2009 Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."

—Matsuo Bashō

This 32^nd edition of the Classical Theater Festival of Almagro (2 July-26 July 2009) celebrated the 400^th anniversary of Lope's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias and the revolutionary impact that text and its author have had on the history of Spanish theater. It also opened a four-year period dedicated to Lope, which will extend through the 2012 Festival, marking the author's 450^th birthday. As a visual symbol of Lope's lead role this year, Alicante's Carros de Foc transformed their 30-foot-tall, crane-driven marionette, named Salvador, into the monstruo de la naturaleza himself, parading him through the Plaza Mayor on the late afternoons of 19 and 25 July, where he roamed and recited (auto)biographical nuggets to the astonished onlookers (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.

"Marioneta Gigante." Carros de Foc. Photo: Manuel Ruiz Toribio. Photo Courtesy of the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro.

Among the seventeen separate Lope texts presented this year, audiences saw four versions of Fuenteovejuna—with troupes from Cuba, Japan, and Spain mounting this piece—two versions of La gatomaquia, and one company even staged Lope's Arte nuevo in the Corral de Comedias. The Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (CNTC) produced Lope's ¿De cuando acá nos vino? and the anonymous La estrella de Sevilla, a play they had not done since Miguel Narros's magnificent staging (of Joan Oleza's version) which debuted at the Almagro Festival for the CNTC's 1998-1999 season. And while Estrella may well have been penned by another poet, its inclusion in the Festival was a logical choice for the CNTC, since this masterpiece certainly bears the seal of excellence ("es de Lope"), if not the stamp of authenticity.

Festival Director Emilio Hernández gave the classics a contemporary flavor, making them relevant to contemporary spectators through various means, including the use of the internet (opening a Lope profile on Facebook), programming an array of modern versions of the classics (e.g., Portuguese director João Garcia Miguel's Burgher King Lear, or Miguel Narros's flamenco rendition of Fedra), and a section—"Lope a tope"—aimed specifically at the younger crowd. Opening night included the dazzling performance art by the madrileño Suso 33, titled Lanzadera de palabras, an interactive live painting that turned Almagro's Ayuntamiento into a support for laser graffiti that projected images (Lope's face, comedy and tragedy masks, theater curtains, etc.) and a host of Lope-relevant words as called out by spectators through a megaphone ("Belisa," "Perro," "Arte," "Venganza," "Enamorada," "Fuente," "Boba," "Amarilis," "Caballero," "Gatomaquia," etc.); the artist signed off with a general well-wishing to all the companies and actors at this year's Festival: "Mucha Mierda" (Fig. 2).

Not surprisingly, many locals were scandalized by this radical Festival opening, and that was, amusingly, the talk of the townies during the entire month. In a similar vein, a free rap concert by Rapsodas en el Barrio—a group of multiethnic Gen Yers from Madrid's Orcasitas neighborhood—started up on 5 July in the Plaza de Santo Domingo at 1:30 a.m., just as the throngs were exiting the theaters around town. While I have definitely seen and heard better rap performances, the incorporation of hip-hop versions of classic texts (including fragments of El caballero de Olmedo and Fuenteovejuna) was a novel touch to this year's Festival. These examples of making the classics more accessible to today's youth through different "languages" and vehicles lies at the heart of Hernández's mission: "porque los clásicos son más que teatro, es un arte multidisciplinar que aúna hoy al igual que en el Siglo de Oro interpretación, música y danza." And this democratizing mission is nothing less than the continuation of Lope's original project to please the general audience—"como las paga el vulgo, es justo / hablarle en...