Diversifying the Classics is excited to be partnering with two different community organizations in Los Angeles to bring comedia to K-12 students around the city.

UCLA undergraduate and graduate students have been working with high school students at the Bresee Foundation to learn about comedia, talk about the role of gender, class, and race in comedias by Ana Caro, Lope de Vega, and Guillén de Castro, and create a new adaptation of a comedia for a short podcast. The students will enter the comedia podcast into NPR’s 5th Annual Student Podcast Challenge. Playwright, actor, and director June Carryl, a part of DTC’s Golden Tongues community whose comedia adaptation Florence and Normandie (adapted from Calderón’s Amar después de la muerte) was performed during La Escena 2022, will join the students one week to talk about the process of adapting comedia for the present moment, and Dr. Marta Albalá Pelegrín, Professor of Iberian Spanish literature at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, joined the students a few weeks ago to talk about DTC’s Radio Comedia and the art of voices when podcasting.

Diversifying the Classics members are also thrilled to be organizing a comedia workshop at LA Líbreria, a bookstore and community space which aims to promote children’s literature in Spanish in all of its forms. The workshop will take place in the spring, and UCLA students and children ages 6-11 will come together for an afternoon to put on an adaptation, written by Professor Barbara Fuchs, of Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega.