A Successful First LA Escena Festival

“Ladies and gentlemen, come right over! I can assure you this will be good for you! Tested for four hundred years without fail!” Fernando Villa opened last weekend’s inaugural LA Escena Festival with his traveling salesman’s pitch and a tour-de-force performance of Cervantes’ comic interludes. For the next three days, theater from Spain’s Golden Age was on display in fresh new form at the Greenway Court Theatre. Theater lovers, students, and scholars from across Los Angeles and beyond turned out for the city’s first Hispanic classical theater festival. Audiences enjoyed inventive remixes and adaptations of the classics by diverse companies. Thank you to our sponsors, our volunteers, and all the performers and attendees who made the festival a success!

Fernando Villa as El Merolico (The Mountebank) presented by EFE Tres Teatro

Musicology professor Elisabeth Le Guin providing period music for Women & Servants

Women and Servants presented by the LatinX Theater Comunión at UCLA, with Elisabeth Le Guin, Jasmine Flores, Gabriela Ortega as Luciana, and Camila Rozo as Violante

Servants Inés and Lope, portrayed by Jasmine Flores and Isabella Urdiales Gúzman