“The Queen of Havana”

Abstract Drawing on performance ethnography, cultural history, and critical reception, Chapter 5 examines how the musical play Carmen la Cubana—conceived by British director Christopher Renshaw and written by Renshaw, Cuban playwright Norge Espinosa Mendoza, and British dramatist Stephen Clark—adapts Prosper Mérimée, Georges Bizet, and Oscar Hammerstein while celebrating Cuban culture and contending with its racial entanglements. From the outset, the musical reverses the cultural hierarchies of its French predecessors, with Afro-Caribbean music and spirituality taking center stage and European-identified culture assuming a supporting role. The story aligns Carmen’s destiny with that of Cuban revolutionary heroes Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and grounds the character in Afro-Cuban culture. In contrast with previous versions, the character’s embrace of love and defiance is represented as central to a large-scale political project rather than disruptive to it. Carmen la Cubana’s reign as the queen of Havana is nonetheless abbreviated, however. This familiar outcome can be traced not only to the legacy of the Carmen myth but also to the history of race in Cuba, particularly the practice of negotiating desire and freedom through the bodies and culture of people of color. Just as the nineteenth-century Spain of Mérimée’s imagination cannot accommodate the persistent refusal of an outspoken Romani woman, so, it would seem, Carmen la Cubana ultimately becomes expendable when she resists subsuming her life within the larger political project of Cuban statehood.