fuenteovejuna (lope de vega)

Fuenteovejuna is a story about citizens who take a terrible, courageous risk. In the face of oppression, they chose to unite and fight back, killing the oppressor. In the seventeenth century, this kind of action rarely ended well. I don’t know enough about Spanish history but Shakespeare’s take on the Peasant’s Revolt in Henry VI, and rebellion in general, makes clear the price that anyone who went against the established rule had to be prepared to pay. (Of course it is not so very different today.) So, how should this affect the staging of the play? Clearly the element of risk is fundamental. Lope’s play incorporates what they call in modern screenwriting terms, ‘jeopardy’. How should jeopardy be introduced into the staging? There must be a million ways, this is the beauty of staging a classic text, but one thing that has to happen is that the contract of the play, which is between those staging it and those watching it, should not be too cosy. To get to the heart of the play’s intentions and communicate this with the public, in other words to honour the writer, involves being prepared to incomodar the audience - to make them uncomfortable. This isn’t a cute classic comedy, it’s a cry of defiance and courage.

Watching a recent staging made me think about what radical risk takers the Golden Age theatre practitioners were, in both Spain and Britain. The plays repeatedly engage with stories, characters and perspectives which questioned the established social and political order at a time when theatres could be arbitrarily shut, when playwrights died in duels, when the very action of participating in theatre implied positioning oneself on a crepuscular margin of society. With luck, you made money and retired to Warwickshire. Without luck, you died in a ditch.

The trouble with the staging of classics, something the RSC also struggles with in my experience, is that there is a desire to tell the audience: don’t worry, we know this is a challenging watch, but we’re going to hold your hand and make sure you don’t suffer too much. When what is essential to the process of the play is a sense of danger, or unease, of uncertainty. Will the villagers be hanged for their valour? Will the forces of law and order bulldoze them in a pit? How scared are they? How scared are we for them? Without this tension, the play becomes an exercise in speaking verse, no more than an archeological process. How to achieve these ends is the great challenge the director faces. Better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb: better to fail valiantly than to anaesthetise the play’s radical premise.

Juan Rojo: So what do you think the town should do?

Alderman: The town should die, or kill these tyrants. We are many, they are few.