Indeed, it is the devastating effects of the exploitative labor system known as the “repartimiento” that fuel the deep-seated anger of Kino’s mother Anieri, wife of the historical don Felipe de Chistoe. How did you return our friendship? You turned us into slaves you tortured and killed us for speaking our language and practicing our ceremonies. You came to our land, we welcomed you with open arms. You are the treacherous, murdering savages. Rebuking Spanish acts of genocide, a Pueblo soldier contends: Despite the Governor’s calls for peace, many of the Spanish continue to regard Pueblo people as “godless heathens” in order to justify the dispossession of their land and the exploitation of their labor (1.1). Whereas the Prince is portrayed as an arbiter of justice and the law in Shakespeare’s play, Gobernador Vargas clearly represents Spanish colonial interests, and it is his son Juan who takes on the greatly expanded role of the Paris figure. Kino and Teresa addresses the devastating effects of Spanish colonial rule on the Indigenous Peoples of New Mexico. By centering Native actors and perspectives within the framework of Romeo and Juliet, Kino and Teresa reaffirms the sense, as Laura Lehua Yim observes of Indigenous appropriations of Shakespeare, that “a seemingly vanquished Native people continue in their actions and words, even when articulated out from beneath the structures of white settler colonialism.” The lack of Pueblo language in the playtext points to intersecting histories of linguistic and cultural oppression. English, then, operates as a more removed language, one that would not have been spoken in the historical setting of the play but which is widely spoken by audience members. In contrast to many works of Borderlands Shakespeare in which Spanish signals a resistance to Anglo hegemony, Spanish functions exclusively as a colonial language in Kino and Teresa, with colonial officials punctuating declarations with words such as “¡Silencio!” (1.1) and “❼laro?” (1.2). The play was produced again the following year by Teatro Nuevo México at the VSA North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque, where it was directed by Sabina Zuñiga-Varela. In the following years, the play was further developed in collaboration with Native Voices at the Autry, the resident theater program at the Autry Museum of the American West, which “puts Native narratives at the center of the American story to facilitate a more inclusive dialogue about what it means to be ‘American.’” It premiered in 2005 at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles. Americans for Indian Opportunity hosted a reading shortly thereafter. Lujan was first commissioned to write Kino and Teresa in 1999 by Marjorie Neset of the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Written for Native actors, Kino and Teresa emerged from a multi-phase development process involving many collaborators. Because the feud between the families is shaped by decades of colonization and anticolonial resistance, it ultimately cannot be solved by Kino and Teresa’s love. While some characters see their union as a pathway to peace in the wake of recent turmoil, others regard it as an acceleration of cultural genocide. Lujan’s tragic love story crosses this colonial divide, as Kino is the son of the governor of Pecos Pueblo, Felipe Chistoe, and Teresa is the daughter of Lorenzo Madrid, el Maestre de Campo de Santa Fe. Lujan brings these two histories together in Kino and Teresa, which takes place after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the subsequent Reconquista of 1692, when the Spanish, led by Governor Diego de Vargas, reclaimed the land amidst ongoing Pueblo resistance. In 1598, just one year after Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was first published in London, Juan de Oñate led an expedition of Spanish settlers and established the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Through an innovative recontextualization of Romeo and Juliet, Taos Pueblo playwright James Lujan’s Kino and Teresa demonstrates the power of appropriation to call attention to the racial and colonial dynamics surrounding Shakespeare’s plays.
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