What distinguishes reality from representation? How much of what we perceive as true is merely myth? Do we possess free will, or are our lives determined by the firm hands of fate?
These are some of the grand questions the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca considered nearly 400 years ago while writing “La Vida es Sueño” (“Life is a Dream”), his magnum opus. The play’s manifold themes—existentialism, the relationship between fathers and sons,…