Lacras urbanas: Juego,prostitución y mendicidad en el entremés barroco

Abstract

The image of a courtly and cosmopolitan Madrid that enjoyed an intense cultural life where millions were spent on luxurious festivals that attracted famous artists and travelers also contained a marginal space where poor people, the crippled, thieves, soldiers, gamblers, prostitutes, and black people lived and made a living. Where the long walks along the Prado at sunset lost their gallantry and became spaces of the night where ruffians challenged each other to duels and ended up, in most cases, in the overpopulated jails of the kingdom. Where the domestic space was transformed into house brothels and gambling dens, full of gamblers and onlookers. Where in the streets, one did not go only to shop but to beg for alms, to con and rob, or where the churches, a place of knowledge and shelter, became places for amorous and clandestine meetings, and where prostitutes, thieves, and murderers hid to escape the law. In this article, I will examine the social meaning of this underworld in seventeenth-century urban Madrid from the perspective of marginality. My interpretation of the urban centers explores baroque Madrid as a space of conflict. From this conflict, new ways of speaking, living, writing, and reinventing urban landscapes arise. Many of the short pieces written in that time articulate their plots through the relationships between marginal society and the established power structures and exhibit social changes in light of the economic processes associated with the development of Madrid as the imperial capital.     

La resignificación de los márgenes del teatro independiente: Oratorio,del Teatro Estudio Lebrijano

Abstract

Oratorio, by Alfonso Jiménez Romero and Teatro Estudio Lebrijano, is arguably among the most representative plays of 1970s Spain’s independent theater. This play experienced many changes and adjustments before it was staged in the Festival Mondial de Théâtre de Nancy in 1971. These changes were tested in performances in Andalusia before audiences with little exposure to theater but sympathizing with the play. By studying a production that developed for three years, this article challenges the claims that support a history of theater as a catalogue of finished products. This article aims at considering the creative process that emerges from the direct contact with audiences in performing spaces. Independent theater archives have limitations, but they are made up with oral histories from troupe members. This article studies both the incorporation of theatrical devices associated with ritual participation of the audience and the use of flamenco reassessed as protest music. The latter included in the play as an artistic device since the tour in Andalusia. This play made explicit references to the Spanish Civil War, which prompted physical reactions from the audience in towns where the repression was fierce.