Date/Time
Thursday, November 12, 2020–Friday, November 13, 2020
10:00 am PST – 3:00 pm PST
–organized by Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)
Online event via Zoom Webinar
This conference is free of charge, but you must register to attend in advance. All audience members will receive instructions via email after registration. Click the following link to register directly with Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F2r7uurXSAmfToPBXPSL0w
Studies of the 17th-century Hispanic comedia have been reinvigorated by a strong turn to both early modern and contemporary performance. Scholars have also explored the transnational reception of the corpus, its translation, and its adaptation. This focus on performance and transnational reception has changed our understanding of the corpus, as of individual plays within it, by foregrounding questions of ideology and canonicity, situatedness and transformation.
Building on the efforts of UCLA’s Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance and its Diversifying the Classics initiative, the Center & Clark’s year-long core program “Resituating the Comedia” explores new contexts for Hispanic classical theater. In addition to presenting new research, the program will provide an opportunity for practitioners to encounter new plays and for working translators to share methodologies and interact with practitioners.
Two conferences, along with two roundtables with local scholars and practitioners, will highlight and examine the new comedia studies with an emphasis on performance and transnational reception.
The first conference, “Making Classics: Canonicity and Performance,” will address these questions: How does comedia fit within current conceptualizations of the theater canon and its classics? How does performance transform the canon, whether by highlighting new works or re-envisioning them?
This conference is held in conjunction with LA Escena 2020, a virtual festival of Hispanic classical theater presented online from November 12–16, 2020. For more information about the festival and to RSVP for free performances, visit www.anoisewithin.org/la-escena-2020/.
For information about the Clark Library’s collections in both French and English reworkings of the comedia, and in the history of European drama and performance, please visit https://clarklibrary.ucla.edu or contact clark@humnet.ucla.edu.
Speakers
Margaret E. Boyle, Bowdoin College
Bruce R. Burningham, Illinois State University
Dave Dalton, University of Virginia
Carla Della Gatta, Florida State University
Esther Fernández, Rice University
Robin Kello, University of California, Los Angeles
Laura Muñoz, University of California, Los Angeles
Javier Patiño Loira, University of California, Los Angeles
Susan Paun de García, Denison College
Aina Soley Mateu, University of California, Los Angeles
Duncan Wheeler, University of Leeds
Conference Schedule
All times listed are Pacific Standard Time
Thursday, November 12, 2020
10:00 a.m.
Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome
Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles
Introduction
10:30 a.m.
Panel 1
Moderator: Marta Albalá-Pelegrín, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Susan Paun de García, Denison College
“Creating and Contesting the Canon: Whose Theater is it Anyway?”
Dave Dalton, University of Virginia
“Respectful Irreverence: A Director’s Toolbox for Engaging the Canon”
12:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
1:00 p.m.
Panel 2
Moderator: Darci Strother, California State University San Marcos
Javier Patiño Loira, University of California, Los Angeles
“Performing and Translating Conceptos in 17th-Century Plays”
Esther Fernández, Rice University
“Making Canonicity from the Stage: Cervantes’s Entremeses at the Teatro de la Abadía”
2:30 p.m.
Short Break
2:45 p.m.
Carla Della Gatta, Florida State University
“Material Bodies and Latinx Theatricality: Solis’ Don Quixote and Quixote Nuevo”
3:30 p.m.
Break
5:00 p.m.
Performance – Finjamos que soy feliz
Presented by Teatro Clásico MX & Caracoles Teatro | Mexico City (Mexico)
Performance and Talk hosted by LA Escena 2020 Theater Festival; for more information and to register please visit: www.anoisewithin.org/la-escena-2020/
Friday, November 13, 2020
10:00 a.m.
Panel 3
Moderator: Erith Jaffe-Berg, University of California, Riverside
Margaret E. Boyle, Bowdoin College
“’The worst’ Women: Sor Juana and Early Modern Feminisms”
10:45 a.m.
Diversifying the Classics: Dramaturgy, Translation, and Canon-Making
Respondent: Dave Dalton, University of Virginia
Robin Kello, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles
“Translating a New Canon”
Laura Muñoz, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles
“Dramaturgy and Translation”
Aina Soley Mateu, Graduate Student, University of California, Los Angeles
“Dramaturgy and Adaptation”
12:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
1:00 p.m.
Panel 4
Moderators: Sarah Grunnah and Richard Huddleson, Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellows
Bruce R. Burningham, Illinois State University
“Minding the Gap: Thoughts on the Comedia in the New Millennium”
Duncan Wheeler, University of Leeds
“The Place of Golden Age Drama in Twenty-First Century Spanish Theater”
2:30 p.m.
Concluding Discussion
4:00 p.m.
Performance – Don Carlos: Prince of Asturias
Presented by Oscar Emmanuel Fabela | Los Angeles (United States)
Performance and Talk hosted by LA Escena 2020 Theater Festival; for more information and to register please visit: www.anoisewithin.org/la-escena-2020/
6:00 p.m.
Performance – Golden Tongues I: The King of Maricopa County
Presented by Playwrights’ Arena | Los Angeles (United States)
Performance and Talk hosted by LA Escena 2020 Theater Festival; for more information and to register please visit: www.anoisewithin.org/la-escena-2020/
Image: Alegoría de la vanidad (supuesto retrato de la Calderona), courtesy of Patrimonio Nacional de España.