The Spanish Theatre Club is bringing new life to the Romance language at MU.
This idea began at a dinner with the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the beginning of the fall semester. Ericka Herbias Ruiz, faculty member in the department and co-creator of the Spanish Theatre Club, asked if anyone in attendance liked theater. After expressing interest, José-Luis Muñoz-Muela, a teaching assistant for the department and the other creator of the club, proposed his ideas for this new group.
Herbias Ruiz previously taught theater at Villanova University but hoped to create a space at MU where her native language and theater intersected.
“I really want this department of Spanish to have a theater club and we can, at the end, accomplish a play,” Herbias Ruiz said. “I hope that performances like this become a tradition each semester. That’s the only thing I want, and I’m going to try to do my best to fulfill this.”
Muñoz-Muela’s inspiration for a club started when he was studying theater at the University of Castilla in Spain. He wanted to continue doing theater in Spanish even while in the U.S. Muñoz-Muela.
“We kind of met with the same idea, and so Erica suggested: ‘Oh, we could do a play of the Spanish Civil War with [texts from the poet Octavio Paz],’” Muñoz-Muela said.
With this plan in mind, Muñoz-Muela started creating the script. Inspired by a compilation of texts from various writers about the Spanish Civil War, which ended with Francisco Franco’s fascists overthrowing the Republican government, the script features an ensemble of characters fighting to keep the heart of Spain alive. Written almost entirely in Spanish, the creators of the club hope to use visual elements, like Spanish and English subtitles, to present the story to an audience of Spanish speaking and non-Spanish speaking people.
The amount of movement and globally understood body language embedded in the play makes Muñoz-Muela believe that the performance will speak to the audience “beyond language.”
To recruit new members, the creators got other teaching assistants from the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures to join. Muñoz-Muela welcomed people with varied backgrounds in Spanish, from those with no experience to others who are fluent speakers. Member and graduate student in the Department of Theatre, Kasey Lynch, is grateful to practice her Spanish again after spending a number of years learning the language and studying in Spain.
“It’s just important to know histories beyond our own histories and beyond United States history,” Lynch said after reading the script. “[It’s important] to be well-rounded people in general, so I really appreciated that there was so much history involved in the play itself.”
Since the club’s creation, members have met for rehearsal in the Arts and Science Building on a weekly basis. Being a new club, the creators are still trying to critique the process for producing their first play. Members of the Department of Theatre are also offering their expertise, like assistant professor Marc Vital agreeing to help with costumes.
“We’re going to try to make connections with the theater department, which is the one that actually knows how to do theater here, so we can have that guidance towards a successful project,” Muñoz-Muela said.
As creators of the play, Muñoz-Muela and Herbias Ruiz hope the club and audience enjoy the experience.
“What I want personally is … to involve other students, like undergraduates,” Herbias Ruiz said. “That would be excellent for our department in order to create a feeling of Spanish as a space for artistic experiences.”
The Spanish Theatre Club expects to put on at least one performance for a live audience per semester. This semester, the club plans to perform their first play Dec. 2 in Studio 4 in McKee Gymnasium, and the creators can’t wait to see the growth of what they’ve established.
Anyone interested in joining the Spanish Theatre Club can contact Muñoz-Muela at jmmpc@missouri.edu or Herbias Ruiz at edhrcv@missouri.edu.
Edited by Shannon Worley | sworley@themaneater.com
