Romeo and Juliet on Mexican Film: Shakespeare across rural and urban divides

Romeo and Juliet on Mexican Film: Shakespeare across rural and urban divides

Durham Hall 240 | Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona) | April 30, 2024 | 12 p.m. (MST)

Presented by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Although Shakespeare is often staged in Spanish-speaking countries, he has seldom been a source for Spanish-speaking film. Moreover, practically no movies have been made “straight” from Shakespeare and only sparsely have his plays been adapted in a readily identifiable manner.

Still, the presence of Shakespeare is easier to detect in Mexican cinema than in other Spanish-speaking industries since 1943, when Romeo y Julieta, a parody starring the legendary “Cantinflas”, was released. Ever since, R&J has unsurprisingly been the play most gestured at, or openly mined for substance, at diverse stages in the history of Mexican cinema. As can be expected, all somehow address the social, economic, racial and political divides that mark—and beset—Mexican culture and life. This talk will provide an overview of such a cluster, focusing on how the R&J hypotext has been adapted to the traditional contrast between the rural and the urban spheres in Mexican cinema.

Alfredo Michel Modenessi is a professor of drama, theater and translation at the National University of Mexico, as well as a translator and dramaturg. He has published and lectured on theater, translation, cinema and Shakespeare in the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Mexico and the USA, among others. He has translated over fifty plays, including eighteen by Shakespeare — e.g. Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library Online), Henry IV (The Globe, 2012), Romeo and Juliet (NY Public Theater, 2021), Love's Labour's Lost, Richard III and Othello — as well as Marlowe's Edward II, Kyd's Arden of Faversham and modern playwrights such as August Wilson, Paula Vogel, Tom Stoppard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nina Raine, Tennessee Williams and Marina Carr. He's currently on sabbatical with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at ASU, where he's writing a book on Shakespeare and Mexican cinema. As a long-term project, he's rendering Shakespeare's sonnets into Spanish verse.