Valor, Agravio y Mujer (The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs)
by Ana Caro Mallén de Soto
Directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo
Adapted by Julissa Contreras
Presented in association with Expand the Canon
Booking and details
Dates Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 8pm
Tickets $20 (or $150 for an All-Access Pass)
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
This play is a celebration of women’s agency, written by Shakespeare’s Spanish contemporary Ana Caro Mallén de Soto (1590-1646).
Following a scorned heroine determined to carry out a revenge tragedy-turned-comedy, the play includes hallmarks familiar to Shakespeare’s writing, including cross-dressing, love triangles, swordplay, and soaring verse. Doña Leonora dresses like a man and crosses Europe to get revenge on her ungrateful ex who left her unmarriageable. Along the way, she manipulates others in her sphere causing confusion and antics – and ends up with a triumph that she deems better than any murder.
Post-show conversation
Join us for a post-show conversation moderated by Robert Ramirez. The panel features Tatyana-Marie Carlo, Emily Lyon, and Julissa Contreras.
How to attend the festival
Individual events – $20
Reading Room Festival All-Access Pass – $150
Access to all staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations included in the Festival.
Students – Free admission to readings and conversations
Admitted free one-half hour before event start time, with a valid ID.
About Expand the Canon
Expand the Canon researches and celebrates classic plays by historic women and gender-expansive writers—and is a call to action to produce them. They’ve partnered with and inspired more than 20 companies across the country to teach and perform these works. Find all 52 curated plays (spanning 1600-1990, 16 countries, and 11 languages) at expandthecanon.com.
Creative team
Tatyana-Marie Carlo
Tatyana-Marie Carlo (ella/she) (Director). Folger Theatre: Valor, Agravio y Mujer. Regional: Philadelphia Theatre Company: La Egoísta; Hartford Stage: Pride and Prejudice; American Stage: La Gringa; Children’s Theatre Company: Carmela Full of Wishes; Dorset Theatre Festival: Native Gardens; WAM Theatre: Far, Far Better Things; Trinity Repertory Company: A Christmas Carol, La Broa’ (Broad Street), The Inferior Sex, Sueño, Fade, References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot, She Kills Monsters, Comedia de las Equivocaciones/Comedy of Errors, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot; Everyman Theatre: Behold, A Negress; Dallas Theatre Center: A Little Less Lonely. Off-Broadway: INTAR Theatre: Vámonos. Proud member of SDC. tatyanamariecarlo.com @tatyanamariec
Julissa Contreras
Julissa Contreras (Dramaturg) Folger Theatre: debut. Off-Broadway: Pregones/PRRT: SOLfest; Rattlestick Theater: MTA Radio Play, Theater Jam; Atlantic Theater Company: African Caribbean Mixfest; INTAR Theatre: Vámonos (HOLA Award), MicroTEATRO Festival, #1OMPF, Maria Irene Fornes Festival; Television: Everything’s Gonna Be All White, White Noize. www.julissacontreras.com @jewleesah
Emily Lyon
Emily Lyon (Co-Adaptor) is a director, dramaturg, and artistic director that carves out the humor and authenticity in new and classic texts. She co-created, leads, and curates Expand the Canon––a call to action to include a wide range of historic women and gender-expansive writers in the canon of classics––as Artistic Director. As a freelance director, Lyon has directed nine world premieres, including Diana Ly’s Sex and the Abbey (The Brick), and has worked with the Folger Theatre, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Geva Theatre, The Old Globe, LaMaMa, Yale Rep, the Royal Shakespeare Company, University of Michigan, and others. As a dramaturg, she’s worked with writers on shaping over 25 new plays, including the world premiere of Kate Hamill’s Sense & Sensibility, and editing classical texts, including the Expand the Canon plays and The Tempest for Shakespeare in the Park. Find out more at EmilyALyon.com, and ExpandTheCanon.com.
Daniel Niewoehner
Daniel Niewoehner (Assistant Stage Manager) Recent stage management credits: Prologue Theatre: Marjorie Prime; Capital Fringe Festival: 29th & Oakes; Hale Centre Theatre (UT): Prince of Egypt, Beauty and the Beast; Texas Shakespeare Festival (TX): Sweeney Todd, Peter and the Starcatcher, Jane Eyre. DanieNiewoehner.com
Robert Ramirez
Robert Ramirez is thrilled to be back in the woods at APT! He has worked as an actor, director, voice artist, and voice and speech coach at theaters across the country including the Guthrie Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, Hartford Stage, the Alley Theater, The NY Public Theater, American Players Theatre, as well as numerous Shakespeare festivals in every region. He has been a member of the Recorded Books repertory company in New York City for over 20 years and is a proud member of Actors Equity Association and the National Theatre Conference. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Los Angeles Theatre Academy at Los Angeles City College and earned his MFA at the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program. Robert is currently the Head of the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University.
Natasha Sánchez
Natasha Sánchez (Production Stage Manager) Folger Theatre: debut. Additional select credits include: The Washington Ballet: The Nutcracker; Ford’s Theatre: A First Look: Blackbox by Rickerby Hinds; Rorschach Theatre: Sleeping Giant, Human Museum, Night of the Living Dead – Live!, Angel Number Nine, Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea; Constellation Theatre Company: Desperate Measures, The School for Lies; Washington Stage Guild: Major Barbara, Memoirs of a Forgotten Man; Theatre Lab: King Lear.
Cast
Gabriel Alejandro
Gabriel Alejandro (Ludovico, Tibaldo, Rufino, Astolfo) Folger Theatre: Romeo and Juliet, The Cuban Vote. Next Stop Theater: Native Gardens; Prologue Theater: Marjorie Prime; Devil’s Isle Shakespeare: As You Like It; Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: The Oresteia, As You Like It; Keegan Theater: The Wilting Point; Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy: Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Twelfth Night; Worlds Elsewhere Theater Company: The Roaring Girl; Fractal Theater Collective: Untitled Horror Project. New York: The Tank: Por Lo Que Soy. International: Colombia: Criaturas; Denmark: Barter; Greece: KOMMOS; Puerto Rico: Mujeres del Alba, Sueños de Colores, Drácula, Unmerciful Good Fortune. Education: (MFA) Shakespeare Theater Company Academy. @galejandro
Fabiolla da Silva
Fabiolla da Silva (Doña Leonor/Leonardo, Flora) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote: The Reading Room 2024, Love’s Labor’s Lost. Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Macbeth, La Salpêtrière (Helen Hayes nomination); The Keegan Theatre: Webster’s Bitch; 1st Stage: The Last Match (Helen Hayes nomination); Prologue Theatre: World Builders, The Revolutionists (Helen Hayes Award for Best Supporting Performer – Play); Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor; Workhouse Arts Center: Women Playing Hamlet. Films: The Importance of Finding the Other, That Engagement Thing, Autumn’s Room.
Ignacio Garcia-Bustelo
Ignacio Garcia-Bustelo Theater (Don Fernando de Ribera) Folger Theatre: debut. GALA Theater: In Spite of Love; Olney Theatre Center: Hamlet, The Giver, The Grapes of Wrath; The Baltimore Theatre Project: The Final Draw; JCTC: Prologue. New York: La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club: The Blue, Downtown Art: The Triumph of Crowds; Theater for a New City: Hecuba; Teatro Circulo: The Knight from Olmedo (ACE Award: Best Actor, HOLA Award: Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast); Spanish Repertory Theater: In Love but Discreet; Spanish Repertory Theater: The Suspicious Truth; IATI Theater: An Invisible Piece of this World. International: Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Don Juan Tenorio (National Theater, Spain), Agamemnon, The Broken Jug. Film: Pawn Sacrifice (dir. Edward Zwick), Silencio (European Film Festival, Mainstream & Underground: Best Actor), Third Week, The Valdemar Legacy, The Forbidden Shadow. Television: Hospital Central, M.I.R. garciabustelo.com
Diana Gonzalez-Ramirez
Diana Gonzalez-Ramirez (Estela). Folger Theatre: debut. GALA Hispanic Theatre: Sylvia Mendez: Separate is Never Equal; Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: A Christmas Carol; 1st Stage: Mojada; Arts on the Horizon: Arco Iris (dir. Elena Velasco); Creative Cauldron: Monarch: A Mexican American Musical (swing); UMD College Park: Food For the Gods (The Clarice Visiting Artists Series, director, Nephrii Amenii).
Lorraine Guerra
Lorraine Guerra (Ribete) Folger Theatre: debut. Trinity Rep Company Member. Teatro en El Verano: Much Ado About Nothing/Tanta Bulla…Y Pa Que? Other theaters include: Playhouse Creatures, Burbage Theatre Co., 2216 The Remix of a Global Experiment, Wilbury Theatre Group. Education: BFA, University of Rhode Island.
Camilo Linares
Camilo Linares (Tomillo, Fineo) Folger Theatre: debut. Shakespeare Theatre Company: The Comedy of Errors; GALA Hispanic Theatre (Company Member): Las hermanas Palacios, Picasso (2019, 2023), Tia Julia y el escribidor; Spooky Action Theater: Frontières Sans Frontières; 1st Stage: Laughs in Spanish, Mojada; Studio Theatre: Fun Home; The Kennedy Center: The Day You Begin; Mosaic Theater Company: Theory; Imagination Stage: Òyeme, the Beautiful. Upcoming: Spooky Action Theater: Professor Woland’s Black Magic Rock Show. Camilolinares.com @ezkatons @manplesa
Cesar J. Rosado
Cesar J. Rosado (Don Juan de Córdoba, Gentleman) Folger Theatre: debut. Broadway: Hudson Theatre: Plaza Suite, director John Benjiman Hickey. Off-Broadway: INTAR Theatre: VAMONOS, director Tatyana Marie-Carlo; Williamstown Theater Festival/Audible: A Streetcar Named Desire; Clubbed Thumb: Plano; The Bushwick Starr: The Things That Were There; LAByrinth Theater Company: Dolphins and Sharks; Rattlestick Theater: Seven Spots on the Sun. Film and Television: The Beast in Me, Wu-Tang-An American Saga, Manifest, Law & Order: SVU.
Bekah Zornosa
Bekah Zornosa (Lisarda, Flora) Folger Theatre: debut. Round House Theatre: A Hannukah Carol, We declare you a terrorist…; Shakespeare Theatre Company: King Lear; Arena Stage: Sanctuary City; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: There’s Always the Hudson; Olney Theatre Center: West Side Story Concert, She Sings Me Home (reading). REGIONAL: Williamstown Theatre Festival/Dir. Michael Arden: ALIEN/NATION; North Shore Music Theatre: Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story; Everyman Theatre: Pipeline. Off-Broadway: The Lost Boys (Upcoming Development Session/Warner Bros/Michael Arden) TV/Film: Trivially True Christmas (Hallmark), The Floaters (upcoming feature), Human Theories (upcoming feature), Evil Lives Here (Discovery).
Learn more
Q&A with Julissa Contreras
Dramaturg Julissa Contreras shares more about working with a bilingual translation of a play by Shakespeare’s contemporary Ana Caro Mallén de Soto, the joys of expanding the canon beyond Shakespeare, and the gendered issues of the play that still resonate today.