October 14-20, 2004

artpicks

From the Well

theater

Lope de Vega, the Spanish Shakespeare, wrote, it is said, 2,000 plays, 470 of which survive -- not to mention novels and poems and treatises on dramaturgical theory. Fuente Ovejuna (which means "The Sheep Well") was written in 1614 and was brought to the English-speaking world’s attention by a production at the National Theatre in London (a now-legendary show which I still have vivid memories of) in Adrian Mitchell’s contemporary translation. Paddy Cunneen wrote the music.

The play is based on a true story of a peasant revolution that took place in 1476, and the community becomes the hero; Fuente Ovejuna was hailed in Russia the first true proletarian drama. It is ideal for a university production since it requires a large number of people onstage, and this undergraduate cast, under the direction of Dan Kern, opens the Temple season.

Fuente Ovejuna, through Oct. 23, Tomlinson Theatre, Temple University,1301 W. Norris St., 215-204-1122.

—Toby Zinman

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