What changed
Profile Theatre opened its 2026 season with Jen Silverman’s Spain, a fictionalized account of the making of The Spanish Earth, the 1937 film about the Spanish Civil War.
The production brings together Profile Theatre, Portland Opera, 45th Parallel Universe and Metropolitan Youth Symphony. Its story follows director Joris Ivens, editor Helen van Dongen, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos as art, politics and KGB funding collide.
Why it matters
Spain treats filmmaking as a political gamble. Ivens and van Dongen want their movie to build American sympathy for Spain’s leftist Republican government while conservative Nationalists threaten to overthrow it. The project becomes harder to control once foreign intelligence money enters the picture and personal relationships blur with professional ones.
Helen is the play’s sharpest lens. She manages the men, the politics and the danger while being repeatedly pushed to the margins. Cycerli Ash plays that balancing act with a visible strain beneath Helen’s composure: every decision keeps the film moving, but also tightens the trap around her.
The production’s form reinforces the story. Sliding panels reveal hidden rooms, turning an apparently modest set into a map of concealed risks. The tone moves from sitcom-like banter to spy thriller and then to darker introspection. Near the climax, opera and symphonic elements finally take over, including a soaring aria.
That ambition is also the production’s weakness. The components are strong, but the play does not fully cohere by its finale. Its most compelling question remains whether art can change political reality, or whether the machinery surrounding art changes it first.
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