Representing the unrepresentable: a one-man retelling of Cervantes’s Entremeses
Representing the unrepresentable: a one-man retelling of Cervantes’s Entremeses
Author
Cowling, Erin
Faculty Advisor
Date
2020
Keywords
Spanish classical theater , fake news
Abstract (summary)
When Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra published his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses
nuevos, nunca representados in 1615, he could not have imagined what a twenty-first-century
Mexican theater company would be able to create out of his short interludes. Even with the great
mind that brought us the Quijote, it would have been beyond his wildest dreams to see a one-man
adaptation of three of his pieces2 – El viejo celoso, El retablo de las maravillas, and La cueva de
Salamanca – with every character played by a single Merolico, the archetype of a traveling
salesman in Mexico.3 And yet, EFE TRES Teatro, a young company based in Mexico City and
founded in 2012, has created a raucous romp in El merolico, moving through these entremeses,
using only a few props and some minor costume changes, so that the actor, in this case Fernando
Villa Proal, can play several characters at once. The paradoxical brilliance of this company is
that they can take the most minimalist of ideas and create a spectacularly intricate performance,
one that would make Cervantes himself proud. As will be discussed below, the company is able
to take pieces that are supposedly “unrepresentable” and with their magical touch, turn them into
a commentary on the very elements that fascinated Cervantes and continue to captivate those of
us who work on Spanish classical theater even today: metatheatricality; the blurred lines between
authorship and character; and the thin veil between reality and fiction. Although it is not the
company’s desire to be prescriptive in their adaptations, ultimately the spectator is confronted
with some of the most troubling questions of our time, namely the rampant dissemination of
“fake news” via social media and the difficulty to distinguish between truth and lies.
Publication Information
Cowling, Erin. “Representing the Unrepresentable: A One-Man Retelling of Cervantes’s Entremeses.” eHumanista/Cervantes, 8, 2020, 132-44. https://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/cervantes/volume8/11%20Cowling.pdf
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
Attribution (CC BY)
