Latinx Shakespeares of the 20th century

In honor of Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, Carla Della Gatta looks at early Latinx-inspired Shakespeare productions and adaptations in the United States beginning with the opening of West Side Story on Broadway in 1957.

Latinx Shakespeares are productions or adaptations of Shakespeare that have Latinx cultures integrated into the storyline through a cultural setting, casting, dramaturgical signifiers, and/or the soundscape. In honor of Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, I look back on early Latinx Shakespeares and various intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad in theater and performance. Latinx Shakespeares are just as diverse in their form as they are in their content, and their histories vary across region, theater company, culture, and theater-making processes.

Spanish-language productions of Shakespeare in the United States have a lengthy history, but the show that marks the beginning of Latinx Shakespeares is West Side Story (directed by Jerome Robbins). Debuting in 1957, it changed musical theater as the first “Method” musical, using emotional-realist acting to create its characters. It also demanded that musical theater performers must be able to sing, act, and dance, or what is referred to as the “triple threat” in entertainment. West Side Story depicted Puerto Ricans in New York, albeit problematically, as I wrote in an earlier post celebrating the film’s 60^th anniversary. It also included some Spanish phrases and words on a Broadway stage, an uncommon occurrence for the time period. West Side Story gave a subtext for the grudge between Capulets and Montagues and based that grudge on cultural and linguistic prejudice. Since West Side Story, such linguistic-cultural division is often integrated into Shakespearean performance, or what I call, the “West Side Story effect”.

In the cinema, the film version of West Side Story (directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins) was produced by United Artists and premiered in 1961. In 1975, Columbia Pictures produced Aaron Loves Angela (directed by Gordon Parks, Jr.), also a riff on Romeo and Juliet set and filmed in New York, also with cultural-linguistic division. It was the film debut of Irene Cara, who was of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent, and who would later star in and sing the titular song for Fame (1980). Cara’s Angela falls in love with Black American Aaron, played by Kevin Hooks, who later became a film director. And Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet leaned heavily on Latinx and Latin American imagery and culture.

In the 1960s and 70s, Latinx and Latin American-themed productions of Julius Caesar incorporated current issues in government and politics. The play’s popularity onstage mirrored its popularity in high school curriculum, later replaced by Romeo and Juliet’s prevalence in the classroom. For example, in 1969, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged a production of Julius Caesar (directed by Edward Payson Call) set in an unspecified Latin American country with Caesar portrayed as an Aztec god. Productions with similar settings in unnamed Latin American countries were also staged in 1979 at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1988 at the Philadelphia Drama Guild, and in 1991 at the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York. It was the 1986 adaptation, Julio Cesar by John Briggs and R.H. Dechamps (directed by Briggs) at Florida Shakespeare, that was set in the future year of 1994 in a fictional “Republic of Corba” that invoked Cuba in several cultural elements and portrayed Cesar as Fidel Castro.

Cuba was a popular setting for Latinx and Latin American-themed productions of Shakespeare. In 1987, The Acting Company in Washington, DC, staged a production of Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Gerald Gutierrez) set in 1930s Cuba that was so successful that it toured nationally. Shakespeare Festival Dallas staged their 1989 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona (directed by Dale AJ Rose) with the action taking place in Verona, Texas, and in pre-revolution Cuba.

Layering cultural-linguistic division onto a Shakespearean play continued to be a popular concept, even outside of Romeo and Juliet. In a 1979 production of Antony and Cleopatra (directed by Estelle Parsons) at New York’s Interart Theatre, Latinx actors were cast as the Romans and “fair-skinned” actors played the Egyptians, with some lines translated into Spanish for the Romans and the Egyptians delivering their lines entirely in English. Likewise, San Diego’s Old Globe staged a 19^th century version of The Comedy of Errors (directed by David McClendon) in 1987 with one pair of the separated twins from Monterrey, Mexico, and the other set from San Diego.

Latinx Shakespeares

Edit Villarreal’s Romeo and Juliet adaptation was originally titled R&J and later The Language of Flowers (directed by José Cruz González). It based the division between the households on class and assimilation. According to foundational scholar and director of Latinx theater, Jorge Huerta, the play takes the young couple beyond death by having them “rise from the tombs in each other’s arms.” It was first staged in 1991 at California State University, Los Angeles, and went on to have a lengthy production history.

Latinx Shakespeares that depicted a specific Latinx culture without invoking West Side Story’s cultural-linguistic division also became more prominent. La Compañía de Teatro de Albuquerque staged classical dramas in both English and Spanish. Their first Shakespearean play was the 1985 Macbeth: A Modern Mestizo Story Set In Central America (directed by David Richard Jones). Most of the cast was Latinx except for the white actress playing Lady Macbeth, and the action was set in Central America during the real-life conflicts happening in several of the countries. Likewise, Cuban-born actor Tony Plana started the East LA Classic Theatre in 1995 and helmed four short-length, music-infused, and Latinx-inspired Shakespeare productions over the next 20 years. The 1999 Much Ado About Nothing. Mariachi Style written by Plana and Bert Rosario (directed by Tony Plana) made Benedick and Claudio Mexican soldiers returning from battle.

In addition, efforts to get Latinx and Latin American actors involved with Shakespeare highlight the biases that prevented Latinx actors from breaking into the mainstream Shakespearean actor pipeline. In 1964, the New York Shakespeare Festival (now the Public Theater), started a Spanish Mobile Unit, which traveled to all five New York boroughs. In 1965, the Spanish Mobile Unit produced Pablo Neruda’s Romeo y Julieta (directed by Osvaldo Riofrancos). While a Mobile Unit with shows in English had been running for years, it was in 1966 that both units ran productions of Macbeth in-tandem. The English language version (directed by Gladys Vaughn) starred James Earl Jones and Ellen Holly, and it notably marked the first time that a woman directed a play for the NYSF. The Spanish-language production (directed by Osvaldo Riofrancos) included a young Raúl Juliá as Macduff. It would be another five years until Juliá would skyrocket to stardom with the John Guare and Mel Shapiro musical, Two Gentlemen of Verona (directed by Mel Shapiro). Without incorporating Spanish as a signifier of Latinx identity, and making clear that Latinx actors can break through the English-language Shakespeare actor pipeline, in 1997, San Francisco-based acting group Luminarias staged the first all-Latinx production of The Winter’s Tale (directed by Joseph Ponce).

This is just a sampling of the intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad in the 20th century. Latinx peoples and cultures have been a rich part of American Shakespearean performance for more than 85 years. Today, Latinx theatre-makers are adaptors, directors, dramaturgs, designers, and actors in Shakespearean productions across the country. These early productions demonstrate the investment in Latinx cultures in American Shakespeares that continues today through nuanced storytelling, Latinx-authored culturally-specific adaptations, and acclaimed performances by actors such as Rachel Zegler, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Daniel José Molina, Oscar Isaac, Raúl Esparza, and more in Shakespearean roles.