Marcela

Exploring Cervantes is always a profound adventure and a challenge for the intellect and the senses insofar as capturing the essence of the mystery of an extraordinary narrator who has been described as a nucleus of modern thinking. Notions such as liberty, self-determination, social class, gender, imagination and metafiction converge in the writing of Cervantes like a perfect storm that transforms all that it touches.

Much has been said and written about Marcela as a feminist icon, for her vibrant denouncement of guilt, which fascinated Don Quixote and offended the men around her. We want to bring Marcela to the stage to look beyond this evident first and powerful impression and to celebrate the rich literature of Cervantes. What does Marcela’s identity really mean to her author?

Her appearance in the novel gives rise to different versions of the same event: a romance attributed to Grisóstomo, the testimony of the shepherds who criticise Marcela, Don Quixote’s own opinion and Marcela’s defence of herself before her accusers, which she pulls off with the aplomb and effectiveness of a TED Talk. Different perspectives emerge in a highly revealing ‘staging’ of the narrator: the role of nature, the papers they use to bury Grisóstomo, the corporal relationship of Marcela with the men who speak of her. From the page to the stage, theatre allows us to inhabit Cervantes in a specific place and time to shed new light on a work that still holds much to be discovered.

María Folguera

The first time I read Marcela’s speech, I was confounded. How can a text written in 1605 be so modern?
How is it that a man, Miguel de Cervantes, in the early 17th century, was able to comprehend and transmit so poetically and effectively something as intrinsic to womanhood in the context of a patriarchy?
And furthermore, how is it that Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and Dulcinea are familiar to me but I had no recollection of the shepherdess Marcela? Directing this production and bringing to life a character like Marcela -who invites us to reflect on love, power and the radical fear of a free woman- is a lovely way to pay tribute to Cervantes, who is one of the most important authors of universal literature, and to all the Marcelas past, present and future.

Leticia Dolera