Save the Date for LA Escena 2022

The LA Escena festival of Hispanic classical theater will be back September 12–18, 2022. After
the inaugural events of 2018 and the 2020 virtual edition, our biennial festival of comedia will be
held live on the UCLA campus this time, with a streamed online reading to honor our
commitment to accessibility.

The schedule of events includes two productions by internationally recognized companies
visiting from Spain. Colectivo Állatok will present Lope de Vega’s El animal de Hungría and
Nao d’Amores will share with us their production of Numancia, by Miguel de Cervantes.
In a continuation of our Golden Tongues series, which produces staged readings of comedia
adaptations by local playwrights, we are delighted to present three brand-new plays. In
conjunction with Lope’s original El animal de Hungría, audiences will experience Amanda
Andrei’s adaptation of the same text. Lina Patel’s version of Lope’s The Widow of Valencia, a
witty balancing act of desire and social mores, will also be on show. June Carryl’s take on To
Love Beyond Death, by Calderón de la Barca, reflects on racial politics in the era of Rodney
King. (For readers interested in the source texts, the UCLA Working Group has new translations
in English of both The Widow of Valencia and To Love Beyond Death.)

Fans of adaptations should also make sure not to miss The Force of Nature, David Dalton’s take
on Guillén de Castro’s The Force of Habit. This tale of twins raised apart who refuse to conform
to social expectations challenges received notions of gender identity in Guillén’s time as well as
our own. Dalton, a director and professor at the University of Virginia, has adapted the play from
the recent English translation by the UCLA Working Group.

Festival-goers interested in fun for the whole family will enjoy Dragoncillo Puppet Troupe’s
shows for all ages, including some never before performed for a live audience. With puppets and
clever jokes, Dragoncillo makes early-modern Spanish culture come alive.

If you cannot join us in person, we invite you to attend online Red Bull Theater’s staged reading
of Lope’s The Capulets and the Montagues, translated by Dakin Matthews. If those names sound
familiar, it’s because the play is based on the same source as a much more famous version of the
love story, Romeo and Juliet. Fans of Shakespeare will have fun spotting the differences between
the two. The reading will be performed live on Monday, Sept. 12, and streamed throughout the
week.

Performances at UCLA will take place Friday through Sunday, in Spanish and English, with
bilingual supertitles. All events are free to the public. We will also hold a conference on the same
weekend, featuring discussions among scholars, actors, directors, and translators.
Save the date, and we look forward to seeing you in September!

For more information, please contact:
diversifyingtheclassics.ucla@gmail.com