Photo courtesy of Óscar Santos-Sopena
The Los Jimediantes, the theater company of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, will perform their first play, El Rapto de Europa (The Rapture of Europe) by Max Aub, on Thursday and again on May 10.
The company, which was founded at the beginning of the fall 2011 semester, is composed of 10 graduate students in the language department (including nine doctoral candidates) and two undergraduate theater majors.
The play is directed by José M. Naharro-Calderón, a professor of Spanish at this university.
Naharro-Calderón, who performed in plays while in college, was excited when the students approach him with the idea for a department theater company.
“Acting and theater is such an important tradition in Spain, especially since the golden age,” Naharro-Calderón said.
In addition to teaching Spanish at the university for 25 years, Naharro-Calderón performed in plays while in college.
This is a revival of an old passion, but yet, as a professor I am directing a play every day when I come into a classroom. I am staging a new play, a new act,” Naharro-Calderón said.
The students began working on El Rapto de Europa in September. They rehearse as a group about seven hours a week.
The play is set in Marseilles, France, during World War II. The play follows protagonist Margaret Palmer and her friend Jay Allen as they try to escape from Marseilles ahead of the encroaching German and Italian armies. During their journey, they meet refugees and various people affected by the war from across Europe.
“What we’re trying to portray is communication in a world where people from different backgrounds were trying to deal with one problem,” said Lina Morales-Chacana, who plays Anna from Germany in the performance.
As a result, the characters switch between a number of languages, including Spanish, English, French, Italian and German with English “supertitles.”
As language graduate students, acting in foreign languages was not a challenge. As a result, they found they were able to focus on perfecting character traits that would lend authenticity to their performances.
“One of the really cool things is Lina’s character is German and speaking in Spanish the whole time so she’s been working on having an authentic German accent in Spanish,” said Lisa Warren, who plays the English-speaking Margaret.
The members of Los Jimediantes hope the audience will not only walk away from the play entertained but, more importantly, made aware of cultural interactions during the World War II era and how they persist in the modern world.
“The neat thing about the play is it gives us and the people who come see it an opportunity to have a cultural experience that they otherwise wouldn’t have,” said Chris Lewis, who plays Bob. “If you really want to learn about a culture, about a language, about people you need to experience it and participate in it.”
The Rapture of Europe is free and will be shown on May 3 and May 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Ulrich Recital Hall in the Tawes Fine Arts Building.
