Guitar, flamenco and dramatic acting have been fused together in an unforgettable poetry presentation.
“Para que yo me llame Ángel González,” or “For me to be called Ángel González,” premieres this Saturday at the National Hispanic Cultural Center downtown.
Director Crawford MacCallum said it was natural to choose Spanish poet Ángel González as the subject for the performance because of his links to New Mexico.
“His style is kind of oblique, but he’s a very fine craftsman of words,” MacCullum said.
The play features poems about González’s life, and the pieces are acted out by the theatre group Teatro Paraguas. Two of the actors also translated González’s poems.
The poems in the show are either recited, expressed through a brief sketch or presented as a conversation between two characters, MacCullum said.
“First of all we try to work from memory as much as we can, and that makes a real difference,” he said. “I try to keep it flowing.”
González, who wrote during the Spanish Civil War, is famous for his poetry subtly critiquing the fascist regime.
“He was working in Franco’s dictatorship and he couldn’t write what he wanted to,” he said. “He was censored. He developed a sort of oblique ironic style, almost in code. His readers knew what he was talking about, but his sensors — he said they were blinded by their own ideology.”
All of the poems are presented in Spanish with the English translation projected on the side of the stage, MacCallum said. Some of the poems will be performed twice, once in Spanish and then in English. MacCallum, who translated most of the poems for the performance, said it was sometimes vexing to find the right words for González’s poems.
“He likes to use puns,” MacCallum said. “Sometimes you can get something equivalent, but very often you get stuck. Sometimes you cannot get a point across and you lose it.”
MacCallum, a retired physicist and astronomy professor, said he was inspired to create dramatic poetry after organizing a Pablo Neruda poetry reading five years ago with his actor friends.
“We weren’t just content reading the poems,” he said. “We had to act them out in costumes and do funny stuff and keep it flowing and make it a theatrical event instead of just a poetry reading.”
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All of the poems will also be accompanied by Spanish-style guitar music played by Dan Briggs. Briggs said it’s challenging to combine musical and poetic elements, but he usually finds the right tune for each piece.
“I take the music off the imagery, what sound and what feeling that suggests to me,” he said.
A few of the poems also feature flamenco dance performed by Susannah Calzada Garrett. Her improvised dance is used to capture the ambience of each poem and the guitar music, she said.
“You are creating images with dance,” she said. “So the images that are there in the poems come into the dance, so I find it an interface that’s pretty natural.”
Briggs said the combination of poetry, classical guitar and flamenco dancing can be tricky, but starting with the right poet makes it easier.
“In this case, it’s the poetry of Ángel González, but he’s very musical,” Briggs said. “His imagery and poetry suggest feelings, therefore tones, sounds.”
“Para que yo me llame Angel Gonzàlez”
Wells Fargo Theater, National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St. SW
Opens Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Free
www.teatroparaguas.org
