Golden Tongues - Diversifying the Classics
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Golden Tongues Performance Series

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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
SEPTEMBER 21-23, 2018
GREENWAY COURT THEATER
LOS ANGELES
School for Witches, or Friendship Betrayed by Madhuri Shekar
Adapted from María de Zayas’ La Traición en la Amistad
Directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx
Like/Share by Janine Salinas Schoenberg
Adapted from 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
Adapted from Lope de Vega’s Los Locos de Valencia
Directed by Jenapher Zheng
GOLDEN TONGUES 3
SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2015
HERSHEY HALL CORTILE
UCLA CAMPUS
Adapted from 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
Adapted from 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
Adapted from Guillén de Castro’s Los malcasados de Valencia 
Directed by Jennifer Chang
Goat Springs Eternal! by Paula Cizmar
Adapted from 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
JUNE 29 & 30, 2013
UCLA CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Cervantes Interludes by Oliver Mayer
Adapted from Cervantes’ El juez de los divorcios and El rufián dichoso
Directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx
Cause Célèbre by Velina Hasu Houston
Adapted from Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera
Painting in Red by Luis Alfaro
Adapted from Calderón de la Barca’s El pintor de su deshonra or The Painter Of His Own Dishonour
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera