Episode 106: Staging Latinx Shakespeares with Dr. Carla Della Gatta

Introduction

0:00Hi, and welcome to the Theatre History Podcast. I'm Mike Liger. There are no Latinx characters in Shakespeare. Not one. That's the observation with which Dr. Carla Della Gatta begins her book Latinx Shakespeare's,

0:33staging U.S. intracultural theater. Despite this fact, there have been many fascinating and challenging productions and adaptations of Shakespeare's works by Latinx artists and performers in recent decades, a phenomenon which Carla explores in her new book and which she's now documenting through a new online archive. Carla is an associate professor of theater at the University of Maryland. In addition to writing Latinx Shakespeare's and creating the online archive, she's also the co-editor of the book Shakespeare and the Latinidad.

1:05Carla, thank you so much for joining us.

Defining Latinx

1:07Thank you. Let's start with some definitions. We've talked about Latinx theater on this podcast before, but how are you using the term Latinx? That's a great question. Latinx or Latinx, which can be pronounced either way, is the gender non-binary formation of the term Latino. Because Spanish is a gendered language, Latino is kind of where we started. But the ethnic category for Latinos is officially, according to the U.S. government, Hispanic slash

1:39Latino. Hispanic is a term that is based on language and is inclusive of Spain. And it's about countries that are Spanish language dominant. Latino is a geography-based term. And it's for the people of the Americas who are descendants of or a product of Spanish colonization. So, we started with some people will refer to themselves as Latin or say Latino. And then a few decades ago, people were saying we need to acknowledge women more explicitly.

2:10So, there was a Latino slash A. Then we decided ladies first, Latina slash O. Then we went to Latinx to signal that, again, gender is not on a binary. And some people will put Latin and then a hyphen and a capital X and say Latinx or Latinx. And some people today are using Latin or Latine with an accent over the E, which is linguistically more correct. I prefer Latinx or Latinx. I fluctuate between the two. Even though some have argued that the X erases indigeneity, I see the word as a disruption.

2:43It's not a word in Spanish or in English. And to me, it signals that disruption and that confrontation of Latinx peoples with the dominant culture today, as well as the creativity of language play that is germane to Latinidad. So, there's a constant mixing of languages. And I think Latinx kind of sums it up for me. Yeah, you use that term Latinidad, as well as there's a number of other terms that show up in the book, including the word oralidad. Could you explain to listeners what those two terms mean and maybe why they matter?

Latinidad and Oralidad

3:13Absolutely. Latinidad, the idad in Spanish is in English, either nes or icity. So, felicidad is felicity. Sinceridad is sincerity. And with Spanishness, it would be hispanidad. So, latinidad is latinity or latinness. And that's the direct translation. It's a presentist word for Latinx cultures and peoples. So, my reason for using it is that it gets the presentist moment in there.

3:43And it is also kind of the best translation for latinness that I can come up with. Oralidad is actually a word that is used in some Spanish cultures, not necessarily all. It's a direct translation with sound studies and it will signal listening. The way that I use oralidad is to convey the oral excess and the specific oral components that are part of conveying Latinx cultures and Latinx peoples on stage. So, it's not a direct translation of orality, but it connotes the rich oral elements that

4:16are germane to the theatrical performance of Latinx cultures. Okay. One more terminology thing and then we'll get into the theater. Last thing. Listeners might be listening to this podcast and be like, wait a minute, are they saying Shakespeare's plural? Yes. But why do you use Shakespeare's as a plural? I know. And the pluralizing of everything. And when it comes, I'll backtrack just for a moment. With Latinx, you may put an S on the N or not. There's no need to pluralize a word that actually doesn't exist in either language.

4:47So, some people will do that and some people I don't. Shakespeare's is pluralized as to be in line with cultural studies. And so, it's more correct from a cultural studies perspective signaling an interdisciplinary approach. So, that's in line with ethnic studies, African American studies, Latinx studies, and it pushes against the singularity and singular perspectives. I know that's not singular perspectives, but the traditional singular perspectives of English history and literature. So, it's also in line with global Shakespeare's, which is a website and archive and a field of

5:21study and other scholarly books such as Alexa Juban's Chinese Shakespeare's and so forth. So, we pluralize for that reason. So, actually, Latinx Shakespeare's, both words are plural to symbolize multiple cultures. And then also that Shakespeare means different things to different people. And so, it's not a singular, homogenous, predominant Shakespeare. It's about a little bit more democratizing.

Book Focus

5:47So, your book is primarily focused on maybe theater from the last two decades or so. But early in your introduction, you begin with this kind of, I thought, really telling anecdote. And it involves Paul Robeson's famous 1943 performance as Othello. And this was a landmark because, as you mentioned, this is the first time that a Black man, a Black actor plays the role with a white cast on Broadway. But you point out that behind this sort of history-making performance of Robeson, you

6:18also have the fact that Iago in this production was played by the famous, very accomplished Puerto Rican actor, José Ferrer. And as you put it, quote, Today, Robeson's casting as Othello wouldn't draw much attention, but a Puerto Rican Iago certainly would. So, what happened? Why wasn't Ferrer's Iago such a big deal in the 1940s? And what do you think has changed that might make us think differently about a casting choice like that today? Part of it has to do with the fact that ethnic and racial categories have changed over time.

6:53So, even though Puerto Ricans were American citizens with the Jones Act of 1917, and Ferrer was racially white, he was basically considered white, noted as Hispanic. But the ethnic and racial difference between Robeson and Ferrer wasn't as pronounced in part because the official category, ethnic category of Hispanic slash Latino, doesn't even make it on until the census until 1980. So, for those of us who were born before 1980, there's no box in our birth certificates for

7:23ethnicity. There's only race. And so, it wasn't a racial distinction at the time. I mean, between, of course, Paul Robeson's blackness and Jose Ferrer's whiteness, but the ethnic differentiation wasn't actually there. And so, part of it has to do with official categories and the way people are perceived in the larger culture. So, that's one part. The second part is that Jose Ferrer, also after that, was a very famous actor. He spoke multiple languages, but he sang and acted in both Spanish and English.

7:54And so, there's kind of a larger scope of what the actor can do in many ways, like Raul Giulia. So, who later comes on and becomes the preeminent Latinx Shakespearean actor who's taking on multiple roles. His ethnicity, his accent are largely noted, especially in Shakespeare when we think of his Taming of the Shrew with Meryl Streep, for example. But Ferrer's language, the sound of his voice, he took multiple language and vocal lessons, and he doesn't speak with an accent at all. So, his sonorous voice doesn't connote ethnicity in the same way that Raul Giulia's did.

8:29Now, if we're talking history, it seems like we have got to talk about West Side Story. Why was this musical, along with its, by now, multiple movie adaptations, so influential for Latinx Shakespeare's? West Side Story. I don't think that play, film, everything is ever going to leave me. It does. I've described West Side Story as the subtext, intertext, and ubertext, which all Latinx Shakespeare's are in fraught dialogue with. So, West Side Story does a number of things.

9:01It's the biggest Shakespeare adaptation, most well-known worldwide, and has been translated into other languages. And with that, it was also the first Shakespeare adaptation of a tragedy. It did a number of things. As we all know, West Side Story, it demands the triple threat where actors have to sing and dance and act. And so, its contribution to musical theater is significant. What it means to Shakespeare's, it's the most, as I mentioned, well-known adaptation, but it ethnicizes and modernizes at the same time.

9:32So, we get this depiction of Latinx peoples, Puerto Ricans, and I know it's fraught with the representation and depiction. But nonetheless, it became the most known depiction of Latinx peoples on Broadway and a lot of stages until over 50 years later within the Heights. And so, there are so few plays that were on Broadway in the 20th century that were authored by a Latinx playwright. There were actually only four. And with the paucity of Latinx representation and Latinx stories, it becomes the most well-known,

10:07one of the most well-known Latinx-themed plays, if you will. I'm putting that a bit in quotation marks. So, what it does is that it gives a background, it gives a reason to the grudge between the two families, this is very modern, this is very method, and Jerome Robbins wanted to create the first method musical. So, Shakespeare says these two families have been having an argument and we don't know why. And he doesn't give us that background or that subtext. West Side Story does. And then once West Side Story does, we get all sorts of Romeo and Juliet's.

10:40She's Finnish, he's Swedish, or, you know, he's from Israel and she's from, and we get this kind of division, we get a reason for it. And that's something that modern contemporary audiences very much want. What it means for Latinx Shakespeare's is that it kind of makes Romeo and Juliet the Latinx Shakespeare play. And we start to see a whole number of Latinx-themed Romeo and Juliet-type films in the early 2000s. And that's brought on by Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo plus Juliet, in which Claire Danes does

11:13not play her character as a Latina, but she's given a Latin slash Latin American Latinx family. So, we have the Italian Paul Sorvino as her father, the Colombian Puerto Rican Gianluca Zamos, her cousin, several Latin American actors who are the Capulets. And so, we get this kind of sense of Latinidad, and she has a whole bunch of religious symbolism, the home altar in her bedroom, and on and on. That reclaims Romeo and Juliet for Latinidad. And then we get the whole spate of Latinx-themed Shakespeare films.

11:46So, what West Side Story does is it amplifies that orality in the form of a musical. And we also, even in the original, get some Spanish. There are a few Spanish words. And then in 2009, Arthur Lawrence, who wrote the book, directed a Broadway revival of it and made it bilingual. It actually started in Washington, D.C., but they made the sharks sing and speak in Spanish and the jets in English. They eventually took out a lot of the Spanish as it moved and traveled across the country. It went from monolingual to bilingual to semi-bilingual.

12:18And in the most recent film, in the Spielberg-Kushner film, we have a lot of Spanish in the film. And it's not translated. And even if you buy the DVD and you put on English subtitles, they don't subtitle that in English. I tried. I just was curious to see if they were translated at all. And they don't. And then some of the Spanish, if you listen to the soundtrack, they include some of the Spanish words and dialogue. So, Spanish has become integrated into the most known adaptation of a Shakespeare play. And it's incredibly important.

12:48A large part of your book consists of case studies of fairly recent Latinx Shakespeare's.

Case Studies

12:53And I'm curious about some of the elements that you focus on in your analysis. You were just talking about language and versions of West Side Story that are maybe bilingual or semi-bilingual. So, one of the major elements that you focus on is what the audience is hearing during these productions. And maybe another major element is who they're seeing on stage. Could you tell us more about these two aspects? Absolutely. Some of it has to do with the legibility of the Latinx body on stage. So, Latinx peoples can be of any or multiple races.

13:26And so, celebrities who are Latinx include Bobby Cannavale, Cameron Diaz, Madeline Stowe, Michelle Rodriguez, Rosario Dawson, Sammy Davis Jr. And there's a wide variety of what people may look like. So, with that and the Spanish language as such a key signifier and oftentimes a purity test. And there's problems with that because not all Latinx people speak Spanish. And there are big differences based on generation and so forth. But with that, how do you recognize the Latinx body, right?

14:00And so, what will happen, for example, in the 2011 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, they cast a number of Latinx actors, including Romeo and Juliet and the parents for the Capulets, Mercutio, a number of characters. They used language to connote differences in generation. So, the parents, the Capulets, spoke English with a Spanish accent. Sometimes Juliet spoke Spanish. Romeo definitely spoke Spanish when he's joking with the other Montague men and they're telling

14:32their stories and making their jokes. And so, we get language differentiation between generations. Both houses were part of the landed Spanish gentry, the production set in 1840s Alta California. So, they move against the West Side Story effect and make both houses of the same ethnic and cultural background. The white characters, even though the West Side Story effect, as I call it, which is staging difference of any kind, is cultural linguistic difference. The West Side Story effect shows differentiation, making Paris and the Prince white Anglo militiamen.

15:06Where we get a different and more expanded idea of Latinidad and the nascent framing of how Spanish and indigenous cultures are coming together to the modern conception of the Latino is with the alone medicine woman or the apothecary. And they make the apothecary character this role that includes vocables, which are non-lexical syllables that don't have meaning, played by an indigenous actress. We also have Day of the Dead calacas, calaveras, kind of like the skeletons that you see, actors

15:38who would come on and stand behind and not say anything in key moments. So, when Romeo says goodbye to Juliet for what is actually their last time when they're both alive and know that, the calaveras just stood on stage and slowly pulled his arm and walked him backwards. And that's how he exited the scene. So, we're getting multiple languages of what constitutes Latinidad. We're getting actors of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The nurse was played by an African-American actress and also is connoted as Spanish speaking,

16:11and she sings in Spanish too. So, we get a range of races, of racial identities that are part of forming Latinx cultures. And this is an expansive idea of what Latinidad actually is. So, the audience has to understand Latinidad as both, if they're confused visually, then they're understanding it orally. And it shifts the perceptions of what Latinx cultures can be, can look like, as well as sound like. Now, your engagement with Latinx Shakespeare's doesn't end with this book.

16:43You are also the creator and editor of LatinxShakespeare's.org, which is an online archive of Latinx productions of Shakespeare and other classical works. What is this archive, and why did you create it? Well, some of that is simply, as a theater historian, I had done a lot of work, and I wasn't quite sure what I would do with it. When I pitched this topic as a dissertation a dozen years ago, I had tracked at that point seven Latinx-themed Shakespeare productions. And I was questioned if this were really a thing.

17:14Do Latinos do Shakespeare? It was the question that I was responding to. And I responded very defiantly, yes, I'm Colombian, I'm Latina, I'm from California. And I was like, of course we do. And then I had to prove it. So I started off with a very small group of case studies. When I finished my dissertation, I had counted over 40. And I thought, OK, I can turn this into a book. I'll pick a few for case studies, and then I'll give a shout out to the rest. Over the years, I have been better able to historicize, meeting numerous artists and knowing

17:46better where to look, and as well as the proliferation of these types of productions, kind of since my beginning of the study of it. So by the time I was publishing the book, I counted almost 200 Latinx-themed and or authored Shakespeare productions, as well as I kept a list of Latinx-themed Chekhov, Lorca, translations of the Spanish Golden Age, Latinx versions of Moliere. And I thought, if anybody else would like to do work on this type of history, there's no need for anyone else to go through what I went through, as well as I felt as if I owed

18:19it to the artists who I had talked to, and not everything made it in the book, to make their work well known. And so it has to do with that sense of, I want to make it public and accessible, and I want other people to be able to work in this field. So I created LatinxShakespears.org, and that's basically my reason for doing so, that there is an online theater archive, and it's actually phase one of what I'm hoping is an experiment of can we archive theater history and run it like a curated wiki?

18:50Like, can we just archive theater in this way? Yeah, I think it's so interesting that you're talking about playwrights beyond Shakespeare. You know, you mentioned Chekhov, Lorca, playwrights like this. Why expand it like that? I think it's a great idea. I'm just curious, why do that? Well, Latinx playwrights and theater makers have always been invested in adaptation, even from early Latinx plays such as Luis Rafael Sanchez's Antigone adaptation, La Passion Según Antigona Pérez. Carlos Morton's Pancho Diablo has elements of John Milton's work, and Maria Irene Fornes

19:24did a version of Blood Wedding by Lorca in 1980. So there's actually been a number of plays as well that take up indigenous myths, for example, like Monica Palacios' La Llorona, and Josefina Lopez had a play in 1995, Unconquered Spirits, as well. And then we have Luis Alfaro's most recent Greek trilogy that also builds on Sheree Moraga's Medea as well. And so this has been part of Latinx theater. So what Latinx Shakespeare's, the website, and the archive does is kind of, rather than

19:56archiving the work of a particular playwright or of a particular theater, what it's doing is saying, here's a section of Latinx theater making and expanding it with that. What does adaptation mean to Latinx theater? And are there different ways in which Latinx artists are presenting a type of dramaturgy in adaptation that perhaps we're not seeing in other places? Yeah. I'm wondering when listeners to this episode rush to latinxshakespears.org and check it out,

20:27what are they going to see and how can they use the site? The way that it's organized is that there's a page for each Shakespearean genre. So there's tragedies, histories, romances, comedies, and there's one page as well for works that are inspired by, some people might call them appropriations, but this is when we have plays that take characters from different plays and put them together. There also is a section for plays that are for young people, for theater, for young audiences. They'll see a small section for each production or adaptation.

20:58And a good proportion of these shows were productions, were concept productions, and they don't have a script that's attached. They're not recreated somewhere else. Some of them are plays that are published and, or can be presented by a different group of people. So there's information and they're, in more than half of the cases, I went out, I reached out to more than 250 artists and theater companies and asked for their permission to post their ephemera. And so I have curated and limited it.

21:28So there's really no more than five or six pictures from any one particular show. I've tried to include marketing posters, images from the actual production. And in some cases, there are reviews. There are more than 25 contributors and people who wrote reviews of past productions, some that they saw, some that they didn't see. So there's a matter of archiving, of writing past performance reviews. That's, that's incredibly important. There is a tab for resources and I give a list of all of the Latinx Shakespeare's and, and

21:58other canonical adaptations, um, for which there's video and for which there's audio. So there are different buttons for each one, um, where you may be able to download or read a review or a scholarly article, or you may have access and be able to link to video to clips and so forth. So it will contain that type of information. And I've been asked to expand from there. So, um, we'll see the directions that it will go in. Um, but that's what's there right now. Yeah. Speaking of expansion, uh, someone might be listening to this and wondering, Hey, how can

22:30I contribute? I know about something. Uh, it doesn't seem to be on the website. How can people contribute to, uh, Latinxshakespears.org? There is a contact button and you can send me a quick message. If there's a production or past production that you think that should be included, there are some parameters that I list on the about tab for what I have included and what I have not. So productions that just include a Latinx actor, I have not included. And I may later make space for the number of Latinx directors who have done a lot of work in directing Shakespeare, but right now I don't have it set up like that.

23:01So you can contact me and let me know that if there's something you may want to include or that should be included and there's no conflict of interest. So if you were an actor in a show, it's not against the rules to write something small about it. So there are a few playwrights who wrote something short about the plays that, that are listed on there and, um, I would edit it and, and get back to you. But I basically, my premise is that having information is better than not having the information. And so right now I am the editor, but all sorts of people have contributed from people who

23:36have just finished college and are not, um, what they consider to be scholars to the playwrights and actors who have been part of the work. And so it's, it, to me, it's more about a community and communities of people coming together in order to make sure that this portion of art making doesn't get lost. Yeah. Talking about contributing to, uh, the website ties in with something that you write in your book and I thought that was really interesting, uh, cause we usually kind of, I think many of us who are in a theater education kind of tend to consider scholarly sources as maybe

24:07more authoritative, uh, that's then stuff that practicing artists say, but in your book, you challenge that stating that, and here I'm quoting you, I put the analysis by theater practitioners on equal level with academic theorists. Why do you do that? And what have you gained from refusing to stick to that old hierarchy?

24:27Um, yes, it is an old hierarchy. I agree with that. And I've talked to so many artists and I've worked in theaters and I've been part of the artistic process. More recently, since I actually finished the book, I did a large oral histories project that will be published in a different publication, which I got to talk to, to wonderful actors and theater makers. And every time I do, I'm reminded that the artistic giftedness is a form of scholarship and that theater making is a form of criticism.

24:58And so I, sometimes we see in more literary scholarship that takes up theater to be presentist, um, or relevant or political. We see a turn to performance of, oh, I want to include the performer because it seems like it's the right thing to do or to give an actor a voice. And there's definite merit in that. I want to push on that and say that actors are interpreting. They're, they're, they're coming at the work from a fundamentally different place that I am, um, and, and, and not taking part in that way in artistic production, but the both

25:32and of the scholar practitioner, I'm kind of expanding into artists are doing this work as well. And so I've been a dramaturg, I've been a scholar for a show or scholar for a workshop, and that is my role. But the conversations I have with artists every single time illuminate things for me in the text that I have not seen or invoke a different way of looking at the material and the different experience. And I don't, I don't agree that that is secondary or lesser than, or just could be noted. And so I have found that, and in the book, there are direct quotations from a number of artists.

26:07And to me, they contribute just as much to the conversation and analysis of these productions as some of the, the wonderful theorists who I've enjoyed reading for years. If we could pull back, maybe look at the bigger picture for a moment.

Challenges and Contributions

26:19It seems like producing Shakespeare with Latinx elements could be a tricky proposition. You're very gracious in your book, but you, you do mention in passing a few productions that sound like they went pretty badly wrong. And, uh, beyond that, many artists and scholars seem to have these, these very understandable reservations about engaging with plays that come with a lot of cultural and historical baggage. How do some of the artists and productions in your book and at latinxshakespears.org that you've documented, how do those artists work against those pitfalls and concerns?

26:53Yes, there, there are a number of problematic productions and, and it came to the questions of, of the ethics of public information about how I address them and also include them in the online archive. And so I will never write about work that I don't like, um, how that's, that's a subjective thing. And so I won't devote my time to something like that, but they are part of the history and even West Side Story, many would argue are part of, is part of that as well. And so that's part of the shaping, uh, most things are in response to, to what is in the

27:25past. So to, to work on Latinx Shakespeare is one of the things that I think is most helpful is having Latinx artists as part of the creative team. And that doesn't mean that the entire cast needs to be Latinx. And Latinx is, um, deems people from a whole number of cultures and more than 20 country backgrounds and different experiences. So that is not necessarily cohesive, but to have Latinx members of the creative team certainly helps in, in perhaps not stepping into problematic representations. But the, but the other idea too, is to move past representation.

27:59And sometimes it's just Latinx artists putting on Shakespeare, right? I mean, Shakespeare is great because he's in the public domain. So he's free and you can adapt them freely and do whatever you'd like as people do, of course. And with that freedom, if there are some strange things that don't work for a particular production, change them and you can do that. And I think one of the main things is, is an expansive idea and not, and not thinking of Latino as a homogenous culture or an object that needs to be represented, but that Latinidad

28:33as, as a presentist, um, notion of cultures and peoples, um, there are different ways to incorporate that into the dramaturgy, um, through music, through sounds, through casting, through language play and that there's an actual reason for adapting, not just, oh, we should do something with Latinos and we're a Shakespeare company, but what's the actual reason? What is the motivation? And more and more, or rather less and less as more Latinx artists have gotten involved and people are understanding Latinx cultures more, I don't see as many problematic productions

29:06nearly at all. And so I think it's just a sign of growth and progression. Yeah. There's, there's something else that kind of comes off of that, that I'm curious about. You say at one point in your book that you've quote, been asked whether Latinx Shakespeare's are good for Latinx people. What to your mind do these productions offer and what makes them worth doing? Well, in some ways, Latinx Shakespeare's dramaturgically go in a different direction than Latinx theater today. So Latinx theater, as it expands and changes or theater by Latinx artists actually open,

29:42over time has included less and less Spanish, for example, and isn't necessarily taking up traditional themes of political protest, immigration, acculturation, right? There are Latinx authored and very Latinx plays that don't address any of that at all. Latinx Shakespeare's incorporates often, well, most of the time Spanish, at least to some extent, other times a tertiary language. And we'll take up on a number of those themes. We see the comedy of errors and 12th night done with immigration themes.

30:12So they're kind of going in a different direction than, than the expansion of Latinx theater. And I think that can be productive. It sometimes is helpful or it shifts the relationship and experience to stage an immigration story through something like 12th night, rather than through a more realistic or memetic authored play. And that to be able to tell that narrative displaces some of the horrors and trauma and atrocity

30:44that might be felt in a more realistic script that is written based on locations of today and so forth. So it can be helpful. That helpful distance shifts the experience for the audience as well as the actor. And with that, there's an audience that goes to see and hear familiar stories, and they're getting different bodies in a different context, right? So the audiences that may go see a production of 12th night may learn a little bit something about Cuba and immigration in the background and hear music and, and see different actors that they probably

31:17wouldn't have gone and seen at their local Latinx theater and something else. And for Latinx actors, there's a long time assumption about vocality and, and Shakespearean actors are noted for their expertise and I use the term mastery of vocality and language, right? And being able to speak the lines and to be able to perform Shakespeare and those who are associated with having an accent or who do have an accent, there's a lot of linguistic bias and racism about that capability. So it permits people who've been left out of the Shakespearean actor pipeline to be able to perform

31:52in productions and, and be welcomed as well as to embrace perhaps their cultures too. So, and I think that any type of creativity and Latinx, um, themes and cultures and actors on stage is great. I'm a big advocate. And so, um, I think that they can and are very good for Latinx peoples and as well as Latinx peoples are very good for Shakespeare. So, um, we're expanding what his works can mean and what Shakespeare can mean. And, and that is something that, um, I think is some ways almost specific to Latinidad.

32:26When I said, there are no Latinx characters in Shakespeare, that's because the formation of the Latino was coming into making during Shakespeare's time with Spanish colonization of the Americas. And so rather than there are other cultures who are not represented well, um, who are not represented enough, but Latinos are just absent from the Shakespearean canon. There are three references to Mexico and the Merchant of Venice, and I think one or two in the, uh, to the Americas and the comedy of errors, and that's it. And so the question becomes, how do we dramaturgically integrate cultures into a canon that doesn't

33:03have them in it? And so it poses artistic challenges and creativity. And I think the expansion of Latinx Shakespeare's will push on the artistic aesthetic and, and political aspect of what it means to be Latinx and involved with this type of work. We'll post links to Carla's book, Latinx Shakespeare's, Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater. And we'll also post links to latinxshakespears.org, as well as a number of interviews that Carla has done on the subject of Latinx Shakespeare's. Carla, thank you so much for joining us.

33:35Thank you. If you'd like to continue today's conversation, please visit theaterhistorypodcast.net and follow at Theater History on social media. Please note that, while we usually spell theater T-H-E-A-T-R-E, it ends in E-R on our social media handle. Our theme music is the Black Crook Gallop, which comes to us courtesy of the New York Public Library Libretto Project and Adam Roberts.

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