Intermedial Queen Lear on the Madrid stage: Remediating gender and power

Abstract

This ‘intermedial’ production of Queen Lear (2022) – deploying ‘recorded and projected performance alongside “live” acting’, and having ‘technologies of digital projection (new) and hand-built scenery (old) work side-by-side’ (W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre, 2020) – followed a text scripted by Juan Carlos Rubio in collaboration with director Natalia Menéndez: Queen Lear: Fragmentos de una lectura microscópica y libre de ‘El Rey Lear’ de William Shakespeare. In the wake of the 2017 resurgence of the #MeToo movement, this Queen Lear could not but intersect with the enunciation of gender as performative rather than innate, giving agency to the female voice and character. It proffered a different ending from Shakespeare's King Lear, one thought to open a door to hope.