Virtual Visits to Spanish Florida
By Ben Gunter
What’s the cure for cabin fever? When the best way to keep loving your friends is to keep staying 6 feet away them, how can you escape from social distancing without endangering the public health? Pay a virtual visit to Spanish Florida! You’ll come back refreshed, with some great stories to share, some great characters to laugh about, and a new appreciation for the ties that bind us together, even when we’re apart.
That’s been the experience of folks participating in TWAM Virtual, a new Saturday-afternoon tradition where Theater with a Mission (TWAM) introduces you to a play that was written while Florida belonged to Spain, then actors read the script for you in a brand-new translation, and then everybody gets to talk. All of this happens via Zoom, with no risk to public health, no limits on how far away you live, and no charge for tuning in. So far, TWAM Virtual has focused on 3 sassy one-act plays designed to tickle your funny-bone: Ark of Wonders, written in 1615, Matador for a Day, written in 1658, and The Wimps, written in 1711.
Ark of Wonders brings a tiny troupe of enterprising actors to a little country town that’s just hosted a big society wedding. The actors offer to put on a show for the wedding reception … a miraculously amazing show that only people whose parents were legitimately married will be able to see. Scripted by Miguel de Cervantes, who dreamed up Don Quixote, this little gem of a play pokes fun at how fake news starts, spreads, and end up shedding light on what’s true.
Matador for a Day was written by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, a poet some folks consider the greatest playwright ever. Calderón’s most famous script is La vide es sueño, where a prince whose dad raised him like a monster has to figure out how to behave like a Christian and forgive. Matador for a Day tells the story of a transformation, too, but this time it’s the rise and fall of a baggy-pants comic who pretends he’s a real lady-killer and a high-society bullfighter. The counterfeit toreador falls flat on his face in the bullring, but his lady love takes pity and says she’ll marry him anyway.
The Wimps introduces a whole street full of married couples. The mayor – a man who’s notoriously henpecked – has just passed a law giving jailtime to every man in town whose wife wears the pants in the family. One by one, he packs all the papas in the place off to prison … until he runs into his wife, who promptly dresses him up in an apron and makes him lead a chorus line of men singing about what wonderful wimps they are. It’s a lighthearted, musical, topsy-turvy look at how couples can take their partners for granted, until something unexpected steps in to turn their world inside out.
This month, while Florida is still figuring out how to recover from coronavirus, cure your cabin fever with a virtual visit to Spanish Florida. Come join Theater with a Mission for TWAM Virtual on Saturday afternoons at 2 p.m. Eastern. Visit www.theaterwithamission.com and follow TWAM on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for invitations to Zoom. Salud!