Introduction to Lydia G. Garcia and Bill Rauch’s La Comedia of Errors

[print edition page number: 369]

Lydia G. Garcia and Bill Rauch’s La Comedia of Errors (2019) resituates Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors in a twenty-first century Borderlands setting. Developed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in partnership with community members, La Comedia of Errors emphasizes the linguistic plurality of the Americas, bringing Shakespeare’s English text together with Spanish as it is spoken in a variety of regions. As co-adaptors, Rauch and Garcia based their play on the modernized text developed by Christina Anderson for the Play On Shakespeare series, and Garcia translated sections of the script into Spanish. This multilayered translation and adaptation process created opportunities for witty bilingual humor as well as for pointed critique of policies that restrict movement and separate families at the increasingly militarized U.S.–Mexico border. In this play, the two sets of twins—Antífolo and Antipholus and their servants, Drómio and Dromio—are separated by the border, with one master-servant pair speaking Spanish and the other speaking English. The play follows their misadventures as Antífolo and Drómio cross the border in search of their long-lost brothers.

Based on Plautus’s Roman comedy Menaechmi, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is a play about commerce, immigration, and coerced labor that was written amidst a climate of anti-immigrant sentiment. The play opens with a Syracusan merchant, Egeon, being threatened with death for appearing in the ancient port city of Ephesus in violation of a recent ordinance barring Syracusans from the city. As Nandini Das observes, Shakespeare draws parallels between Ephesus and late sixteenth-century London, a site of global trade in which there was “severe backlash” against immigrants who “were both equally attracted by London’s economic promise and accused of appropriating the local population’s livelihood, resources and charity.”^[1] Because of its treatment of these themes, The Comedy of Errors resonates with twenty-first century concerns about immigration, [370] including restrictive laws, inhumane policing practices, and inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric. Set in Oregon but in a nondescript location, La Comedia of Errors reveals the elasticity of the border for migrants, particularly for those who are undocumented and living in fear of deportation. Furthermore, while La Comedia does away with Shakespeare’s language of slavery, it maintains the class differences between the Antipholuses and the Dromios, thus commenting on the treatment of domestic workers and others in modern service roles.^[2]

Like many works of Borderlands Shakespeare, La Comedia of Errors is indebted to the teatro tradition and its legacy of community engagement. It opens with a prologue that features an acto, a short skit that explains the events that led the twins to be separated from one another and from their parents. Like the actos performed by El Teatro Campesino, this brief introductory set piece calls attention to political injustices that have inspired social movements. In it, Egeón takes a flight from Mexico to Canada for work, causing him to be separated from his pregnant wife, Emilia, who follows him and then adopts the Dromios because their mother is “ill and alone.” Tragically, a plane crash disrupts the family’s voyage home. Egeón, Antífolo, and Drómio manage to return to Mexico, while Emilia is stopped by Border Patrol and the other children are taken from her. This acto not only sets the scene for the bilingual comedy that follows, but also calls attention to the mistreatment of migrants at the border and to the ever-present threat of deportation and family separation.

Reflecting OSF’s commitment to culturally relevant programming, Latinx communities of Oregon’s Rogue Valley were deeply involved in the development of the original production of La Comedia, which was directed by Rauch in 2019. The production team brought together a group of community dramaturgs drawn from Spanish-speaking members of the OSF staff, a constituency that had not previously been brought into the company’s artistic process. As Community Liaison Alejandra Cisneros explains in an interview,

we have such a rich fountain of folks here on campus who are already invested in OSF and work here and do all the unseen work that actually makes this machine move, who are Spanish speakers, who love comedy, who are from this area, who are literally within this 30 miles of OSF.^[3] [371]

These dramaturgs provided suggestions based on their own experiences and perspectives during workshops and rehearsals. OSF’s inclusive ethos was also evident in the bilingual marketing of the production and in its regional tour.^[4] In addition to staging La Comedia in OSF’s home space in Ashland, the company toured the surrounding area in a series of “community hosted experiences,” which sought “to engage in deeper collaboration with local communities by exchanging stories and creating space for ongoing dialogue about the issues in the play.”^[5] In service of this goal, the performances concluded with a shared meal, where theater practitioners and audience members could celebrate what Community Producer Antonio David Lyons described as an unquantifiable “magic” that happens “in these very unique spaces, in these very specific communities.”^[6]

Seeking to build bridges across languages and to create trust among people with different relationships to English and Spanish, the creators of La Comedia prioritized linguistic accessibility and in the process transformed mainstream Shakespearean theater. Reflecting on the wholesale integration of Spanish with English in the production, Bernardo Mazón Daher writes, “It is a revolutionary act to put Spanish on an American stage, let alone in proximity with Shakespeare.”^[7] This act of linguistic justice contributed to OSF’s efforts to disrupt the whiteness of Shakespeare institutions and meaningfully build new theatergoing audiences. The result, as voice and text coach Micha Espinosa describes it, was a production “where crossing sonic borders was welcomed and embraced.”^[8]

The primary strategy that Garcia and Rauch used to make this production accessible to multilingual audiences was to incorporate acts of real-time translation and translanguaging into the bilingual world of the play itself. Several characters serve both informally and formally as interpreters, reflecting the necessity of interpreting in official legal contexts and in community spaces. For instance, when the Sheriff’s Deputy—an English speaker with a working knowledge of Spanish—interprets for Egeón as he is threatened with deportation, he is also [372] serving as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking members of the audience. When they first arrive in the United States, Antífolo de México similarly translates both for Drómio de México and for the benefit of those in the audience who might not understand the guide’s instructions about how to behave and speak in order to avoid calling attention to their undocumented status.

The most dynamic interpreter in this production, however, is La Vecina, a bilingual neighbor figure who is both “part of and local to the audience.” Using culturally specific humor, this character interprets the action for audience members while also offering hilarious and sometimes biting commentary. La Vecina adjusts the translation depending on context, providing literal glosses and condensing or augmenting the speeches of the other characters. La Vecina’s witty rejoinders remind the audience, moreover, that they need not be comfortable with the abuse that Dromio and Drómio receive at the hands of Antipholus and Antífolo.

La Comedia of Errors also critiques the myth of the American Dream, which, as Antífolo de México laments, “es una pesadilla,” thus exposing the nightmarish conditions that migrants often face in pursuing a more prosperous future for themselves and their families. Life in the United States proves to be alienating for Antífolo and Drómio and causes them to question their sanity. When he is confused about why Adriana and Luciana insist that they know him, for instance, Antífolo de México asks in an aside whether he is “en la tierra, el cielo, o en el infierno” and wonders if he is “¿Soñando o despierto? ¿Sensato o enloquecido?” Is it possible that they know him and he doesn’t know himself? “¿Conocido de ellas y de mí mismo desconocido?” (2.2). In La Comedia’s Borderlands context, this disorientation also reflects Antífolo and Drómio’s undocumented status and the ways in which migrants can be denied full legal personhood in the United States.

Despite the deep losses that the play’s central family has experienced during their thirty-three-year separation, the final act ends on a note of hope and comic joy. Reprising the language of dreams from earlier in the play, Egeón describes their reunion as a long-deferred dream come true. When he finally sees his wife Emilia, who has been living as an abbess in the convent where she sought sanctuary, Egeón says, “Los sueños, sueños son. Pero si eres Emilia, un sueño querido se ha hecho realidad” (5.1). Their newfound happiness is threatened by Egeón’s pending deportation, but La Vecina averts this crisis by rallying the community, leading the audience and ensemble in the popular bilingual protest chant:

¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
The people united will never be divided!
¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
The people united will never be divided! [373]

Proving that the community is united in their support for Egeón, La Vecina successfully persuades Sheriff Solinus to allow him to stay in the United States, creating the conditions for the family reunion that concludes the play. In these closing moments, La Comedia of Errors realizes its vision of theater created by and for the community, as audience members are invited to join the play’s action and raise their own voices for justice.

— Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos