenge, 15, 136, 139, 147, 150, 151, 155. See also vengeance Revolution, 5–7, 10, 12, 14, 21, 41, 46–49, 53, 62, 79, 80, 86, 87,

164

INDEX

90, 101. See also Cuban Revolution Riders, Rough, 151 Riondino, David, 46, 56–60, 62, 64–66, 68, 72–74. See also AEDOS—El mundo en versos (Riondino); Otello all’improvviso (Riondino) Rivlin, Elizabeth, 136–138, 154, 157 Rodó, José Enrique, 22, 23–25. See also Ariel (Rodó) Romeo, 12, 45, 49, 63, 64, 66–72, 123, 126 Romeo and Juliet , 13, 14, 45, 46, 48–50, 58–60, 62, 73, 76, 114, 123, 124, 126, 128, 132, 144 Romeo y Julieta en Luyanó (Grupo de Teatro Cheo Briñas), 2, 12, 46, 49–52, 55, 58, 64, 76 Roosevelt, Teddy, 5, 151, 152, 155 Rough Riders, 5 S Sáez, Joel, 115–117, 120, 129 Salaya, Camilo, 80–82 Santa Clara, 79, 80, 87, 88, 90, 93, 99, 121 Santería, 27, 40, 87, 94, 152, 153 Santiago, Silviano, 89, 92, 101 Santos, Rick J., 1, 45, 90. See also Latin American Shakespeares Sardiñas, Emiliano, 65, 66, 68, 70, 74 Shakespeare in Avana: altri Romeo alter Giuliette [Shakespeare in Havana: Other Romeos, other Juliets], 46, 58, 60–62, 64, 65 Shakespeare in Havana. See Shakespeare in Avana: altri Romeo alter Giuliette [Shakespeare in Havana: Other Romeos, other Juliets] Shakespeare y sus máscaras , 3

Shylock, 27, 30, 40, 140–142 Silence, 114, 118–120, 129, 131, 132 Spanish-American War, 5, 151, 152, 155 Subirats, Eduardo, 84 Sycorax, 12, 27, 28, 38, 39 T Tabares, Vivian Martínez, 12 Teatro Buendía, 26, 27, 39, 112, 119, 154. See also Carrió, Raquel; Lauten, Flora; Otra tempestad (Carrió and Lauten) teatro de la comunidad, 7, 14, 52–54, 56, 75 Teatro El Público, 4 Teatro Escambray, 53, 54 Teatro La Caridad, 79, 81 Teatro La Rosa, 117 Teatro La Yaya, 54, 55, 56. See also Lauten, Flora Teatro Mella, 4, 88 Tempest, The, 11, 13, 20, 21, 23, 26–29, 33, 37–39, 112 Terando, Lorena, 2 tragedy, 3, 8, 35, 36, 65, 70, 80, 81 transcendent acting, 86, 87, 94, 97 translation, 25, 28, 31, 35, 46, 66, 70–74, 149 Tupinambá, 9, 33. See also Tupi people Tupi or not Tupi, 111 Tupi people, 111 Tybalt, 58, 66, 68, 69, 74 V Vaughan, Alden T., 11, 19 Vaughan, Virginia Mason, 11, 19 Vedado, 62, 63 vengeance, 150, 153–156. See also revenge

INDEX

Villegas, Alma, 54 voice, 15, 30, 114–121, 125–127, 129, 131, 132 W Weiss, Judith A., 53 Woodford, Donna C., 1, 45 Woodford-Gormley, Donna, 1, 8, 21, 45, 85, 113

165

Y Yachnin, Paul, 11, 33 Yago, 79, 87, 89–94, 97, 99, 101–107 Yago tiene feeling (González), 79, 80, 85, 87, 89, 90, 101, 103, 105, 107 Yoruban, 35, 40