The LA Escena Festival of Hispanic classical theater will be back September 17 – October 5, 2026. The fifth edition of Diversifying the Classics’ biennial festival will bring exciting new works by international artists and Los Angeles playwrights to UCLA’s Macgowan Hall theaters in Westwood, Los Angeles.
This year LA Escena will offer productions at the theaters in UCLA’s Macgowan Hall by internationally recognized Spanish theater company Jóvenes Clásicos, performing Canciones de Olmedo and Amar después de la muerte, three new adaptations from our popular Golden Tongues series, and new performances stemming from our Mex-Clásicos initiative. These include La casa de empeños by Christian Nájera and Historias amorosas by Paola Izquierdo, adapted from pioneering Baroque female dramatists Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and María de Zayas de Sotomayor. We will also feature theatre dybbuk’s “illuminated lecture” on La Celestina. To conclude the festival, streaming from New York City, Red Bull Theater will present a virtual reading of Diversifying the Classics’ latest translation, Luis Vélez de Guevara’s The King Born a Woman, as a part of our ongoing collaboration, Hispanic Golden Age Classics.
Get your free tickets here: https://app.hi.events/event/9881/la-escena-2026
Further information here: https://diversifyingtheclassics.humanities.ucla.edu/comedia-in-performance/la-escena-2026/