‘I’ve had a love of Renaissance tragedy ever since I was a 15-year-old goth in the Canary Islands—where dressing all in black was not a great idea,’ said Carlos Pons Guerra. ‘I loved Shakespeare’s tragedies, and then I came across Marlowe: and you can’t get more dramatic, more bloody, more over the top and naughty than Marlowe.’
That youthful obsession finds full theatrical release this autumn. On 30 and 31 October, Pons Guerra’s company, DeNada Dance Theatre, premieres Edward II at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds, before embarking on a UK tour to Sheffield, Rochdale, Barnsley, and Salford. Transposing Christopher Marlowe’s 1592 tragedy to the linoleum corridors of a hormone-fuelled secondary school, the production reframes England’s first recorded gay monarch not as a remote historical casualty, but as an infatuated teenager under siege.
For the Gran Canaria-born choreographer, the leap from the Caribbean docks and Puccini melodies of his previous work, Mariposa, to Elizabethan drama was entirely natural.
‘Ideas for full-length dance works don’t just pop out,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘They brew, slowly, they bubble and trouble (like the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth, here I go again…). So the world of this Edward II began sprouting towards the end of Mariposa, and it felt great to have another world to dive into and discover.’
‘I’ve had a love of Renaissance tragedy ever since I was a 15-year-old goth in the Canary Islands—where dressing all in black was not a great idea,’ said Carlos Pons Guerra.
The Horror of the Playground
Marlowe’s play chronicles the ruinous confrontation between Edward II and his nobles over the King’s public devotion to his favourite, Piers Gaveston—a relationship that provoked rebellion, deposition, and brutal murder. In Pons Guerra’s staging, the lethal politics of the royal court relocate to the classroom.
‘Frankly, because as a queer man, I cannot imagine a place scarier than high school,’ explained Pons Guerra. ‘And the court that Edward had to live in, as depicted by Marlowe, was nothing short of the set of a slasher movie. So maybe I am trying to work through some trauma—the homophobic bullying I experienced growing up keeps reappearing, like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th sequels.’
Yet the domestic setting serves a deliberate narrative purpose, paring back the ceremonial trappings of medieval monarchy to expose human vulnerability.
‘For me it was very important to look at Edward the man, not the king,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘Few productions do that. I thought that by taking him out of court and placing him in a space that is equally governed by strict rules, strong social hierarchies, constantly shifting power dynamics, torture and war—high school, basically—we’d be able to find a more human Edward.’
Pons Guerra cautions, however, against viewing the staging as a straightforward, literal high school drama.
‘I would also take “modern educational setting” with a pinch of salt,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘The production plays a lot with time, and history, and is kind of a joyful mess of past, present and future.’
That collision also establishes the physical pacing of the production. Across its 90 minutes, the action proceeds lesson by lesson, hurtling from subject to subject with the disorienting rush of the school bell.
‘Isn’t it crazy how, in school, we would go from English to Maths to German to PE to Music, then lunch, then back for Geography and Biology?’ said Pons Guerra. ‘And after school, we had archery and piano? All in a day, whilst also dealing with first love, the birth of sexuality, best friends who turn into worst friends, acne, and coming out of the closet? How on earth did we do it?’
Danced by an ensemble of five—including Will English as Edward, Mariano Zamora as Gaveston, and Tahlia Russell as Queen Isabella—the choreography demands rapid, exhausting stylistic shifts.
‘The production tries to replicate this shift of lessons through very different movement worlds,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘It’s a real challenge for the dancers, who constantly change performative register. But they are incredible at it.’
The Thesis on the Stage
The production is no playful experiment; it forms the core of Pons Guerra’s doctoral research at the University of Leeds, provisionally titled ‘We Found Love in a Hopeless Place’: Reparative Reading, Queer Dance, and Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. Advised by Renaissance scholars from Leeds, Sheffield, and York, the choreographer treats the rehearsal studio as an alternative seminar room.
‘Can I come back to you on this when I’m a doctor, in the distant future?’ joked Pons Guerra. ‘It is something that I am trying to figure out; but what I’m finding is that the dance is in itself the academic paper. A lot of research and a lot of thinking has gone into this production—research into the Renaissance, into medieval imagery, historical dance, but also, into the way we read things from the past and the queer ways we can dance them.’
For Pons Guerra, physical storytelling carries an interpretive power that traditional literary scholarship often overlooks.
‘The production itself is the thesis; the writing I’m doing simply supports it,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘We tend to think that words are more important than dance, and this project is really demonstrating the opposite for me. I say the production is a thesis—but that doesn’t mean it is meant for academics. Our Edward II is a wacky, histrionic, poignant, nostalgic, dramatic and super camp affair.’
Indeed, he sees the staging as a direct proposition to conventional textual analysis.
‘I think this is something that I can offer to traditional literary studies—that dancing these texts from the past can reveal all kinds of pleasurable surprises lying within them,’ said Pons Guerra.
Synthesizers, Showers, and Historical Reparation
To establish the production’s restless, anachronistic texture, Pons Guerra turned to long-time collaborator Luis Miguel Cobo, whose original score splices 1990s arcade electronics with medieval flourishes and 1980s horror synthesizers.
‘I’ve given him stimuli such as: “I think we need to find Britney in the early Renaissance” or “this is a waltz, on 80s horror synths, that happens in the gym showers,”’ said Pons Guerra. ‘And he follows them, and what is coming out is incredibly bonkers and rich. I think this mix of past, present and future really captures the essence of the soundtrack.’
That instinct for blending camp irreverence with visceral tragedy explains why the BBC famously labelled him the ‘Pedro Almodóvar of dance’—a moniker he treats with wry humility.
‘That’s a title that I still don’t think I deserve,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘While there are many Almodóvar and Spanish Easter eggs in the production, it is a jump from shows like Ham and Passion, that happened in a Spanish kitchen with a leg of jamón.’
Yet the Spanish cinematic auteur remains his primary aesthetic touchstone.
‘Almodóvar is my guru, and the elements of kitsch, high camp, the blurred lines between the past and the present, the dead and the living, history’s hauntings, which are what draw me to his work, transfer very neatly to Edward II,’ said Pons Guerra.
Above all, the work attempts an act of historical reclamation. Marlowe’s play was rarely staged in England before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1960s, with historians and literary commentators long dismissing the central bond as mere political convenience or reckless infatuation. Only David Bintley’s 1995 ballet had previously brought Marlowe’s text to the dance stage.
‘I’ve given him stimuli such as: “I think we need to find Britney in the early Renaissance” or “this is a waltz, on 80s horror synths, that happens in the gym showers,”’ said Pons Guerra. ‘And he follows them, and what is coming out is incredibly bonkers and rich.
‘I feel that not enough directors or critics give the love between Edward and Gaveston enough credit,’ said Pons Guerra. ‘When people do the play, I don’t know that many directors read the couple beyond Gaveston’s self-interest or Edward’s irresponsible enthralment. So this adaptation proposes the question: what if they were really, madly, deeply, in love with each other? With the kind of infatuation that you only experience in adolescence? There is a sense of historical reparation in creating this space.’
That ambition ensures that despite the blood-spattered climax of the tragedy, Pons Guerra can still insist on leaving the audience with something more durable than sorrow.
‘Breaking up is hard to do—which I think is maybe what Marlowe was saying?’ said Pons Guerra. ‘Jokes aside, what I really hope is that Edward II takes audiences back to a space that we’ve all been to, whether LGBTQ+ or straight, Spanish or English or other, whether you live now or you danced around in medieval England. On a more personal note, the little scrawny gay boy that saw high school as a slasher movie and who is still in me, hopes that audiences reflect on the hurt and horror of bullying. But I am also giving the scrawny gay boy—and so many others—a show in which we dare to dream otherwise, and to love and hope just like everyone else.’
Featured Image: DeNada Dance Theatre in Edward II photo by David Lindsay
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