ABSTRACT
Sor Juana en Almoloya (Pastorela Virtual) (“Sor Juana in Prison: A Virtual Pageant Play”) and Striptease de Sor Juana (“Sor Juana Striptease”) by playwright, actor, director, and feminist activist Jesusa Rodríguez stand apart among the dozens of competing biofictions that spin imaginative conjectures about the poet Sor Juana’s intimate life and political consciousness. This essay considers how both performances stage distinct readings of the Mexican Baroque: the satirical Sor Juana en Almoloya is a raucous postmodern riff on censorship, while in Striptease Jesusa uses her voice and body to interpret Sor Juana’s long epistemological Primero sueño (“First Dream”) and bring the language and insights of Sor Juana’s greatest poem into the lives of her audiences.
