"Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama, 1580-1680"

FORUM "PARALLEL LIVES: SPANISH AND ENGLISH NATIONAL DRAMA, 1580-1680" CHARLES GANELIN Purdue University During the week of October 15-18, 1987, on the campus of the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, the first "Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama, 1580-1680" conference was held. The 30 invited participants, among them noted comedia and Shakespearian scholars as well as translators, presented papers including such topics as approaches to translations, performance theory, semiotics of English and Spanish plays, and a discussion of themes common to both theatres. The conference, sponsored by the University of Calgary and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), was organized by Louise Fothergill-Payne and Jim Black (University of Calgary) , José Ruano de la Haza (University of Ottawa) and Don Beecher (Carleton University). In a number of sessions the papers read were particularly interrelated and complementary (for example , John Orrell (University of Alberta) on "Spanish Corrales and English Theatres"; Jay Allen (University of Kentucky), "The Disposition of the Stage in the English and Spanish Theatres"; and John Varey (Westfield College, London), "Memory Theatres, Playhouses and Corrales de Comedias"). Just as important as the conference itself, the results promise to focus greater attention on the parallels between the Spanish and English 137 138BCom, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Summer 1988) national theatres. A two-volume publication (hopefully to see light in 1989) will help disseminate the wealth of information presented at the four-day meeting. The first volume, Parallel Lives, contains those articles dealing with specific Spanish and English plays, while the second, Prologue to Performance: Spanish Classical Theatre Today, aims to call the attention of the non-Hispanist to Spain's rich heritage of classical drama. Included in the second volume are papers given at the first-day symposium "Translating the Theatrical Experience." One of the more exciting spin-offs of the conference is a project, headed by Cynthia Rodriguez-Badendyck of Baruch College, to foment the production of Spanish Golden Age drama in translation; she has put together a committee of scholars and directors in an effort to contact theatre companies and provide them with support in locating and identifying suitable texts, or even arranging for the translation of specific texts, if so desired. The purpose is to attract a wider audience to the comedia and so recognize its importance. In a related project, Vern Williamsen of the University of Missouri, with the support of Don Dietz (Texas Tech University) and the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre, Inc. , is seeking grants to promulgate productions of comedias in translation, and to provide texts to be developed in collaboration with directors. The thrust behind this movement is to encourage performance texts, not a literary text simply adapted to the exigencies of performance. The goal here, too, is to bring the comedia alive to a contemporary generation, and open it up to non-Spanish-speaking audiences. "Parallel Lives" is going to have an impact on anyone concerned with the dissemination of theatre. A second "parallel lives," to study the connections between the French and Spanish classical theatres, is tentatively planned for 1989 at the University of Montreal. The importance of these present and future conferences clearly goes well beyond a gathering of scholars and a publication. Many of us who study the theatrical/literary "text" have already had many of our firmest ideas about classical Spanish theatre shaken by experiences at El Chamizal in El Paso. Scholars and directors are beginning to realize their interdependences ; translators almost by definition must help to bridge the gap between theatre read and theatre performed. The problems faced by students of both the English and Spanish stage, 1580-1680, can be shared; putting text into action, understanding how specific actions emanate from what we call a "literary text," are tasks for which neither language nor geographic boundaries exist. The conventions of theatre Ganelin139 held in common allow us to cross those boundaries, and it is up to us, with a solid beginning in Calgary in 1987, to translate related experiences for each other as well as for the unconverted. ...