In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviews167 century. Interestingly, however, the first representation in Poland of Calderón's Lances de amor y fortuna was performed in German (Der künstiliche Lügner) by Johannes Velten's itinerant company, which also staged plays in the German-speaking countries (see Franzback, 177 ff). Susan L. Fischer Bucknell University El texto puesto en escena: Estudios sobre la comedia del siglo de oro. En honor a Everett W. Hesse. Ed. Barbara Mujica y Anita K. Stell. With the collaboration of Ángel Sánchez. London: Tamesis, 2000. 209 pp. This collection of nineteen essays on the staging of Golden Age theater, appropriately dedicated to the memory of Everett W. Hesse, is divided in two parts: play production in the early modern period (thirteen articles) and modern-day revivals (six articles ). In the first section, Catherine Connor, in "Hacia una teoría sociocultural del espectador aurisecular," examines the way that the theories of Iser, Fish, Eco, Barthes, Maravall, and Bakhtin, as well as the ideas of the "preceptistas," Lope de Vega and de Pellicer, might elucidate the spectator's process of making meaning . In particular, Connor astutely asserts the shortcomings of Iser's by now classic concept of reader response refashioned for the theatrical experience, not only because of the difference between page and stage, but also because the theory does not account for "diferencias históricas, sean a base de distinciones de género sexual, etnicidad, geografía o clase" (5). Robert Johnson, in "El movimiento escénico y las 'relaciones proxémicas' en El médico de su honra de Pedro Calderón de la Barca," also pays close attention to the play's impact on the spectator vis à vis those familiar elements of semiotic analysis cited, however curiously , apud John Varey's Cosmovistón y escenografía (Madrid: Castalia, 1998): "indumentaria, tramoyas, movimientos y agrupaciones de los personajes en el tablado, gestos y ademanes, colores y ritmos de actuaciones" (66). Without considering poten- 168BCom, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002) tially groundbreaking modern productions of El médico (e.g., 1986 and 1994, Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico [Madrid]), Johnson comes to view as problematic the received notion that the perspectives of today's spectators are different from those of their seventeenth-century counterparts. In "La representación de la violencia en las obras de la cuarta parte de Lope de Vega," Margaret R. Hicks focuses on the use of visual signs, sound effects, and dialogue to create, however indirectly , a sense of violence on stage and so stimulate the spectator 's imaginative participation in works belonging to the first decade of the seventeenth century. In "Legitimando lo imaginado: dimensiones ocultas de las leyendas de san Ginés de Pedro de Rivadeneira, S. J. (1599) y de Lofingido verdadero de Lope de Vega (1607-1608)," Cecilia McGinniss explores how political, social, and theological signs were revealed in the theatrical space for the spectator to capture. Elma Dassbach, in "Representación de lo sobrenatural en las comedias hagiografleas," examines the spectacular use not only of "tramoyas, apariencias, adornos y trajes " (33), but also of "escotillones" (43), thereby underscoring the importance of the visual in the staging of comedia. Donald T. Dietz captures graphically the prominence of plastic arts in "La serpiente de metal de Pedro Calderón de la Barca" by illustrating his textual analysis with nine photographic reproductions of artworks referenced. Similarly, Ángel Sánchez, in "Pintura y espectáculo teatral en La aurora en Copacabana de Calderón," emphasizes the visualization of the artistic process and a possible relation between the plastic arts and poetry. Teresa Kirschner, in "Espectacularidad del teatro de Lope de Vega: el caso de Amor, pleito y desafío," discusses the paucity of audiovisual stage mechanisms manifested in the extant autographic manuscript of the play, once attributed to Alarcón. In "Leyendo la casa: imágenes escénicas en Peribáñez y El Comendador de Ocaña," Donald Larson treats the deconstructive violation of human space in terms of its various domestic configurations, aptly applying Kenneth M. Cameron and Theodore J. C. Hoffman's notion that "a performance is a succession of static tableaux, each one symbolizing something about the play" (Theatrical...

pdf

Share