LA Escena: Los Angeles Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater
The first Los Angeles Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater presents some Hispanic classical theater plays by renowned authors, as well as contemporary adaptations for Los Angeles audience.
The comedias of the Hispanic Golden Age were plays for the people: performances took place in open-air theaters, where attendees of all classes and both sexes commingled. At the same time, the works are sophisticated urban dramas, offering pointed reflections on the constructed nature of class and gender as well as the performativity of social roles in the burgeoning city, issues that resonate with audiences today.
El Merolico (The Mountebank)
- On Friday, September 21 at 6 pm. In Spanish, with English supertitles.
- EFE Tres Teatro presents a reworking of Cervantes’ comic interludes as delivered by a traveling performer in small-town Mexico.
Women and Servants by Lope de Vega
- On Friday, September 21 at 8 pm. In English.
- Sylvia Blush and Jean Carlo Yunen Aróstegui direct Lope de Vega’s recently rediscovered comedia, which traces the play of class, loyalty, and desire in a very modern Madrid.
School for Witches, or Friendship Betrayed by Madhuri Shekar
- On Saturday, September 22 at 6 pm. In English.
- Based on La Traición en la Amistad by María de Zayas.
- Friendships are not always what they seem to be, especially when love gets in the way.
El Príncipe Ynocente (The Innocent Prince) by Lope de Vega
- On Saturday, September 22 at 8 pm. In Spanish, with English supertitles.
- Cutting-edge Mexican company EFE Tres Teatro will present Lope de Vega’s meditation on political power and culpability, reimagined as a dialogue between two prisoners in their cell.
Like/Share by Janine Salinas Schoenberg
- On Sunday, September 23 at 5 pm. In English.
- Based on Los Cabellos de Absalón by Calderón de la Barca.
When a night of college partying goes wrong, what you see is not always what you get.
La Locura de Los Ángeles (The Madness of Angels) by Michael Premsrirat
- On Sunday, September 23, at 7:00 pm. In English.
- Based on Los Locos de Valencia by Lope de Vega.
- It’s a psychedelic LA in the summer of ’69, and the entire world seems to have gone mad.
Venue
Greenway Court Theater, 544 N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Admission
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Credits
Organized by Diversifying the Classics with the support of the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Center for European and Russian Studies, Latin American Institute, Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, Theater, and English, UC Riverside’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, UC MEXUS, and the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Pomona. Image: El Príncipe Ynocente by Lope de Vega, performed by EFE Tres Teatro
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