Invierno by José Cruz González
This is an excerpt from Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (2023) by Carla Della Gatta. To read it in its full context, click on the link. The book can be purchased on all major sites that sell books and it is FREE to download.
Chapter 3 - INVIERNO: A CENTRAL COAST VERSION OF THE WINTER’S TALE
As part of its 2009–10 season, PCPA Theaterfest Santa Maria (now PCPA Pacific Conservatory Theatre) presented an adaptation of The Winter’s Tale called Invierno. The play, which was directed by Mark Booher, is set in California’s Central Coast, the same region where PCPA is located. Booher commissioned José Cruz González to write the adaptation. Unlike O-Dogg, which challenges identity categories through racial differentiation among today’s Latinx and Brown peoples in Los Angeles, Invierno turns toward the distant past, redrawing connections to the land and the layers of historical claims to it by depicting the diverse peoples of colonial California and recovering the Indigenous Samala language onstage. Invierno remaps Brownness across linguistic histories, through the invocation of Indigenous temporality, and through a connection to the land and the palimpsest of peoples who feel a tie to it. (p.94-95)