About LA Escena 2020
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LA Escena is Los Angeles’ first festival of Hispanic classical theater, featuring staged readings, experimental re-imaginings, and adaptations of works from Golden Age playwrights on both sides of the Atlantic. The festival celebrates the comedia—witty seventeenth-century dramas that deal with issues of class, gender, sexuality, and urban life—in many forms and seeks to showcase their continuing relevance to today’s audiences. As part of Diversifying the Classics, LA Escena promotes an expanded vision of the classics onstage and Hispanic culture in the theatrical canon.
LA Escena 2020 will include innovative digital performances by performers around the world, site-specific experiences that explore Los Angeles’ vibrant and diverse culture/history, and the fifth edition of the Golden Tongues adaptation series—new explorations of Hispanic classical plays by LA writers in partnership with Playwrights’ Arena. Blending the classic and the cutting-edge, the Old World and the New, LA Escena will bring audiences together for a virtual celebration of the theater’s unifying power across cultures and distances.
LA Escena, el primer festival de teatro clásico hispano en Los Angeles, presenta lecturas dramatizadas, adaptaciones y nuevas versiones de obras del Siglo de Oro escritas a ambos lados del Atlántico. El festival celebra la comedia—esas ingeniosas obras del siglo XVII, que tratan problemas de clase, género, sexualidad y vida urbana—y muestra cómo nos habla el día de hoy. Como parte de Diversifying the Classics, LA Escena promueve una visión más amplia de los clásicos en el escenario y de la cultura hispana dentro del canon teatral.
LA Escena 2020 incluye innovadores espectáculos digitales creados por artistas de todo el mundo, experiencias en sitio que exploran la vibrante cultura e historia de la ciudad de Los Ángeles, así como la quinta edición de Golden Tongues, programa que adapta obras clásicas en español por escritores de LA, en conjunto con Playwright’s Arena. Combinando lo clásico y lo innovador, el viejo mundo y el nuevo, LA Escena nos transporta a través de siglos y océanos desde la comodidad de nuestras casa, reuniendo a un amplio público para celebrar los poderes unificadores del teatro a lo largo y ancho de diversas sociedades y culturas. LA Escena presenta lo mejor de la comedia clásica en el siglo XXI.
Festival Team
Barbara Fuchs: Founder & Artistic Director
Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA. She is the founder and director of the Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance and its Diversifying the Classics initiative, which has been working to promote Hispanic classical theater since 2014. With Jon Rivera of Playwrights’ Arena, she launched Golden Tongues, an adaptation initiative connecting Los Angeles playwrights with comedia to produce brand-new plays. In 2018, she founded LA ESCENA, designed to bring comedia to Los Angeles audiences.
Professor Fuchs is currently writing a book on virtual theater, informed by her experience with the 2020 edition of LA ESCENA. In 2020-21, she serves as the UCLA Clark Professor, directing a program on “Resituating the Comedia” at the Clark Memorial Library and Center for 17th and 18th-Century Studies.
Lorenzo Pappagallo: Artistic coordinator & Executive producer
He has collaborated as a cultural project management consultant for several international institutions and private companies, among which the Fundación Ciclo Buenos Aires, the French Institute of Madrid, the City Councils of Paris, Madrid and Göteborg, Fundación Mapfre, Acción Cultural Española, European Festival Association, UNESCO World Heritage Cities Group.
He also works as a theater and dance curator and programming advisor for important national and international festivals and seasons such as the Almagro International Classical Theater Festival, Festival de Otoño, WienerFestwochen, GIFT Festival Tblisi, Neuss Shakespeare Festival, REGARDING FESTIVAL Tel Aviv, Teatro Español and Naves del Matadero, Victoria Eugenia Donosti Theater among others.
He also collaborates with various playwrights, festivals and theaters on subtitling for classic and contemporary theater texts.
Diversifying the Classics team:
For detailed bios, please click here.
Marta Albalá Pelegrín, Javier Patiño Loira, Paul Cella, Rafael Jaime, Saraí Jaramillo, Robin Kello, Laura Muñoz, Rhonda Sharrah, Cheché Silveyra, Aina Soley, Samantha Solis
