Humanities Decanted: The Bones of Contention

Join us for a dialogue between Leo Cabranes-Grant (Spanish and Portuguese, Theater and Dance) and Juan Pablo Lupi (Spanish and Portuguese) about Cabranes-Grant’s new play, The Bones of Contention. Refreshments will be served.

The Bones of Contention describes the efforts of Yitipaka (an imaginary California town) to regain its economic and social stability after the COVID pandemic. Constructed as two collective latinx murals (one dedicated to the older generation, one dedicated to younger people), the play confronts frictions produced within that community by conflicted financial, environmental, political, and emotional demands. The play also combines different aesthetic styles (with elements that are both Brechtian and magic-realist) in order to envision a space in which nature and cultural differences meet and confront each other. With this play, Cabranes-Grant has tried to create a pluricultural work, one that encompasses the extraordinary diversity of California while offering actors and directors an opportunity to support more inclusive forms of story-telling.

Leo Cabranes-Grant is Professor of Literature, Performance, and Intercultural Poetics in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Theater and Dance at UCSB. His scholarly work has received the Association for Theater in Higher Education Best Essay Award (ATHE, 2011). His most recent book, From Scenarios to Networks. Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico, was published by Northwestern University Press (2016). Professor Cabranes has also published four books of poetry and a collection of his plays. His plays have received awards in Puerto Rico (Best Play, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, 2006) and in New York (Asunción Award, Pregones, 2011; Hispanic Federation Fuerza Fest Award, 2022). Professor Cabranes was Editor of the prestigious journal Theatre Survey, published for the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) by Cambridge University Press. At the moment, Professor Cabranes is working on two scholarly projects: a book on Søren Kierkegaard’s theories of performance, and a book on the connections among performance, racial identities, and painting in eighteenth-century Mexico.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Harry Girvetz Memorial Endowment

Watch a video of the performance of The Bones of Contention.