Avant Bard Blog

DC Metro Theater Arts is running a series of interviews with members of the cast of Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories. In the excerpts below they tell their own favorite holiday memories and their holiday wishes. Click on each actor’s photo to read their full Q&A.

Séamus Miller
(plays seven-year-old Truman, nicknamed Buddy)

Favorite holiday memory: “I really liked Obama’s speech at the White House Christmas party: ‘Happy Holidays! Don’t steal the forks.’ ”

Holiday wish: “I would like Bernie Sanders to come down my chimney in a Santa suit and restore funding to arts education. I’m only half-joking; I’ve seen theatre make such a difference in young people’s lives. Everybody needs art.”

Liz Dutton
(plays various roles as “Woman” plus a dog named Queenie)

Favorite holiday memory: “For Thanksgiving, my family used to drive up to Massachusetts in the snow to spend the holiday at my great grandmother’s house—at the time she was in her 90s, and she lived to be 107. We all gathered at her small place, and I think she managed to cook the whole meal herself, including her famous “homemade” pies (until we saw the Mrs. Smith’s boxes in the trash…). She didn’t have a whole lot to entertain my sister and our cousin, but at night we would sleep on her pull-out couch and watch State Fair (the only movie I think she owned).”

Holiday wish:“Good health to everyone in my family.”

Christopher Henley
(plays grownup Truman)

Favorite holiday memory: “Thanksgiving: Returning to DC from early afternoon Thanksgiving dinners in southern Pennsylvania, my family would stop in Thurmont, MD, where a liquor store would be inexplicably open. We would stock up for the rest of the drive home (with my 30-years-sober brother at the wheel) and debrief. Christmas: Everyone in my family would bring over the Christmas cards we’d received. We would put them around the house, everyone would look at them all, and then we would vote in various categories (best card, worst card, trendiest card, most clueless card, etc., including some categories not suitable for publication).

Holiday wish: “That violence would cease to be a defining aspect of our species, and that we would take greater and more forward-thinking care of our planet.”

Charlotte Akin
(plays Buddy’s cousin Miss Sook)

Favorite holiday memory: “I know it sounds cliche, but [my favorite holiday memory is] being with family. When my sister and her large family moved to a mountaintop ranch outside of Aspen, my whole family converged on them one Christmas. We took horse-drawn sleigh rides, went ice skating, skiing, caroling. Very Currier and Ives. It was a magical Christmas. Being with the whole family, priceless.“

Holiday wish:“That the world wasn’t such a scary place right now. So much sadness, so much turmoil. When you turn on the news it’s hard to get in the holiday spirit.”

Devon Ross
(plays various roles as “Man,” including Odd Henderson the bully)

Favorite holiday memory: “I always loved having Christmas back in Amarillo, Texas, with my extended family.”

Holiday wish: “I’ve been asking Santa for a jetpack for as long as I can remember.”

What’s your favorite holiday memory? If you had one holiday wish, what would it be?

Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories plays to December 20, 2015, at Theatre on the Run. For more information and tickets, click here.

“It’s fruitcake weather!” exclaims Miss Sook in Holiday Memories, and you just know she can’t wait to cook up a big batch with seven-year-old Buddy (her fond nickname for the young Truman Capote). 

But not everybuddy loves fruitcake the way Miss Sook and Buddy did. Some people loathe it, in fact. Fruitcake may be America’s most contested holiday tradition. Maegan Clearwood has the dish on its history and significance.

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]F[/su_dropcap]ood was an enormous part of Truman Capote’s childhood years in rural Alabama. Even during the worst of the Great Depression, elaborate family meals were a staple of daily household life. In fact, a typical early breakfast in the Faulk home usually included •ham • eggs • pancakes • fried chicken • pork chops • catfish • squirrel • grits and gravy • black-eyed peas • collards (with corn bread to sop up the collard liquor) • biscuits and homemade jams and preserves • pound cake • sweet milk • buttermilk • coffee flavored with chicory

And then there was fruitcake.

Miss Sook had dozens of fruitcake recipes, each of which she made with meticulous care months before delivering them to friends, acquaintances, and even admired celebrities (the thank-you letter she received from President Roosevelt became one of her most prized possessions). Truman’s aunt Marie Rusdill later compiled Miss Sook’s recipes into a cookbook (which will be available for purchase in the lobby!) and became immortalized as the famous Fruitcake Lady on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Although fruitcake has become more of a holiday joke than a treat in recent decades, it is still one of America’s most distinctive seasonal traditions. Below, excerpted from How Stuff Works, is a comprehensive overview of the controversial loaf’s complex legacy:

History of Fruitcake

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]C[/su_dropcap]ulinary lore claims that ancient Egyptians placed an early version of the fruitcake on the tombs of loved ones, perhaps as food for the afterlife. But fruitcakes were not common until Roman times, when pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and barley mash were mixed together to form a ring-shaped dessert. Prized for its portability and shelf life, Roman soldiers often brought fruitcake with them to the battlefields. Later, in the Middle Ages, preserved fruit, spices, and honey were added to the mix and fruitcakes gained popularity with crusaders.

With the colonies’ providing a boon in cheap, raw materials, 16th-century fruitcakes contained cupfuls of sugar, which added another density booster to the cake. In addition, fruits from the Mediterranean were candied and added to the mixture, along with nuts. Each successive century seemed to contribute yet another element to the cake, like alcohol during the Victorian era, until it became weighty with the cumulative harvests of the seasons.

In fact, by the early 18th century, fruitcake became synonymous with decadence and was outlawed in Europe, where it was proclaimed “sinfully rich.” The law was eventually repealed, since fruitcake had become an important part of the tea hour, particularly in England.

But it’s perhaps the former host of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, who best determined fruitcake’s place in the modern psyche. Deriding the loaf as a holiday reject, he once claimed. “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

Characteristics of Fruitcake

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]T[/su_dropcap]he average fruitcake weighs two pounds and serves six to seven people. Its ability to languish on countertops for months without a spot of mold developing is due to its moisture-stabilizing properties, mainly sugar. The high density of sugar reduces the cake’s water content, and therefore its ability to bind to microorganisms (bacterium).

For fruitcake aficionados, fruit can make or break the baked good, and preference varies widely. But most bakers do agree on one aspect of fruitcake baking: The fruitcake should be made at least one month in advance of its gifting (or eating). Some even make the fruitcake one year in advance. This allows the cake to deepen its flavors, particularly since fruit contains tannins that, like wine, release over time. It’s also common for the baker to add another seasoning dimension by “feeding” the fruitcake — pouring whiskey, brandy, or rum over the loaf. This process, too, adds to the weight of a fruitcake.

According to writer Erika Janik, nuts and fruits should compose at least 50 percent of the loaf, which would provide considerable heft. However, she cautions: “At its best, fruitcake is a delicious mix of dried fruits and nuts, bound by sugar, flour, eggs and a few spices. But at its worst, fruitcake is rock hard, laced with day-glo candied fruit and bitter citron.”

Such an edict gives the fruitcake-maker a clue: The loaf can — and should — be heavy, but it must be moist and have a variety of flavor in order to be a successful dessert.

Fruitcake Tossing and Other Endeavors

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]E[/su_dropcap]ach­ year in early January, the town of Manitou Springs, Colorado, gathers for the Annual Great Fruitcake Toss. Besides acting as a food drive — participants must bring one canned item to gain admission — the event is a clever way to rid citizens of unwanted fruitcakes. Fruitcakes can be hurled, tossed, or launched by a pneumatic device such as a spud gun.

Judges take the event seriously and make contestants adhere to standards such as weight divisions (two- and four-pound fruitcakes), launching distances, fruitcake contents (must contain glacéed fruits, nuts, and flour and be edible) and launching devices (non-fuel devices only).

Fruitcakes have also found their way into science experiments. “Iron Science Teacher” is a competition similar to the food show “Iron Chef,” wherein competitors are given a secret ingredient to perform an experiment with. One year, the secret ingredient was fruitcake, and science teachers had 10 minutes to present their science lessons, which included dropping various sizes of fruitcakes to reenact Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, drowning fruitcakes in water to measure buoyancy, and using fruitcakes to illustrate the powers of the digestive system.

And in 2006, nutrition and food scientist Thom Castonguay blew up fruitcakes with a bomb calorimeter — a metal box that allows for small-scale food explosions. The heat from the explosion was measured in order to determine the amount of calories in the fruitcake.

Though some people prefer to repurpose their fruitcakes in less dramatic ways, like the old stand-by: fruitcake-as-doorstop.

Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories plays to December 20, 2015, at Theatre on the Run. For more information and tickets, click here.

Maegan Clearwood is Avant Bard’s Director of Audience Engagement and Resident Dramaturg. She recently completed a year as the Literary Associate at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where she served as Assistant Dramaturg on Slaughterhouse-Five (music by Jed Feuer, book/lyrics by Adele Ahronheim) and End of Shift (by Jenny Connell-Davis). Favorite credits from her Olney Theater Center Dramaturgy Apprenticeship include I and You, The Piano Lesson, The Tempest, and Colossal. She studied drama and English at Washington College and is a proud Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Dramaturgy “Deb,” and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas member.

When Truman Capote’s autobiographical short story A Christmas Memory was first published in 1956, the 32-year-old author was reaching his peak as both a celebrity and writer. Although his notorious public reputation would eventually overshadow his critical and popular talents as a writer, these early days of his career established him as one of the most innovative, seminal authors of his generation.

Childhood

Capote’s journey to literary notoriety was a difficult one. He was born on September 30, 1924, to Lillie Mae and Arch Persons in New Orleans, and his early years quickly turned sour. His mother, a small-town beauty without the patience or maturity to care for her son, often left Capote to fend for himself, eventually—after her marriage fully dissolved—in the care of distant relatives in Monroeville, Alabama.

Although Capote’s feelings of abandonment would haunt him the rest of his life, there were glimmers of happiness in his childhood. He, his elderly cousin Miss Sook, and his tomboyish friend Harper Lee spent many happy hours together, giving young Capote the tools and inspiration that would eventually spark his fictional work.

Capote was sent back to live with his mother and her new husband in New York City in 1932, but it was hardly the joyful family reunion he hoped for. His mother was preoccupied with her new life, and she was determined to “cure” Capote of his effeminate, sensitive personality. Private school and later military school failed to offer solace, either; Capote was frequently bullied for his diminutive size; and unchallenged by his classes, he had little interest in proving himself academically. His enrollment in Greenwich High School, however, finally gave him the outlet necessary for spurring his artistic talents.

The young writer

Although he wasn’t encouraged to pursue his writing talents as a young child, Capote was always a storyteller. He taught himself to read by watching over the shoulder of his older relatives and reading with his cousin Sook, and he was often the leader of his childhood adventures with Harper Lee. During these early years especially, writing was a sanctuary: “I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day, and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it.” It wasn’t until adolescence, when he was encouraged by a Greenwich High School English teacher, that Capote determined to pursue writing as his vocation.

As a teen, Capote secured his first job as a copyboy for The New Yorker. After he was fired for walking out on a Robert Frost reading, Capote pursued his writing full-time, publishing several short stories while working on his first novel. It wasn’t until he returned to his Monroeville roots, however, that his first full-length work came to be; while staying at his childhood home to focus on his novel—then a New York City social commentary called Summer Crossing—Capote was inspired to write a totally different story, a coming-of-age novel about a lonely and effeminate young boy who travels to Alabama to meet his father. Published in 1948 when Capote was only 24 years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms was an instant success—but it spurred as much controversy as it did praise, both for its homosexual coming-of-age undertones and the supposedly erotically charged photograph of Capote on the book jacket.

Early fame

Capote’s literary success gave him access to the biggest names in film, literature, and celebrity. His striking behavior and voice, as well as outspoken personality and love for the spotlight, quickly made him one of the most popular figures in the literary scene.

He followed the success of Other Voices, Other Rooms with a collection of short stories, A Tree of Light, published in 1949. Not one to stay out of the public eye for long, Capote’s travel essays were put out in book form in 1950 as Local Color, and his much-anticipated second novel, The Grass Harp, was released in the fall of 1951.

Capote’s personal life also took a successful turn after meeting author Jack Dunphy, who was 10 years his senior, in 1948. They spent many of their early years traveling abroad while working on their respective writing projects. Even in Capote’s later years, when addiction took toxic control over his life and he was unable to sustain a close, constant relationship, Dunphy continued to support his partner. Capote was brazenly outspoken about his homosexuality, and although he was never a direct advocate for the early gay rights movement, his openness was monumental for the time.

A Christmas Memory

Amid this whirlwind of fame and success, Capote published A Christmas Memory in 1956. He wrote this story right on the cusp of some of his most seminal works of literature and nonfiction—Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and In Cold Blood (published in 1965, although he started working on the book in 1959)—after he had already published Other Voices, Other Rooms and The Grass Harp, also very autobiographical.

In Cold Blood would artfully combine fiction and journalism and revolutionize both fields. Although it became his most significant work, the subsequent fame eventually led to a downward spiral for Capote, who was as intoxicated by celebrity as he was by drugs and alcohol. In later years, the literary brilliance of his writing faded next to his controversial public persona—even now, more than 30 years after his death, his legacy speaks less to his role as one of America’s finest prose stylists than it does his fame for being famous.

The tension between artist and celebrity makes A Christmas Memory especially intriguing. There is virtually no firsthand information about the process behind or inspiration for A Christmas Memory, so one can only speculate as to why Capote felt a need to return to his roots in such an honest, heartfelt way. It is a nostalgic, surprisingly innocent reminder of the child who would eventually become a notorious household name, and poses challenging questions about the nature of memory and what truly defines a human being.

Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories plays November 25 to December 20, 2015, at Theatre on the Run. For more information and tickets, click here.

Maegan Clearwood is Avant Bard’s Director of Audience Engagement and Resident Dramaturg. She recently completed a year as the Literary Associate at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where she served as Assistant Dramaturg on Slaughterhouse-Five (music by Jed Feuer, book/lyrics by Adele Ahronheim) and End of Shift (by Jenny Connell-Davis). Favorite credits from her Olney Theater Center Dramaturgy Apprenticeship include I and You, The Piano Lesson, The Tempest, and Colossal. She studied drama and English at Washington College and is a proud Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Dramaturgy “Deb,” and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas member.

 

Truman Capote’s childhood was as distinct as it was nomadic and lonely: his early years with his extended family in Monroeville, Alabama, shaped him as a writer, influencing the distinctive themes and aesthetic that later permeated his works.  Capote’s early childhood was difficult, to put it mildly. When he was about 6 years old, his then-single mother deposited him in the care of elderly, distant cousins who, with the exception of Miss Sook—who inspired Holiday Memories—could be self-involved, emotionally removed, even cruel. Capote’s cousins were each invested in their own important worlds, spending their days working in the family business, running a farm, keeping house, entertaining guests, ensuring that their family had a respectable place in town.

Outside his busy, eccentric household was one additional character that helped shape Capote’s early years, however: the town of Monroeville, Alabama, itself. Much as it does for Capote’s childhood friend Harper E. Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird, the town serves as an entity unto itself with its own distinctive voice and tone. 

Below is an excerpt from Gerald Clarke’s Capote: A Biography, describing how the town looked, sounded, and behaved during the 1930s, when the stories that influenced Holiday Memories took place.

[su_dropcap size=”5″]I[/su_dropcap]n 1930, when Truman went to live in Monroeville,
it was a small country town, scarcely more than a furrow between fields of corn and cotton. That year’s census listed 1,355 people, but even that tiny figure was probably exaggerated by local officials, who wanted a number big enough to qualify for a post office. There was not one paved street, and a row of oak trees grew right down the middle of Alabama Avenue. On hot summer days cars and horses kicked up red dust every time they passed by; when it rained that dust turned into mud. Without a map it was hard to know where the town began and the surrounded farmland ended. Yards were big, with two or three outbuildings, and most people kept chickens, some pigs, and at least one cow. The Faulks did not have a cow—Sook would not milk one—but they did raise chickens, and turkeys too, and every winter Bud would bring in from his farm a couple of hogs, which were soon sent to the smokehouse.

Everybody followed farmers’ hours, up by dawn, in bed by eight or nine. In the Faulk household, Sook and old Aunt Liza—all elderly blacks were called “aunt” or “uncle” by the white people they worked for—would start cooking breakfast, the big meal of the day, at five: ham, eggs, and pancakes, of course; but also, in an almost excessive display of the land’s bounty, fried chicken, pork chops, catfish, and squirrel, according to the season. Along with all that, there would be grits and gravy, black-eyed peas, collards (with corn bread to sop up the collard liquor), biscuits and homemade jams and preserves, pound cake, sweet milk, buttermilk, and coffee flavored with chicory. After that cockcrow banquet Jennie and Callie would walk down to their store, Bud would retire to his bedroom, and Sook would go on with her other domestic chores.

…Jennie and Callie came home for lunch, which was usually leftovers from breakfast, then came back again for an early supper, much of which had also been part of the early-morning feast. When dinner was over, everyone wandered out to the porch, which was the center of activity for most of the year; winters are short in southern Alabama and some years so mild they are scarcely noticed at all, fall merging into spring with only the briefest punctuation  in between. After a while neighbors dropped by to gossip: talk was the chief form of entertainment, and everybody knew all there was to know about everybody else. Once a week Sook and Callie invited some friends to play a card game called rook. Sook, who was the best player on the street, would mix up a batch of divinity candy for the occasion and dance around in a fever of excitement all day. Jennie was the only one who remained aloof; card games, she said, were a damned-fool business. Her only passion was her garden. Her japonica bushes were a neighborhood landmark, and she guarded them as if they were her precious jewels, which to her way of thinking they were.

Even the Depression, which hit the South first and harder, did not alter that placid routine. There were more people for Sook to distribute hand-me-downs to, and “Hoover cars,” horse-drawn wagons with rubber tires scrapped off Model-Ts, were beginning to make an appearance. But money had never been as plentiful or as important in small towns like Monroeville as it had been in the cities, and its sudden disappearance mattered comparatively less. The Faulks were hurt by the hard times, but they never suffered real deprivation. There was, as always, an around-the-clock banquet in Sook’s kitchen.

 

Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories plays November 25 to December 20, 2015, at Theatre on the Run. For more information and tickets, click here.

 

Maegan Clearwood is Avant Bard’s Director of Audience Engagement and Resident Dramaturg. She recently completed a year as the Literary Associate at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where she served as Assistant Dramaturg on Slaughterhouse-Five (music by Jed Feuer, book/lyrics by Adele Ahronheim) and End of Shift (by Jenny Connell-Davis). Favorite credits from her Olney Theater Center Dramaturgy Apprenticeship include I and You, The Piano Lesson, The Tempest, and Colossal. She studied drama and English at Washington College and is a proud Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Dramaturgy “Deb,” and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas member.

 

DC Metro Theater Arts is running a series of interviews with members of the cast of Friendship Betrayed. You can see excerpts below. Click on each actor’s name or pic to see their full Q&A.

Alani Kravitz: “I play Belisa, cousin of Marcia (Megan Dominy). In our production, Belisa is a relatively new import to the social circle of the play, but has not wasted any time in having her share of drama. I love Belisa; she is, in the words of Kari, “A character of opposites.” She feels things on an immense scale, but has a fierce set of morals. Those two butt heads a lot, and the emotions win over propriety several times throughout the play (no spoilers). I think we are very alike in that we see that there is a way it is “fashionable” to be, and a way we choose to be in spite of that. Also, we are not to be underestimated *cue devilish grin*.”

Daven Ralston: “I play Laura. She is very expressive and passionate. On the first night of rehearsal, Kari described Laura as having “no bottom to the depth of her emotions.” She is ruled by, consumed by, and often overwhelmed by her feelings. All the feels. She’s probably what most ladies would tactfully describe as “a little much.” Oh I love it. I relate to her in that, as I often think that I feel things very strongly and I’m sometimes surprised by how much different situations can move me. Also Laura really loves and values friendship, and who doesn’t?”

James Finley: “I play Liseo, who is kind of entitled and oblivious. I think we can all relate to the idea of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, but hopefully we don’t act on it (and pay the price) the way Liseo does.”

 

 

Melissa Marie Hmelnicky: “I play Fenisa, the most sexually liberated and least lady-loyal of our group. We have all met Fenisas. She is the girl at the party who shamelessly flirts with your boyfriend right in front of you and says things like “I luv ya, girl! Cute dress!”… while she’s texting your man to meet her up later for something seemingly innocuous but actually venomous. She’s feline but also quite serpentine; she craves attention from all men with little to no standards or boundaries and is quick to pounce and slow to coil. I personally cringe at Fenisas when I encounter them and have no time for those who show a lack of respect for relationships—others’ or their own. That being said, I admire Fenisa’s ability to schedule so many men into her life—she must have more time in her day than the average person, and I’d love to get in on her scheduling strategy, especially when I’m juggling shows, rehearsals, and my job.  Maybe I’d be able to squeeze some grocery shopping in! I also think Fenisa’s betrayals take their origin from a bottomless canyon of insecurity and painful heartache related to men and her own identity (or lack thereof)—and for that, I have both pity and sympathy.”

Zach Roberts: “I play Felix and Lauro. Felix is Laura’s bestie, and I absolutely adore Daven Ralston, who’s playing Laura, so that’s easy! Lauro is kind of in his own little world and in his separate play, and I think we’ve all been there before.”

Friendship Betrayed plays to October 11, 2015 at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two – 2700 South Lang Street, in Arlington, VA. For tickets, call the box office at (703) 418-4808, or purchase them online.

Connor J. Hogan: “I play the ever-gregarious Leon. He loves a good story, just like me. He’s the servant to Liseo [James Finley], the Casanova of the story, but is always looking to take his master down a few pegs. Speaking truth to power is another thing I share with Leon.”

 

 

 

 

Brendan Edward Kennedy: “I play Gerardo, Marcia’s (Megan Dominy) spurned, scorned, long-time-underdog of a suitor. With all his pining, his yearning, and his unshakable belief in Love… Gerardo is basically who I was back in high school.”

 

 

 

 

Megan Dominy: “I play Marcia, who is caught in a couple of love triangles…so, it’s more like a love hexagon? She is very proactive and practical. I relate to how she takes charge in a bad situation to fix it. She also has a very strong moral center and operates based on her conscience as opposed to what she really wants. I can definitely relate to choosing consideration over personal desire.”

Christian R. Gibbs: “I play Don Juan, the warrior of love. A man who champions, who conquers, yet is never conquered by, love. He is a mystical creature who traverses the line of truth and pretense, sometimes seamlessly. I believe Don Juan and I share the thought and act, that life has to be lived.”

Mary Myers: “I play Lucia, Fenisa’s (Melissa Marie Hmelnicky) serving woman.  I’d say she’s blunter than I am, but she is also impossibly sassy…and I most definitely identify with that.”

 

 

Friendship Betrayed plays to October 11, 2015 at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two – 2700 South Lang Street, in Arlington, VA. For tickets, call the box office at (703) 418-4808, or purchase them online.

Maegan Clearwood: Tell me about your journey with María de Zayas’s Friendship Betrayed. How did it all begin?

Catherine Larson: During the Spanish Golden Age (16th to 17th centuries, or early modern times), there were few women dramatists, and those who did write plays were generally not able to see their works performed in the public theaters. We believe there were probably only 23 women writing in Spanish, and not all of them were writing secular drama, nor were they all writing in Spain. Still, this small group created a number of really good plays; the dramaturgas often got together in literary salons—with or without male playwrights—to read the plays aloud to one another or share them as written texts. My own appreciation for Zayas’s comedy led me to seek ways to let others know about her work.

The decision to share Zayas’s play with the rest of the world was part of what was happening in the field of Hispanic literary studies starting in the late 1980s–early 1990s: scholars began to get excited about literature written by women. When I was a graduate student, plays written by women were not included in the canon, with maybe one exception—most of us didn’t even know that female writers existed. Feminist literary studies began to influence the ways we talked about women characters; this was quickly followed by the decisions of many professors and scholars from across the globe to locate and publish “lost” texts by women. They often found those plays in public and convent archives. Many of us believed that the first thing we had to do was find the texts of these women so that they wouldn’t be silenced anymore. Valerie Hegstrom, a colleague from graduate school, said that she’d like to do an edition based on this play, which would help us get the word out. Friendship Betrayed is a funny comedy, a great play to share with the world, so we decided to create a bilingual edition based on the manuscript, which is how the translation came into being: we wanted English speakers to also have access to the play.

Spain’s national library, the Biblioteca National in Madrid, owns the only extant 17th-century version of the play, the manuscript that served as the basis for our bilingual edition. The manuscript contains 49 folios measuring approximately 6 by 8 inches, and they are bound in leather. The pages are generally in good shape, although they have yellowed and show some age spots.

What is it like seeing this play come to life?

Our bilingual edition, with Valerie Hegstrom’s edition in Spanish and my translation in English, was published in 1999. Although I had imagined an audience interested in reading Friendship Betrayed, I never thought it would be performed in public. I think I was stuck in the mindset of looking at the play as a literary text. My own thinking has greatly evolved since then, and my research now centers on performance, but at that time the profession was turning a corner, just beginning to look in new directions. It has been gratifying to see Friendship Betrayed in performance; prior to this production, it has been staged in Oklahoma City, OK; El Paso, TX; Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; and Washington, DC.

Every time I see it performed I learn something new. The previous DC production [Washington Women in Theatre, 2006], directed by Karen Berman, was beautifully modernized and filled with a great deal of sexual energy and vibrancy. There was a lot of symbolism in the staging; the audience loved it. The earlier productions were performed by university students, who, using their bodies and presence on stage, did an astonishing job with almost no set. The director changed a major scene at the end of the play, transforming a catfight between two female characters into a sword fight, and it worked well.

What was Zayas’s life like?

Zayas (b. Madrid, 1590-1650?) interacted with people who, like her, were from the aristocracy. We know little about her life. Like her female friends, Zayas was well educated, knew what was happening in the theater world, and chose to write plays, even though her only known play wasn’t staged until centuries later.

Zayas was hugely popular as a prose writer in the 17th century; she wrote two extremely well received collections of novellas, and she was respected as a writer by both men and women. This was the era of a number of famous writers, such as Miguel de Cervantes, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and painters such as Diego Velázquez. The Golden Age was filled with creative figures and royal patronage.

Had this play been produced in Zayas’s time, what might it have looked like?

It was called the Spanish Golden Age for a reason: the great writers were creating plays and characters that were incredibly important in terms of the trajectory of Hispanic drama. Lope de Vega, who authored hundreds of plays in his lifetime, wrote The New Art of Writing Plays in 1609, which revolutionized the theater. Lope insisted that plays should please the public, so instead of five long acts, the number was reduced to three; the plays were written in verse, and dramatists were called dramatic poets. The three main themes in Golden Age drama were love, honor, and faith. There were comedies and the Spanish version of tragedies (very different from Shakespeare’s)—a huge variety of plays, with an emphasis on action. Unlike the situation in England, Spanish women were allowed to act, but actresses in general were associated with loose morals, and there were very specific laws about who was allowed to act: for example, you had to be married to join a theater company, and even then, female actors were judged harshly.

The earliest public theaters were in Madrid, Valencia, and Seville. They were open-air theaters with platform stages erected in patios surrounded on three sides by houses. The stage was at the far end, and there was a canvas awning over it so that the whole spectacle was shielded from the rain and sun. The wealthiest people from the nearby houses watched from their balconies. Less-wealthy males paid very little and stood in front of the stage, somewhat like the groundlings of Shakespeare’s theater. Women spectators were segregated in the back, in the cazuela, or “stew pot,” with guards keeping men out. Most plays began with an introduction praising the patron of the playwright, followed by the three acts, with short (comic) plays or dances between the acts and a fin de fiesta at the end. The admission money not only paid the actors but went to support hospitals and orphanages. Theater audiences were often rowdy, especially due to the men in the front, who would yell and throw fruit and vegetables if they didn’t like what they saw. There were sometimes people from other towns who would attend a few performances, memorize everything they heard, go home, write down what they had heard, and then have locals perform the play. There were also lavish palace productions: because Spain controlled parts of Italy at that time, Italian set designers were brought in to transform the settings of royal performances. Finally, the theater also played an important role in religious festivals and convent life.

What did you notice about Zayas’s language while translating it?

First of all, I was struck by how really funny this play was, and how Zayas had a great sense of how to use language in ways that made the situation come alive. Even more than that, this is a play about community, female community, and what it means to be loyal or disloyal to other women. Fenisa is a transgressor of limits—young noblewomen shouldn’t steal every man in sight—but she has no qualms about doing that. Fenisa is not easy to define: she is not a spiteful vixen in the negative sense, because she insists that she honestly has room in her heart to love many men at the same time. On the one hand she’s exciting and subversive, pushing the envelope on how women act with one another, but she is also punished for breaking social codes. Zayas shows how other women view Fenisa’s betrayal of the culture of support among women, and how they choose to help someone like Laura, who made the mistake of surrendering to the man whom virtually all the other women would like to marry. In the theater (and often in society) in those times, if a woman were dishonored, she would have three options: marriage, the convent, or death. Laura is a driven young woman: she leaves her home with the intention of forcing her seducer to live up to his promise of marriage. Zayas’s spin on this situation is to foreground the supportive reactions of all of the other women except Fenisa. This play is ultimately about how women can both challenge and maintain social and cultural codes. That’s what I love the most about Friendship Betrayed: it talks from a woman-centered perspective, an approach you didn’t see in plays written by men.

What were the biggest challenges you encountered while translating this play?

I translated Friendship Betrayed truly for the joy of it, and because I thought it was important to get Zayas’s name out there to a larger public. We thought that an English translation could appeal to theater people and to those who can’t access the comedy in Spanish, which is exactly the case for Avant Bard right now. Today, I believe much less in the need for a translation to express fidelity to the original source text (linguistically or culturally), because I recognize how much a text in performance is already an adaptation, as is a translated text: there is no such thing as a word-for-word translation. As I was translating the play, I was already inserting some of myself into the text, because I was trying to create a text that would come alive in the reader’s or spectator’s mind. I wanted the translation to be lively, because this is a comedy, and language matters. I tried to create a framework that the director and actors could build upon in their own interpretation of Zayas’s play. My thinking about translation and adaption has changed a lot from seeing theater, hearing translators talk about it, and doing it myself.

Are you excited to see Avant Bard’s performance?

I love the idea that this play is offered in translation to an audience, because Spanish theater of that time period and by people like María de Zayas deserves to be discovered and experienced by more people. I know that Kari is updating it to the 1920s, which is an interesting approach; my sense is that she is trying to capture another time in history when women were transitioning out of positions of weakness and were displaying themselves as strong and witty and in control. So I understand those directorial decisions and I can’t wait to see how that comes about onstage. Hispanic theater is my great love, so the chance to see a production of Friendship Betrayed is exciting. We’re creating a new performance history here with this play.

 

Friendship Betrayed plays to October 11, 2015 at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two – 2700 South Lang Street, in Arlington, VA. For tickets, call the box office at (703) 418-4808, or purchase them online.

Catherine Larson is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Porgtuguese at Indiana University Bloomington specializing in Golden Age literature (especially Comedia), Spanish American theatre, and Gender Studies.

Maegan Clearwood is Avant Bard’s Director of Audience Engagement and Resident Dramaturg. She recently completed a year as the Literary Associate at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where she served as Assistant Dramaturg on Slaughterhouse-Five (music by Jed Feuer, book/lyrics by Adele Ahronheim) and End of Shift (by Jenny Connell-Davis). Favorite credits from her Olney Theater Center Dramaturgy Apprenticeship include I and You, The Piano Lesson, The Tempest, and Colossal. She studied drama and English at Washington College and is a proud Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Dramaturgy “Deb,” and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas member.