No ordinary life at RSC

Buy photos » Catherine McCormack and Diana Kent in rehearsal for The Heresy of Love. Photo by Stewart Hemley.

AN EXTRAORDINARY life is brought to the RSC stage.

Helen Edmundson’s The Heresy of Love - commissioned by the RSC and directed by Nancy Meckler - is a new play based on the extraordinary life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a poet, nun and major Baroque literary figure of Mexico.

It runs in repertoire in the Swan Theatre in Stratford from February 2 until March 9.

Helen was inspired to write the play after she saw the RSC’s production of Sor Juana’s play House of Desires at the Swan during the company’s award-winning Spanish Golden Age season in 2004.

She said: "I saw House of Desires and thought it was terrific and surprisingly funny and meaningful and everything a good play should be.

"After the show I spoke to the play’s director, Nancy Meckler and she told me that the story of the playwright was extraordinary and she thought I would love it. She lent me a huge tome about Sor Juana, written by Octavio Paz, and before I was half way through the book, I knew the she was right; it was inspiring stuff, and there was certainly a play to be written."

Helen did a huge amount of research and immersed herself in Sor Juana’s life and work.

"There are two complete plays and one more fragmented play. There are also many religious works – often musical – written to be performed in churches. Then there are several documents relating to her life."

Born Juana Ramirez de Asbaje in a small town not far from Mexico City to a Criolla mother and Basque father in 1651, she was able to read from the age of three. By five she was writing verse. By six or seven she begged her mother to allow her to dress as a boy in order to attend the university in Mexico City where she could learn the sciences. Her wish was refused so she studied in her grandfather’s library.

When she finally arrived in Mexico City, she entered the vice-regal court – a world of flirting, love, games and riddles, where women fleetingly enjoyed relative sexual freedom, but were also bound by the rigours of the marriage market. Juana was famed for her beauty, wit and intelligence, and by her teens she was regarded as a strange bird - a woman with learning.

In 1669 Juana entered the Convent of Saint Paula of the Order of St Jerome ‘because although I knew that this life had many things that were repugnant to my nature, it was less than the abhorrence I had for marriage.’

In the convent, which allowed her a high level of autonomy, Juana continued studies, but such was her fame she was constantly commissioned to write both religious and profane poetry and works of theatre. She died after succumbing to plague in 1695.

Helen added: "I've taken what’s known about her as a starting point and then let my imagination go. Just enough is known about her to inspire me, but not enough to stifle me. The play imagines a particular time in her life – a time of crisis which throws up questions about, amongst other things, the role of women in the church and about what happens when we move away from organized religion and try to create a form of faith which suits the way we want to live."

Catherine McCormack plays the central role of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her films include the lead in Anna Campion’s Loaded, Braveheart, Spy Game and Dangerous Beauty.

Visit www.rsc.org.uk for further details.