El Alcalde de Zalamea in Castelldefels

Last Sunday evening I went to see a play in Castelldefels with my Teatro Español en el Siglo de Oro class.   It's El Alcalde de Zalamea by Calderón de la Barca.  It's his second most famous play behind La Vida es Sueño (which we will be reading in the month of May).  We met outside one of the main train stations in the center of the city and had to buy Zone 2 train tickets.  (My Zone 1 T-Jove wouldn't cut it).  Castelldefels is a town outside of Barcelona, but technically still inside Barcelona.  I believe it's close to the airport.  The town reminded me of a city suburb, with typical European thin streets.  After the 30 minute train ride, we arrived in the town with about 45 minutes to spare until showtime.  The theater was right outside the train station, so it really would be very difficult to get lost.  Here's my train ticket with a blurry group of students from my class (and the other section of the class) behind.  The building they're standing in front of is the train station.

Since we had some time to spare, me and a friend (who is also in my program) wandered around a bit and stopped for some gelato.  We ran into a outdoor children's fair celebrating International Day of Children's Books.  There were activities all day:

I guess we arrived right around the end of "Canto Latinoamericano (Mario Farias)" and "Baile tradicional del centro de Chile."  Here's whoever the singer was (nothing too great).

And then the cute kids who did the traditional dance of Chile.  Although it looked more like hula dancing to me... But they were incredibly cute, so I really didn't question.  And there's a video!

And there were other kids activities and performers dressed up in costumes all around.  I love the picture of the boy getting his face painted.

Here's a cool-looking square structure with flowers in a square the center of the town, in front of the theater and train station.

And my ticket and program in front of the theater!

Unlike everything else in Barcelona, the play actually started on time!  (Or at least the typical 5 minutes late-- which is common even in the U.S.)  As I quickly realized, I should have read the play instead of just skimming a 3 paragraph summary of it beforehand.  I understood what was generally happening, but a lot of the monologues seemed to drag on because I'd space out and have no idea what they were talking about.  But generally I understood the play's underlying message of honor.  We also had the worst seats in the house-- last row in the corner.  Literally.  Although despite the theater's basic appearance, it had incredible acoustics.  I certainly didn't feel like I was sitting in the last row in the corner because the actor's voices carried very well.  Here's an attempt at a picture of the theater before the show started.

The play lasted almost 2 hours without any intermission. At one scene that would have been a perfect spot to place an intermission, I almost started clapping.  But when I saw that the actors kept talking, I stopped myself at the last minute.  Sitting through a play without an intermission and where you don't understand a lot is very difficult.  But somehow I made it!  At the end, the actors came out six or seven times to take bows!  At about the 3rd time they came out, it seemed more like a game:  How many more times can we come and take a bow before the audience stops clapping??  I snapped some shots of the actors during the various bows.

And that was all!  We took the train back to the city center and got back to the dorm around 10pm or so.