Please join Diversifying the Classics on April 23 from 12:00-3:00 pm PST for an online roundtable with Madrid-based Grumelot Theater Company! We will be discussing their exciting new production, Amar por ver amar o Recuperar lo perdido, which will be performed at LA Escena 2024, Diversifying the Classics’ biennial theater festival.
In 2023, Diversifying the Classics received an Alianza-MX grant to expand our mission of
promoting Hispanic classical theater to collaborate with Mexican artists and educators. With this
grant, Diversifying the Classics partnered with Professor Gabriela Villanueva of the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) to create MEX-Clásicos with a team of UCLA graduate
students including Saraí Jaramillo, Rachel Kaufman, Galo Lopez, Rebecca Smith, and Sofía
Yazpik and postdoctoral fellow Isaac Giménez.
In this illuminated lecture, Professor Barbara Fuchs addresses Miguel de Cervantes’s surprisingly timely take on the trustworthiness of media. How does who we are shape what we see and believe? And how do the purveyors of media manipulate those distinctions?
Diversifying the Classics’ latest translation has been out adventuring from coast to coast, from Red Bull Theater in NYC to UC Irvine here in Southern California. Don Quixote de la Mancha—Guillén de Castro’s theatrical adaptation of Cervantes’ classic novel—recently delighted audiences for two nights at UCI, in collaboration with the New Swan Shakespeare Center and Brown Bag Theatre Company.
“When I studied Theater as an undergrad, we would cover Molière, Shakespeare, Goldoni, and so forth, but no Hispanic author” said Óscar Rodríguez Quiroz, director of Sor Juana’s Love Is the Greater Labyrinth for Michigan State University’s Department of Theatre. First as a drama teacher in Honduras and now as an Artist-Educator and MFA Acting Candidate at Michigan State, Quiroz decided to explore the rich Hispanic tradition and turned to the famous Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, known for her protofeminism as well as her remarkable poetry and plays.READ MORE
An interview with Professor Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, director of Skidmore College’s production of The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs [17-19 November, 1-3 December 2023]
Love is the Greater Labyrinth, written in 1698 by the Mexican nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, is a retelling of an Ancient Greek myth. This project, completed during my final year in the BA of Theatre Design program at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL, relocates the story to the rich cultural and geographic landscape of Mexico. This design aims to introduce the audience to elements of Mayan culture and theatrical sustainability, two themes I feel strongly about and am interested in exploring further in my work.READ MORE
On Oct. 26, part of the Diversifying the Classics team attended the opening night of The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs at CSU Bakersfield, in a production directed by Professor David Melendez. Javier Patiño, Marta Albalá, and Barbara Fuchs led a pre-show discussion with an enthusiastic audience. We wish the company a very successful run this weekend!
I do not mean to suggest that Alonso Quijano, Don Quijote de la Mancha, Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance and his squire Sancho Panza were themselves spotted in on the eastern side of the isle (not to be confused with ínsula) of Manhattan earlier this month. There was, however, a staged reading at Repertorio Español on October 3rd of the Diversifying the Classics translation of Guillén de Castro’s Don Quixote.READ MORE
We are very pleased to announce the publication of our translation of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s El semejante a sí mismo, the latest in our collaboration with Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs!READ MORE
