Golden Tongues
Golden Tongues is a collaboration between Diversifying the Classics and Playwrights’ Arena.
Since 2013, the Golden Tongues initiative has commissioned and staged new adaptations in English of Hispanic classical plays by Los Angeles playwrights.
Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles
A first-of-its-kind anthology that explores adaptations of 17th-century Hispanic comedia within contemporary Los Angeles theater.
Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles explores how adaptations of source texts by authors such as Lope de Vega, Calderón, and María de Zayas harness their energy and themes. Touching on key modern issues like the intersection of power and sexuality, gentrification, and Black identities, this anthology bridges the gap between the classical and the contemporary. Featuring seven plays, each with an introduction that situates the adaptation in relation to its source and contextualizes its performance, this play collection both highlights the longevity of Hispanic classic theater and celebrates the diversity of modern day performance.
LA Escena Festival 2024
I Put a Spell on You by Rosie Narasaki
Based on Ana Caro’s El Conde Partinuplés
Directed by Alana Dietze
Rosaura, Queen of Constantinople, needs to marry in order to keep her throne. Can magic conjure the perfect suitor? Narasaki crafts a whimsical realm where rom-com meets a Renaissance fantasy. In this enchanting world, trickery and magic can help women obtain what they want, but they also must confront the moral repercussions of their choices once the spells wear off.
Substantial roles: 2 male, 2 female.
Fling by Zharia O’Neal
Based on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa
Directed by Khanisha Foster
Who are we, truly, in the dark? Four young beauty-pageant contestants trapped during a blackout are forced to reckon with their own ambitions, bare their secrets, and come together. Amid jokes, lively banter, and a good deal of tension, they grapple with their standing in an industry that both exploits and perpetuates stereotypes, and with their own motivations for participating in it, even those that are better left unsaid.
Substantial roles: 4 female, 1 male.
Flickers by Diana Burbano
Based on Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s La cueva de Salamanca
Directed by Alejandra Cisneros
In 1912 Los Angeles during the earliest era of silent films, Beatriz, an aspiring actress, struggles to make her mark in the fledgling film industry while working with the eccentric director Alarcón, who is fixated on producing a film of La cueva de Salamanca, a play by his noted Mexican ancestor. Against the backdrop of a rapidly growing city and a burgeoning film industry they struggle with its downsides: ambition, treachery, prejudice, and creatives eager to claim the latest genius idea as their own.
Substantial roles: 3 female, 2 male.
LA Escena Festival 2022
Your Home in Me As I in You by Amanda L. Andrei
Based on Lope de Vega’s El animal de Hungría
Directed by Jean Carlo Yunén Aróstegui
How do we understand what lies beyond the known, the urban, the so-called civilized? What if the natural forces that we fear had surprising things to teach us? Set in and around LA, this poetic text offers a unique perspective on the wilderness-urban border and imagines what it might mean to truly find a home in another, beyond difference and received ideas of belonging.
Substantial roles: 2 female, 1 male, 2 neutral
Florence and Normandie by June Carryl
Based on Calderón’s To Love Beyond Death
Directed by Michael Matthews
Los Angeles, early 1990s: As tensions boil and the threat of violence looms, two families entwined by both location and love find themselves living the American racial nightmare. A compelling drama portraying the ongoing horror of state-sanctioned cultural supremacy that extends from the religious persecution of early modern Spain to struggles for racial justice in the American present.
Substantial roles: 3 female, 4 male.
Traces of Desire by Lina Patel
Based on Lope de Vega’s The Widow of Valencia
Directed by Alana Dietze
A choral play chronicling the struggles and pleasures of female sexuality in one Indian family. Over three generations, these women gradually learn to embrace their bodies and yearnings, freeing themselves — and a fourth generation — of long-held notions of womanhood.
Substantial roles: 4 female, 2 male.
LA Escena Festival 2020
A Virtual Experience Hosted by A Noise Within Theater
The King of Maricopa County by Mary Lyon Kamitaki
Based on Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza
In present-day Arizona, near the border with Mexico, the politically conservative sheriff is up for reelection. His daughter from a previous marriage and his new wife are brought together by destiny: a car collision far out in the Arizona desert, in the middle of a thunderstorm. Their forbidden love, discovered by the vengeful sheriff, sets in motion a tragic series of events that shows the horrific consequences of power run mad.
Substantial roles: 2 male, 3 female.
The Woodingle Puppet Show with Host Mr. C, as Constructed by Mr. Asinine with Calculations and Articulations of the Genius Sort by Julie Taiwo Oni
Based on Miguel de Cervantes’ Retablo de las maravillas
This play reimagines the anxieties around social and cultural belonging in the space of a rapidly gentrifying South LA. In The Woodingle Puppet Show with Host Mr. C, as Constructed by Mr. Asinine with Calculations and Articulations of the Genius Sort, Oni explores questions of Blackness, and the hoops people are willing to jump through to prove that they are “black enough.”
Substantial roles: 2 female, 1 male.
What We Pay For Likes by Inda Craig-Galván
Based on Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s What We Owe Our Lies
Inda Craig-Galván’s What We Pay For Likes transports the squabbling, reputation-obsessed aristocrats of Madrid to a Calabasas populated by influencers whose lives revolve around their brands and social media views. When a handsome stranger comes to town, their relationships IRL turn out to be much more complicated than their polished profiles suggest.
LA Escena Festival 2018
School for Witches, or Friendship Betrayed by Madhuri Shekar
Based on María de Zayas’ La Traición en la Amistad
Directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx
How do we understand what lies beyond the known, the urban, the so-called civilized? What if the natural forces that we fear had surprising things to teach us? Set in and around LA, this poetic text offers a unique perspective on the wilderness-urban border and imagines what it might mean to truly find a home in another, beyond difference and received ideas of belonging.
Substantial roles: 4 female.
Like/Share by Janine Salinas Schoenberg
Based on Calderón de la Barca’s Los Cabellos de Absalón
Directed by Fran de Leon
La Locura de los Ángeles/The Madness of Angels by Michael Premsrirat
Based on Lope de Vega’s Los Locos de Valencia
Directed by Jenapher Zheng
Golden Tongues 3
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Hershey Hall Cortile
UCLA Campus
The Blade of Jealousy by Henry Ong
Based on Tirso de Molina’s La celosa de sí misma or Jealous of Herself
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera
Dawg in the 626 by Annette Lee
Based on Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano or The Dog in the Manger
Directed by Diane Rodriguez
Golden Tongues 2
September 6 & 7, 2014
UCLA Clark Memorial Library
Unhappily Married in Valencia by Laurel Ollstein
Based on Guillén de Castro’s Los malcasados de Valencia
Directed by Jennifer Chang
Goat Springs Eternal! by Paula Cizmar
Based on Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna
Directed by Douglas Clayton
Fixed by Boni B. Alvarez
Adapted from Calderón de la Barca’s El médico de su honra
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera
Golden Tongues 1
June 29 & 30, 2013
UCLA Clark Memorial Library
Cervantes Interludes by Oliver Mayer
Based on Cervantes’ El juez de los divorcios and El rufián dichoso
Directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx
Cause Célèbre by Velina Hasu Houston
Based on Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera
Painting in Red by Luis Alfaro
Based on Calderón de la Barca’s El pintor de su deshonra or The Painter Of His Own Dishonour
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera