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“A Completely Different Set of Possibilities”: In Conversation with David Melendez

“When we talk about Shakespeare, it’s 36 plays—that’s it!,” Cal State Bakersfield Professor of Theatre History & Literature David Melendez tells me. “Let’s make other works visible to expand this canon. Here we have a completely different set of possibilities.” Those possibilities are the many works written across the Hispanic world during the early modern period, a corpus of plays long obscured by the Shakespeare-centric focus of classical theatre in the United States. 

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¡Buenas Noticias!: New Funding for Future Diversifying the Classics Projects

As a small operation with big plans, the Diversifying the Classics initiative depends on support from organizations in line with our mission of promoting Hispanic classical theater through translation, performance, and an ongoing series of public-facing events. We are thus delighted to announce that, with the help of three new grants, we will be able to offer exciting new works at the 2024 LA Escena, the first festival of the comedia tradition in Los Angeles, and continue to expand our “Library of Translated Hispanic Classical Plays,” offered free of charge on our website and published with Juan de la Cuesta Press. READ MORE

LA Librería Workshop

Diversifying the Classics recently partnered with LA Librería, a bookshop and distributor dedicated to Spanish-language children’s books, to present a theatrical adaptation for children of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna. READ MORE

New Publication: Love is the Greater Labyrinth

We are very happy to announce the publication of Love Is the Greater Labyrinth, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the latest addition to our series with Juan de la Cuesta Press.

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Ana Caro at Bowdoin, Sor Juana at Michigan State

We are thrilled to announce two new productions of our translations:READ MORE

UC Riverside performs The Widow of Valencia

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Two Recent K-12 Collaborations

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The Widow of Valencia at UC Riverside

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Ana Caro in San Antonio

On January 24, I had the great pleasure of joining Mahalia Dinglasan and her theater students, of MacArthur High School in San Antonio, Texas, for a Zoom dramaturgy session on Ana Caro’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs. READ MORE

DTC celebrates third biennial Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater

For a lively week September 12-18, 2022, the third LA Escena Festival of Hispanic Classical
Theater brought together academics, actors, dramaturgs, and playwrights from around the world
to celebrate the ongoing legacy of 17th century comedia.

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