Red Bull Theater Presents the Premiere of THE COURAGE TO RIGHT A WOMAN'S WRONGS (VALOR, AGRAVIO Y MUJER)

RED BULL THEATER today announced that its fall offerings will continue with a premiere reading of The Courage to Right A Woman's Wrongs (Valor, Agravio y Mujer) by Ana Caro, presented in association with Diversifying the Classics | UCLA, on Monday, November 16th at 7:30 PM EDT.

One of the Spanish Golden Age's most accomplished female playwrights, Ana Caro presents a witty critique of society through the story of Leonor, a woman who sets out to find her one-time lover (Don Juan, naturally) and bring him to justice. The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs is a comedy of wild intrigue and lively ingenuity in which Leonor crosses geographical boundaries and defies social expectations of gender in order to bring her fickle lover to justice and restore her lost honor.

"All of us at Red Bull are thrilled to share a play by the remarkable and unjustly obscure Spanish Golden Age female playwright: Ana Caro," said Artistic Director Berger. "Ours will be the premiere New York reading of a brand new English-language version of Caro's delightfully surprising, proto-feminist take on the Don Juan legend, with a fantastic cast under the expert direction of Melia Bensussen."

"And we are doubly thrilled that this marks the beginning of a new Red Bull collaboration with UCLA's Diversifying the Classics - a dynamic initiative that is helping to discover and translate rarely produced classics which were originally penned in the Spanish language. Expanding our canon is important, and organization's like this are doing some of the most important work," added Managing Director Bredeson.

Dressed as the dashing Leonardo, Leonor travels from Seville to Brussels, where she finds Juan and initiates her shrewd plan for revenge. What follows is a hilarious feat of masterful maneuvering, replete with cross-dressing and unexpected twists, in which she repeatedly outwits the men around her. And while the thrill of Leonor's efforts to seek redress culminates with the expected restoration of her honor and marriage to Juan, the questions raised by her demands for justice make the play anything but conventional. Through this stirring tale of a woman's courage to right the wrongs she has suffered, the play holds up to scrutiny contemporary notions of masculine honor and offers in their place a vision that opens up space for women and their agency.

This event will premiere LIVE at 7:30 PM EDT on Monday, November 16th. A recording of the livestream will be available until 7:00 PM EDT on Friday, November 20 - then it disappears. This is a FREE event, but advance reservations are recommended.

On Thursday November 19th at 7:30 PM EDT, there will be a free post-performance Bull Session, an interactive discussion with some of the artists involved along with scholars Barbara Fuchs and Marta Albalá Pelegrín, moderated by Nathan Winkelstein, Red Bull's Associate Artistic Director. Registrants will receive a link to participate.

Born an enslaved person in Granada, Spain, ANA CARO MALLÉN (ca. 1601 - ca. 1645) came to be one of the most celebrated playwrights of Spain's Golden Age. Her work was praised by eminent playwrights and novelists of her day, and she was even included in a book celebrating the Famous Men of Seville. Noting her status among the greats of the Spanish theater, her friend and celebrated novelist María de Zayas wrote, "audiences have praised her, and every great mind has crowned her with laurel and cries of victory, writing her name on the city streets." a??In spite of her renown and success, little is actually known about Caro's life. The circumstances of her birth only came to light with the recent discovery of a baptismal document, which also reveals she was adopted by an officer of the High Court of Justice in Seville (Real Audiencia y Chancillería). She seems to have spent much of her life in Seville and Madrid-the two most important cities of early modern Spain, where literature and theater thrived-writing professionally for the theaters and public festivities of these cities. Though she was a prolific writer, only a few of her works have survived. These include two plays-The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs (Valor, agravio y mujer) and a chivalric story entitled El conde Partinuplés - short theatrical pieces that emulate the linguistic features of Portuguese, French, Morisco, and West African characters; and also narrative accounts of various political and military events.

Ana Caro was deeply familiar with the tradition in which she was writing, and this is evident in Courage. The play is often in conversation with works by some of the most celebrated playwrights of the comedia-a dramatic form that emerged during Spain's Golden Age. The opening scene on a wild mountain channels Calderón de la Barca's baroque landscapes, while Leonor's long made-up story of seduction and revenge recalls the outsize tales in plays by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. The very plot is a rewrite of Tirso's The Trickster of Seville and closely echoes his Don Gil of The Green Breeches. Playfully conscious of its own genre, Caro's play presents many of the conventions of the comedia only to bring them under scrutiny and even overturn them.

UCLA's Diversifying the Classics promotes the vibrant, Spanish-language theatrical tradition developed on both sides of the Atlantic by playwrights such as Spaniards Lope De Vega and Calderón de la Barca, or Mexicans Ruiz de Alarcón and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The project seeks to foster awareness and appreciation of Hispanic classical theater in Los Angeles and beyond, expanding the canon to include the heritage of US Latino communities. While our work is based in Los Angeles, we hope to reach theater professionals and audiences across the US, offering them the materials and tools to explore the rich tradition of the comedia. http://diversifyingtheclassics.humanities.ucla.edu/

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