New Book: Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles

 

We are thrilled to announce the release of Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles, an anthology that brings Hispanic classical theater into vibrant dialogue with contemporary storytelling. This collection, born of the collaboration between Diversifying the Classics and Playwrights’ Arena, features seven English-language adaptations of comedia classics by Los Angeles playwrights. These plays offer fresh perspectives on themes of gender, race, cultural identity, and social justice, connecting centuries-old narratives to the challenges and experiences of modern audiences.

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DTC Welcomes Paul Wagar to Translation Workshop

On December 3rd, Diversifying the Classics was delighted to welcome the acting professor and voice coach Paul Wagar to speak to the translation workshop. Paul worked with the actors in TFT’s extraordinary production of The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs by Ana Caro, directed by Michael Hackett. Paul shared invaluable insights about how actors receive translations of Hispanic classical theater and how DTC’s translations can be best adapted to the stage. Paul taught the workshop how details such as punctuation, line breaks, and sounds affect the way actors perform our texts, helping us make informed decisions in our scripts that will allow our translations to shine in the mouths of actors.

Labyrinth at The Sor Juana Project at UCSD by Bretton Rodríguez

On October 17, 2024, more than five hundred members of the UC San Diego community attended a staged reading of Love is the Greater Labyrinth by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In his introductory remarks before the performance, Manuel Vargas, a professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego, mentioned that he never would have believed five years ago that such a large audience would come out for a play by a seventeenth-century Mexican nun at what has long been considered a STEM-focused institution.

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A Suelta State of Mind: Special Issue of Comediantes Out Now!

We are excited to share the publication of the first of two special issues of The Bulletin of the Comediantes dedicated to the sueltas, cheaply-printed texts which made comedias widely accessible in the early modern Hispanic world. This issue highlights the work of Szilvia Szmuk-Tanenbaum, founder of the extraordinary database Comedias Sueltas, an  interactive online resource dedicated to cataloguing sueltas and enabling research on them. Read the issue here!

The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs at UCLA: November 21-26

We are excited to announce TFT’s upcoming production of The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs by Ana Caro, translated by UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics and directed by Michael Hackett. Performances are this week, November 21-26, at UCLA’s Macgowan Hall 1340.

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Come Find Us at PAMLA 2024!

Join us as members of Diversifying the Classics meet for a panel discussion titled “Reaching New Audiences Through Translation and Adaptation.” The panelists will present on a variety of projects currently underway at DTC, including the adaptation series Golden Tongues, which invites local playwrights to adapt Hispanic classical theater to a modern Los Angeles, and MEX-Clásicos’ children’s book project, which focuses on developing materials for young audiences. Moreover, the panel will explore the role of technology and multimedia platforms in expanding the reach of classical works to broader demographics, particularly younger audiences. We hope to see you there as we discuss best strategies for embracing the richness of diverse perspectives and narratives so that we can ensure that classical literature remains vibrant and relevant in an ever-changing world.

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Love is the Greater Labyrinth at UVA Nov. 8-10 and Nov. 14-16

DTC is delighted to share Anna Rebek will direct our translation of Love is the Greater
Labyrinth by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz at the University of Virginia’s Department of Drama. The production will take place November 8-10 and 14-16 in the Ruth Caplin Theatre.

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Fuente Ovejuna at Loyola Marymount University, Oct. 31-Nov. 2 and Nov. 6-9

We are thrilled for Loyola Marymount University’s production of Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna, directed by our valued collaborator Melanie Queponds. From October 31-November 2 and November 6-9, LMU Theatre Arts will perform Adrian Mitchell’s translation of Lope’s play. On Nov. 7, Professor Barbara Fuchs will lead a talk-back after the performance. Come watch as the villagers of Fuente Ovejuna join together against an authoritarian who uses his power to prey upon the women of the town.This production asks us to consider the political message of the play: that no government should offer any man “the opportunity to gratify his greed for power.” We look forward to all the drama, love, humor, and history that this play has to offer!

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The Beast of Hungary at BHSEC Bronx by Andrés Orejuela

DTC Celebrates LA Escena 2024 by Rebecca Ogden Smith

From September 12-17, 2024, LA Escena held its fourth biennial festival at UCLA’s historic, recently renovated Nimoy Theater, the festival’s largest venue yet. This year, LA Escena brought together artists from all over the US, Spain, and Mexico to perform 11 cutting-edge productions, the most in the festival’s history. An extraordinary joint conference of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (AHCT) and the Asociación Internacional de Teatro Español y Novohispano de los Siglos de Oro (AITENSO) took place at UCLA in conjunction with the festival. LA Escena artists participated in roundtables and other presentations at the conference, while comedia scholars were able to attend LA Escena performances.

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