Adapting La dama boba and The Taming of the Shrew for a Foreign Audience

Laurence Boswell’s 2013 production of Lope’s The Lady Boba in three cities in the United Kingdom paralleled a traveling production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to various countries throughout Europe by the British theatre company, Propeller, that same year. With thematic similarities yet antithetical stage histories, these two productions illuminate how repertory and repertoire function to make plays less foreign to audiences from another culture. This article focuses on the layers of translation for the stage that are facilitated through aligning the plays with recent stagings in each country. Ultimately, negotiating these dramaturgical elements allows for a constant re-invocation of theatricality that suspends mimetic depictions of problematic gender dynamics in The Lady Boba and The Taming of the Shrew.