“Desentrañando los Empeños. La subversión de un esfuerzo colectivo / Unraveling the Trials. The subversion of a collective effort”

About the presenter:  Spring 2020 Tinker Visiting Professor of Spanish & Theatre, Nuria Alkorta, is a founding member and the director of the Compañía delabarca. She has been professor of Interpretation at the Royal School of Advanced Dramatic Art in Madrid since 1999.  Alkorta launched her teaching career in 1996 in Harvard’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, where she developed courses on the Spanish language, studied through classic dramatic texts. She holds the doctorate in Philology and is author of a dissertation titled From Thought to Performance in the Theater of Calderón. In the U.S. she has directed stagings in English of works by Calderón, Cervantes, Chekov, Brecht, Druas and Mamet. At the A.R.T. she served as directorial assistant to Andrei Serban, Scott Zigler and David Mamet. The Compañía delabarca, founded in 2008, is devoted to the recuperation, study and diffusion of the theater of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, as well as of playwrights attuned to the dramatic art and philosophical concerns of the author of Life Is a Dream. It was conceived, according to its director, as the focal point of a Center dedicated to research, interpretation and stage production of works written by the writer known as the Baroque’s “Monster Wit”.  Professor Alkorta will be joined by Gloria Morales, Maria Pulla-France, and Elizabeth Neary.

About the presentation: La suspensión de clases y actividades presenciales en la Universidad de Wisconsin-Madison, durante la primavera de 2020, puso a prueba la determinación de un grupo de estudiantes y de su profesora en su empeño de desentrañar y estrenar la comedia de sor Juana Inés de la Cruz titulada Los empeños de una casa. Este docudrama de cuarenta minutos nos presenta el proceso de este colectivo en paralelo con los ensayos virtuales de la obra de la gran dramaturga mexicana. Ofrece una visión esperanzada basada en el poder regenerador de nuestra naturaleza creadora como modo de subvertir cualquier crisis.

The suspension of classes and face-to-face activities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the spring of 2020, put to the test the determination of a group of students and their teacher in their efforts to unravel and premiere the comedy by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz titled House of Trials. This forty-minute docudrama presents the process of this collective in parallel with the virtual rehearsals of the play of the great Mexican playwright. It offers a hopeful vision based on the regenerative power of our creative nature as a way to subvert any crisis.

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