Theatre in Spanish? Where? Curricular Tensions Between Language and Theatre Departments

I focus here on US universities' institutional responsibilities regarding theatre in Spanish. Undoubtedly, discussions in the US academy about Spanish-language theatre differ completely from those related to theatre in French or German. The growing use of Spanish in the US mass media (newspapers, TV, Internet) and services (judicial, education, hospitals, etc.) has completely transformed the situation of Latin American immigrants in the last twenty years. It is no longer necessary and urgent for Hispanics to learn English in order to adapt to their new environment. Maria Horne, in an essay published in the 2002 collection Theatre Without Frontiers, has detailed the growth of the Hispanic population in the US and its impact on academic life and, consequently, curricular changes. However, the increasing number of native speakers of Spanish does not seem to have greatly affected theatre and language departments. Professional groups perform in Spanish in New York, Miami, Washington DC, or Los Angeles, and amateur Spanish-language productions receive limited promotion by language departments, but there is no professional academic training for actors and directors interested in Spanish-language performance. Despite the increase in the number of potential Spanish-speaking spectators and in the Hispanic market, Latino playwrights do not seem interested either in the growth of Spanish in this country or in Latin American theatre as a cultural phenomenon. In the university, the debate on future curricular changes is just beginning, and, from my perspective, it is filled with problematic confusions and policy restrictions.

Let me sketch out the curricular frame within which Latin American theatre in Spanish struggles. This will also allow us to visualize the abyss separating language and theatre departments. Both perspectives pose arguments requiring urgent debate.

The Language Department's Perspective

Language departments insist that their goal is to promote language and culture, as if theatrical production and diverse performative strategies were not part of a region and its culture. They concentrate on the literary dramatic text and disregard the specific theatrical context. Language programs sponsor theatre activities as cultural decoration, but they depend upon faculty members' good will and enthusiasm or leave it to a group of students, who—faced with a lack of appropriate spaces, technical resources, and schedule flexibility—can produce a show with pedagogically questionable results. Language students typically perform in a classroom, with few props and lacking suitable lighting and sound equipment, and often deficient acting training. Acting is then reduced to the physical illustration of a memorized and recited text. Consequently, audiences attending such a production leave with a disastrous impression. When compared to the technical precision achieved by theatre and media departments, these productions can create an inappropriate lack of appreciation for Latin American theatre in particular, and for Spanish-language theatre in general.

Ironically, despite the enormous bibliography produced by language departments in the last twenty years regarding the body (its identity, resistance, submission, and perversion), these very same departments seem curiously uninterested in promoting courses where knowledge emerges from the body itself, in all its silences, rhythms, ruptures, and pleasures. Apparently, language departments can discuss the imaginary and symbolic dimension of the body in literature, but they refuse to deal with the body itself. Language departments resolve this contradiction by installing sophisticated language labs. They think that traditional classes—centered on the instructor's body and voice—require audiovisual enhancement. Thus, they spend a substantial budgetary amount in endlessly updating technology. It is obvious that there are no real changes here, only the illusion of change. Students remain rooted to their chairs, perhaps more paralyzed in front of the computer's screen than in the bodily dynamic of traditional classes. A weird paradox: language departments promote theatre as literature, but they want their students to approach literature through an audiovisual experience. The Cartesian prejudice privileging reason over corporeal passion is exacerbated by the ideology of entertainment.

Problematic theoretical and methodological questions emerge even at the content...