Siglo Latinx - Students' Testimonials

Adaptation, Transformation and Relevance of Early Modern Theater/ 2024 congress.

By Natalia Soracipa

On September 11th, Lorena Rojas and I headed to Los Angeles to take part in the annual conference organized by AITENSO and the AHCT in the company of La Escena. In addition to having an opportunity to break the routine of remote meetings and meet through the screen, this was an experience in which we connected with countless academics, researchers, and artists who continue to keep the Golden Age alive. Every day, we listened to the ideas of educators who strive to transmit ancient stories to young people, and we closed with a visit to the Nimoy Theater to witness different theater productions. In addition, we were also able to give a presentation about our work with Siglo Latinx Lorena's was titled "Del verso al reggaetón en La traición de la amistad de Ana Zambrana" and mine "La poética del espacio: un encuentro entre la imagen y la luz en la creación artística de Israel Franco-Muller." This was an excellent opportunity to connect with others and open our horizons towards the theatrical and academic fields.

Mentorship Through Theater Performances

By Natalia Soracipa

When I started working for Siglo Latinx, I did not foresee this project's impact on my career, and my visit to Teatro Círculo in New York is just an example of this impact. This experience had a profound meaning to me not only because being backstage at a theater performance would awaken emotions that I had not felt since I stopped my career as an actress but also because it would teach me a new way to approach theater from a different lens.

In New York, I was tasked with documenting the rehearsal pre-premier of La monja alferez, a new performance by Teatro Círclo that they decided to stage to celebrate their 30th anniversary. From the beginning, I knew I was going to meet artists from different origins, interview the director of the play, Daniel Alonso de Santos, and work every day next to the production designer Israel Franco-Müller, fixing costumes and scenography, jobs I knew pretty well from my previews work as assistant director and theater actress, but I did not imagine that this experience was going to take me to write my first published theater review.

During a week, I recorded how the story of Catalina de Erauso (la monja) was being staged, how the rehearsals developed, and what the most captivating features of the performance were; I shared this information daily through social media. Also, I chatted in the dressing rooms with actors from different countries and learned about their experiences as Hispanic actors working in New York, a path that has required lots of effort from all of them. Indeed, that week in New York reminded me that theater is a discipline that congregates diversity on stage to tell stories that could impact audiences in different ways. All this information collected during a week was the basis for writing my first theater review, "La monja alférez: una producción del Teatro Círculo de Neva York," published by Latin American Theater Review in Spring 2024. The writing process of this review under the mentorship of Dr. Nieto and Dr. Cowling, directors of the Siglo Latinx project, brought multiple learning experiences, from how to analyze academically a theater performance to how to give flow to the text in a way all the information and ideas I had were communicated with clarity. This writing experience awakened my interest in visiting more theater companies and continuing to write more reviews, something I plan to undertake this year and next year with the support of Siglo Latinx. I am very excited to continue working for Siglo Latinx and embracing new learning experiences like this one that nurture my career as an educator and artist.

The Intersection of Identity and Art

By Elizabeth Sumoza

As a 3rd year student at Ohio Wesleyan University studying Sociology/Anthropology and Theatre (with minors in History and Spanish), it was really exciting to be invited to be a part of an internship with Professor Nieto-Cuebas, an Associate Professor at OWU. My name is Elizabeth Sumoza, and I am one of five people who were a part of the Siglo Latinx project in New York, alongside fellow OWU student Madison Cartnal, professor Erin Cowling from MacEwan University and doctoral student Natalia Soracipa from the University of Calgary in Canada.

The Siglo Latinx project studies present adaptations of Golden Age Spanish plays by and for latinx artists. The role that this specific internship had in the Siglo Latinx project involved a trip to NYC, funded by OWU’s Small Grant Program (SIP), to work on La Monja Alférez, a play adapted by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, directed by Daniel Alonso de Santos, and put on by Teatro Círculo. Teatro Círculo is a not-for-profit theatre company that focuses on producing works by both past and present Latinx artists. This is particularly meaningful to me because I am a Puerto Rican and Venezuelan artist who aspires to be a part of the theater industry. Being in a space that values my cultural heritage is exciting, especially when I get to share that passion with a community of people who share my identity and have the same cultural vocabulary. The play that Teatro Círculo was putting on meant a lot to me as a queer person as well because I got to see my identity represented in a culture that isn’t traditionally accepting of changes to the status quo.

At first, Israel, the production director, put us to do smaller tasks while he and the technical director, Omayra Garriga, prepared the stage for the final technical rehearsals. These tasks included steaming the costumes to free them of any wrinkles, which was especially important to contrast the wealthy characters with characters who were less fortunate and didn’t have to appear as clean-cut. We also reorganized all of the chords that were used for lights and sound after the stage was prepared for tech rehearsals, and we helped clean the stage at the end of the week for the final performance, which was happening that weekend.

Closer to the night of performances, I got to help out with some lighting issues that they were having. When we arrived, Israel and Omayra were in the process of rewiring all of the lightbulbs that they had hanging from the ceiling to create the effect of stars in the night sky into one channel so that all of the light bulbs could be controlled by one slider on the light board. However, once they had rewired the bulbs, there was a section of them that had completely burnt out and needed to be replaced. That section had not been programmed along with the other bulbs that had already been rewired, so when that section was replaced, I went to the lightboard to merge it with the light bulbs that had already been programmed. I found which cues used the light bulbs, matched the light intensity of the new section with the sections that were ready to go, and then merged the new light bulbs in with the existing cues so that all of the bulbs would come on and off at the same time. It was really fun to learn about programming cues and get the chance to operate the board. After that, Omayra asked me to attach a clamp to a projector so that she could hang it and project the overtitles for the show. Those were the two big things that I felt really proud of doing because it was so different from the spheres of theatre that I’m used to working with.

I’m a Theatre major, but I’m a lot more well-versed in thinking about performance elements than I am with technical elements. I chose this major because I wanted to go into acting after I graduated, but now I’m really excited to add knowledge of operating the light board and managing the technical elements to my repertoire so that I can be open to more kinds of opportunities in my career.

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