A Conversation with Ramón Espejo Romero

Ramón Espejo Romero is a distinguished professor of American Literature at the University of Seville. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in American Literature, History of Drama, and American Drama, and directed more than a dozen doctoral dissertations and a masters program in Bilingual Education. He currently chairs the American Studies research group at the university, as well as the Seminario Permanente de Estudios Norteamericanos Pilar Marín Madrazo, which works to develop an interest in America in a community of fellow scholars, students, and the city of Seville at large.His books include the three-volume The History of the Performance of American Plays in Spain, 1912–1977: Theatre as a Weapon Against Political Authoritarianism (Edwin Mellen, 2017), Re-Thinking Critical Paradigms on Arthur Miller: Resurrection Blues and the Postmodern (University of London, 2013), and España y el teatro de Arthur Miller (Universidad de Alcalá, 2010). His most recent book is From Jimmy Valentine to The Vagina Monologues: The Journey of American Drama in Catalonia, 1911–1920 (Legenda, 2024). He has translated three of Arthur Miller’s plays into Spanish for annotated editions: Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge. He wrote the critical introduction to the first Catalan version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (Comanegra / Institut del Teatre) and an annotated edition of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, both including his Spanish translations of the plays. He has co-edited Violence in American Drama: Essays on Its Staging, Meanings and Effects (McFarland, 2011); ¿Soy lo que ves? Cultura, identidad y representación homosexual (Septem, 2010); El teatro del género. El género del teatro. Las artes escénicas y la representación de la identidad sexual (Fundamentos, 2009); Critical Essays on Chicano Studies (Peter Lang, 2007); Arthur Miller: Visiones desde el nuevo milenio (Universidad de Valencia, 2004); and Visiones contemporáneas de la cultura y la literatura norteamericana en los sesenta (Universidad de Sevilla, 2003). In addition, he has published dozens of articles and book chapters on American literature and drama with special attention to their transnational dimension.Espejo was a visiting scholar at the PhD Program in Theatre and Performance at CUNY in 2023 and is on the Advisory Board of the Arthur Miller Society and its current vice president, on the advisory board of Revista de estudios norteamericanos, and the European representative on the board of the Edward Albee Society.My decision was made probably not for the best of reasons, but I had someone whom I liked at the time, and this person was going to do English. So, I decided to as well. Why not? My original choices had been different ones. English was one of the things that I could have contemplated at some point, but maybe, had it not been for that, I would have done something else.Returning to his plays, what are your favorite plays, which may or may not be the same as the ones you have mentioned as his greatest?Even there, perhaps the generalizations and stereotypes are fitting—perhaps another form equals content that you referred to earlier. Right now, we are seeing so many people generalizing and simplifying . . .Returning to the idea of who the play is about, I used to ask my students who the main character in Salesman is. They most often would answer the title character or Biff. But what about Linda? You can argue for Kate in Sons, but also for Esther in The Price.What do you believe accounts for Miller’s continuing productions? He started writing so long ago and passed away twenty years ago. We have a lot of political issues going on now about literature and theatre and teaching. And yet his plays are still produced so often; one only needs to see what Sue Abbotson posts on the society’s Facebook page, a new production nearly every day. How do you account for that?If I can share a brief anecdote, the other day, I was in Cadiz at a TV series festival and I went to a masterclass by David Shore, a Canadian filmmaker, essentially a show runner. There’s a show “The Good Doctor” about a physician with autism who uses his “disadvantage” to go where other, more conventional doctors cannot or dare not go. Shore is also famous for the hospital dramedy “House.” He said something that I keep thinking about: “What I tell young scriptwriters who want to get started in the business is the following: Think about two people who have completely different beliefs, and then write a paragraph supposedly uttered by each one of them expressing what they think, what they believe in. If someone reads both paragraphs and is unable to tell whom you are siding with and whom you are not, then you’re a good writer.”You’ve raised something else that I haven’t thought about because in many ways you can say that Miller was criticizing some of the effects of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, for example, and in several of his other plays. Perhaps all of them are critical of the characters but also present them with an underlying compassion. And then we go back to that quote that you brought up from After the Fall—everybody is guilty or everybody is responsible.The other thing that you have reminded me, too, is that I went into directing because it embraced so many of my interests, but it also became exactly what you’re talking about: We can walk down the street and see someone who looks different or odd, and people are making fun of that person. But then you spend two hours in a theatre looking at that person closely and what their life is like and why they look or act the way they do, and my directing journey quickly and organically took on the philosophy to encourage empathy among people.What are the differences between the reception of American drama in the United States and in Europe, or in Spain particularly, both on the page and on the stage?I am reminded here as well of Kornelia Slavova who shared with us at the recent conference in Roxbury the censorship of Miller’s plays in Bulgaria during its communistic years. That was fascinating and enlightening. As you have pointed out here, it is not just a specific country but also the time and whatever is going on politically.What attracts or garners respect for Miller’s work in Spain?—I am not going to ask about Europe as whole now . . .On the other hand, Spain and the United States signed a treaty just about the time Death of a Salesman opened in Spain. That treaty basically gave Franco a lifeline for a few more years in the form of financial investments in the country in exchange for military bases that we allowed the American government to build in Spain. If you’re receiving help from the United States and it is the only country in the world that considers your regime a legitimate one, you cannot go on forbidding their plays. You have to allow for some leeway so that some of their writers can be presented here and some of their work can be seen. Miller was an excellent choice because the other choice at the time was Tennessee Williams, and I don’t have to explain to you why Francoism would rather have Miller than Williams.The Crucible makes for another interesting case study. It was authorized more begrudgingly, and there was a concerted move by the authorities and the theatrical establishment to present it as merely a play about seventeenth-century Massachusetts, nothing to do with the present. Anyone who said it was remotely connected to the present was lying. Only those bent upon destroying society could say that Miller was attacking anti-communism, which was such a necessary thing. Franco’s victory over the republican government had been constructed as the first glorious victory over communism, and what Americans were doing then was to be commended. Thus, this side of the play was hidden and frowned upon, and the play’s emotional aspects were put into the foreground. The intelligentsia were not fooled, however, and there was a heated controversy over how to read The Crucible that led to firings in certain progressive journals, enmities, and a true revolution in the theatrical establishment.I can think of European playwrights who are great at what they do, but no one who compares with Miller. I guess that what Miller was doing throughout his career was something that only he did. The same thing, I believe, is true for Williams, Albee, and O’Neill. All of these American playwrights were unlike any playwright in Europe. I am not saying they were necessarily better or worse, but they were very genuine, very unique. No one in Europe was dealing with psychological trauma when O’Neill did, or writing classical tragedy for that matter; no one was de-constructing femininity when Williams did; and no one had produced such lucid constructions of postwar society by the time Miller did.His effects on the theatre are considerable. Maybe at this point in 2025, they are not as visible. I think they are more visible if we go back to the theatre of the 1950s and the 1960s, and even the 1970s. His towering presence was everywhere. Even commercial theatre was improved by drawing on techniques that Miller had pioneered. Nowadays, there’s so much to choose from that it would be more difficult to see him as having a powerful presence on younger playwrights although we are watching plays that open every season by those who read Miller’s classics or try to build on material that Miller dwelt on or respond to questions that he raised. I guess that’s also an effect of him being a classic and still, to a more or less limited extent, being taught and being considered someone that you need to at least be familiar with. If young people are exposed to him from early on—and let’s hope this continues to be so for a long time, obviously they’re likely to be influenced by him. That is the thing about Miller—it’s impossible to read him and fail to engage with his works profoundly, not be affected by them. If that happens, it’s because you’re not alive.What do you think the future of Miller’s plays looks like, and the studies of Miller for the future?Do you have any suggestions for future Miller scholars?In addition, the ways in which the director composes and blocks the characters onstage can highlight that. That is an excellent point to notice those silences and their effects.I’ve enjoyed working most on my translation of The Crucible. I had such a great time with the language of that play, particularly when trying to find Spanish equivalents for the different ways in which the characters speak. There are probably thirty ways of talking in that play. Maybe Americans don’t realize that because it’s their language, but when it comes to translating the play into another language, you need to be more attentive to such nuances. John speaks in one way. Elizabeth does so in a completely different way. And, then some characters are in denial, refusing to see what is obvious, and translating their lines was a lot of fun. I suspect that Miller himself was having a lot of fun when fashioning them. The irony is acerbic. Everyone is kind of speaking a different language although it all looks like English. But it’s very, very, very diverse, and finding equivalents in Spanish to all those different ways of talking was a challenge but also a treat.You have translated three of Miller’s plays. You’ve also spoken a lot about After the Fall. If the opportunity were available, would you like to translate and work on After the Fall or other Miller plays?It strikes me again that you have made me think about new ideas and angles here. Thank you so much for this conversation, and for being so open and thoughtful in your answers.

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