Un Sueño de Una Noche de Verano

By: Seth Panitch

Directed by: Seth Panitch

The University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL) - 2009

 

​

Un Sueño de Una Noche de Verano (2009)

 

 

The University of Alabama (UA) began their UA Cuba-Alabama Initiative in 2002, allowing for artists to travel between the two locations for collaboration and academic research. Un Sueño was a collaboration between The University of Alabama and the Cuban Office of Scenic Arts (CNAE). When the ten Cuban actors traveled to the U.S. for the production, it was the first time since 2003 that professional performers from Cuban had been admitted to the U.S.[1] It “was the first Cuban-American theatrical production on U.S. soil in 50 years.”[2]

 

The show was performed in Alabama in Spanish, with a Cuban dialect, even though not one of the ten UA actors were fluent in Spanish. It was also performed in Havana, Cuba, at the Teatro Berthold Brecht.

 

Director and professor Seth Panitch had previously directed The Merchant of Venice in Havana at the Adolfo Llaurado Theater in December 2008. That production, as well as Un Sueño, included actors from professional Cuban theatre companies and The University of Alabama.

 

In 2011, Panitch directed Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy (translated into Spanish by Panitch and Ignacio Rodeño) at Havana’s Adolfo Llaurado Theatre. In 2013, Panitch’s own play, Alcestis Ascending, an adaptation of Euripides’ Alcestis, was performed off-Broadway at the Harold Clurman Theatre. It was scripted in both English and Spanish and it was also a part of the UA Cuba-Alabama Initiative starring fifteen Cuban actors and eight American actors.

 

 

 

CARLA DELLA GATTA

NOVEMBER 2022

 

​

[1] “Diplomacy through Drama: Cuban Actors Will Perform Shakespeare in U.S.,” Associated Press, 6 August 2009.

[2] Mark Hughes Cobb, “UA Professor, Actors to Join Cuban Production as Part of Exchange Program,” Tuscaloosa News, Tuscaloosanews.com, 13 November 2011.