El Paso Matters – Performers give Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ border twist

While written in Elizabethan English, the plays of William Shakespeare are Greek to most Americans. That has not stopped the Kern Place Association from organizing its third annual Madeline Park Shakespeare Festival Sept. 20-21 and 27-28.

The centerpiece of this year’s free celebration is an abridged and Southwestern-ized version of the Bard’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” a comedy about the battle of the sexes and the dynamics of marriage that is told in an innovative way so both lead characters learn from each other. About a fifth of the dialogue will be in Spanish.

Jay Stratton, associate professor of theater at the University of Texas at El Paso, will direct the play that he helped edit down and rewrite to be about 90 minutes with one intermission. Among the changes is the location from the Italian cities of Verona and Padua to the U.S.-Mexico cities of El Paso, Texas, and Mérida, Yucatán. Instead of the late 16th century, this story takes place in the mid-20th century.

“Some people get lost because it’s Shakespeare,” Stratton said. “For some, it’s a chore because it makes no sense. My job as the director is to make the story as clear as possible so people will know who’s mad at who and where the comedy is. I’ve tried to make it super accessible.”

The eight cast members will take on about a dozen roles. The actors, mostly UTEP alumni, will be mic’d up. Rehearsals at the park and at UTEP started in early August. The performers will be backed up by music. Technicians will oversee the audio and the lighting.

One of the actors is Wicho Valdez, a senior theatre arts major, who portrays several roles to include Vincentio, the wealthy father of Lucentio, one of the lovesick characters. He has performed in some UTEP productions, but this was his first Shakespeare play.

“I’m thoroughly enjoying it,” said Valdez, 27, during a brief break. “I love the language and how it’s used to express what he is feeling.”

Stratton is proud that the festival’s productions have added more and more Spanish through the years. From about 5% of “As You Like It” in 2022 to about 20% of the dialogue in last year’s “Twelfth Night,” the plan is to make the Bard more inclusive. He made the same choice about six years ago when he helped adapt Charles Dickens’ holiday classic into “A Christmas Carol en la Frontera,” a bilingual border staple that his department now produces annually.

Gabriela Reyes was among the UTEP students who performed in the 2019 edition of the holiday show. She said that Stratton liked how she worked with the cast and told her about his plan to produce family-friendly Shakespeare plays at Madeline Park. 

Reyes, who earned a bachelor’s degree in theater with a concentration in performance and a minor in creative writing in 2023, said she had no training in Shakespeare and considered it a third language after her native Spanish and English. 

At some point, Stratton encouraged her to add some Spanish to her role as Rosalind, the heroine in the 2022 production, “As You Like It.” There was some translation to the script, but he mostly wanted her to speak to the audience about what was taking place. People who watched the rehearsals at the park reacted positively. The explanation added to the tension and confusion between the characters.

“It was really funny,” Reyes said during a telephone interview from Lubbock, where she is a first-year MFA theater student at Texas Tech University. “The audience understood the context.”

As a result, Stratton decided to add additional Spanish in subsequent productions with Reyes providing the translations in scenes where Spanish would fit best. The performer, a native of Guadalajara who graduated from El Paso High School in 2019, said the addition of Spanish makes Shakespeare more accessible to border residents, and will make them more invested in the arts.

“It speaks to the culture,” said Reyes, whose thesis will involve something similar to the Madeline Park festival in Lubbock. “There’s room to explore comedy in Spanish. It complements very well.”

The inclusion of Spanish and the edits add to the public accessibility, said Joe Ortiz, professor and chair of UTEP’s Department of English who is a Shakespeare and Renaissance scholar.

“I think what they’re doing is really wonderful,” Ortiz said. “What Jay and his team are doing is not easy, but the cuts and the changes make it fun to those who think they may not like it.”

Joe Ortiz, professor of English at UTEP, is a Shakespeare scholar who supports the Shakespeare Festival. (Daniel Perez / El Paso Matters)

He compared some of the slapstick antics from past year’s performances to skits he might have seen on “Sabado Gigante,” a wildly popular Spanish-language variety show that ran from 1962 to 2015.

During a recent rehearsal at Madeline Park, the actors worked on blocking, the timing of lines, and the use of props to make the performance simple, fluid and fun. It was odd to hear some performers try to recite their Elizabethan lines in a Texas twang.

While the performers focused on their tasks, community members from children to the elderly used the park to play tennis, shoot baskets and train their dogs as hip-hop music wafted in the background under a first-quarter moon.    

Based on past years, Stratton expects several thousand patrons to enjoy the four presentations of “Shrew,” which will cost about $10,000 to produce. Much of that comes from the park association, the UTEP College of Liberal Arts, and its departments of English and Theatre and Dance to include in-kind contributions such as costumes, as well as the El Paso Parks and Recreation Department. There also are private donations.

The festival will be produced by Eden Performing Arts, a nonprofit arts organization.

Ortiz, the Shakespeare scholar, encouraged audience members to go with an open mind and to try to sit as close as possible to the stage. Stratton said performers may interact with patrons who set up near the gazebo, which he called “the splash zone.”

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