2026 AHCT Symposium Program

Golden Tongues: Adapting Comedia in Los Angeles

Roger Mason, playwright; Nicholas Pilapil, playwright; Abe Zapata Jr., playwright

A roundtable with LA playwrights Roger Mason, Nicholas Pilapil, and Abe Zapata Jr., discussing their adaptations of La verdad sospechosa, La vida es sueño, and El perro del hortelano.

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Roundtable: Mexican Baroque: Primer Festival Internacional de Teatro Barroco y Disección Escénica

Araceli Rebollo Hernández, UNAM/INBAL; Margaret Boyle, Bowdoin College; Bruce Burningham, Illinois State University; Barbara Fuchs, UCLA

This panel presents the conception, curatorial framework, and outcomes of the inaugural Baroque Theater and “Theater Dissection” festival in Mexico City, a collaboration among the Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno de México, the Centro Cultural Helénico, and the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana marking the 330th anniversary of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. We reflect on how the partnership shaped repertoire, and public programs, and how the “Theater Dissection” laboratory invited artists and scholars to anatomize Baroque texts through contemporary performance practice. Case studies include: Fuenteovejuna. Breve tratado sobre las ovejas domésticas; La cueva de Salamanca; Segismunda; and Tempo Barroco. Panelists will share excerpts from the festival and open a discussion on sustaining baroque repertoires for contemporary audiences in Mexico City and beyond.

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“Lope, eternamente joven”

José Carlos Cuevas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

A lo largo del siglo XX, uno de los grandes debates en torno al teatro clásico español se centró en la cuestión de cómo debía decirse el verso. En este contexto, la creación de la Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico bajo la dirección de Adolfo Marsillach supuso un punto de inflexión al apostar por una renovación de los códigos interpretativos y por la formación de nuevos actores capaces de hacer accesible este repertorio.

Dentro de este proceso, tanto la Escuela de Teatro Clásico como la Joven Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico han desempeñado un papel fundamental como espacios de aprendizaje, experimentación y transmisión del teatro áureo a nuevas generaciones. En ambos proyectos, la obra de Lope de Vega ha ocupado un lugar relevante. Lejos de ser un autor distante o exclusivamente académico, Lope se nos muestra como un dramaturgo especialmente cercano: su vitalidad, la frescura de sus personajes y la universalidad de sus conflictos convierten sus textos en un vehículo privilegiado para la formación actoral y para el encuentro con el público. Así, a través de estos proyectos pedagógicos y escénicos, Lope se ha confirmado como el autor más fresco de nuestro Siglo de Oro, capaz de renovar su significado en cada generación y de mantener viva la conexión entre el teatro clásico y la sociedad contemporánea.

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“Dreams in Panels: La vida es sueño (2018) and the Graphic Potential of the Comedia”

Jonathan Wade, Brigham Young University

With the publication of La vida es sueño in 2018, Ricardo Vílbor, Alberto Sanz, and Mario Ceballos added a comedia to the growing body of graphic literature produced in twenty-first-century Spain, including a small number of works dedicated to the Spanish Golden Age. While Shakespeare has long occupied a prominent place in the world of graphic adaptation, neither Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, nor Calderón de la Barca had seen a work reimagined in comic form in the twenty-first century until La vida es sueño appeared. Undergraduate students often experience the comedia as distant in terms of language, theatrical conventions, and historical context. Graphic adaptations such as La vida es sueño address these challenges by modernizing the language and introducing a strong visual dimension that encourages readers to consider the play’s spatial, performative, and dramatic elements. While this paper centers on La vida es sueño, it argues more broadly that graphic adaptations of the comedia have the potential to become a valuable pedagogical tool for teaching Golden Age theater. Such adaptations can be taught independently, alongside the original text, or even as performance scripts, increasing both the visibility and accessibility of one of the most significant periods in the history of world drama.

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“Entre el repertorio y el proyecto: modelos de producción para el teatro clásico en el siglo XXI”

Alejandra Juno Rodríguez Villar, Hanover College

A diferencia de países como Francia o Alemania, donde instituciones como la Comédie-Française o los teatros de ensemble mantienen compañías estables dedicadas a la representación continuada de sus repertorios nacionales, España, y en general el mundo hispano, carece de compañías permanentes de repertorio especializadas en el teatro del Siglo de Oro. Aunque existen numerosas agrupaciones y proyectos dedicados a la puesta en escena de los clásicos españoles, la mayor parte de ellos se organizan en torno a producciones concretas y/o elencos temporales, sin contar con una estructura estable de actores, directores y técnicos que permita la alternancia regular de diferentes obras dentro de una misma temporada.

Este trabajo reflexiona sobre las posibilidades y los desafíos de recuperar un modelo de repertorio aplicado al teatro áureo español. Se argumenta que la amplitud, diversidad y calidad del corpus dramático de autores como Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Moreto o Rojas Zorrilla justificarían la existencia de una institución de estas características.

El estudio plantea que la creación de compañías de repertorio dedicada al Siglo de Oro podrían contribuir no solo a la conservación y difusión de este patrimonio dramático, sino también al desarrollo de una escuela interpretativa especializada capaz de garantizar su transmisión a futuras generaciones.

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Play Screening of Fuenteovejuna, followed by a Q&A session

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Performing Fuenteovejuna in Fuente Obejuna: A Living Theatrical Tradition

Performances of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna in the town of Fuente Obejuna, in the province of Córdoba, date back to 1935, when the play was staged to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the playwright’s death. A significant change took place in 1992, when the inhabitants of Fuente Obejuna began taking part in the cast and assuming the principal roles. Since then, the production has been performed by the people of the town, a practice that continues today.

In 2018, the production was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural, recognizing its historical, artistic, and cultural value. This designation acknowledges both the tangible and intangible heritage associated with Fuente Obejuna, including the legendary story of Fuente Obejuna and the distinctive theatrical tradition through which the inhabitants of the town stage Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna.

Attending a performance of Fuenteovejuna in Fuente Obejuna offers a unique experience, allowing spectators to engage with the history of the town whose resistance to tyranny inspired one of Lope de Vega’s most celebrated works. The most recent production, staged from August 18 to 22, 2026, under the direction of José Carlos Cuevas and Pedro Hofhuis, included the character of Lope de Vega as a tribute to the theater of Spain’s Golden Age.

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Fuenteovejuna en Fuente Obejuna por Fuente Obejuna

Las representaciones de Fuenteovejuna de Lope de Vega en Fuente Obejuna, provincia de Córdoba, se remontan a 1935, con motivo del III Centenario de la muerte del autor madrileño (1635). A partir de 1992 los vecinos del pueblo empezaron a implicarse en el reparto asumiendo los papeles principales, acontecimiento que supuso un antes y un después en la representación por cuanto adquiere el carácter de evento de participación popular que es seña de identidad desde entonces. Ya en 2018 fue declarada oficialmente Bien de Interés Cultural, título que protege su valor histórico, artístico y cultural, destacando su patrimonio material e inmaterial, como la propia leyenda y la singular representación teatral.

Asistir a ver Fuenteovejuna en Fuente Obejuna es una experiencia única en España que permite al espectador viajar en el tiempo y conocer la verdadera historia de un pueblo que se rebeló contra la tiranía y que inmortalizaría Lope en unas de sus obras más emblemáticas. Del 18 al 22 de agosto de 2026 se representó la última edición, dirigida por José Carlos Cuevas y Pedro Hofhuis, quienes incluyeron al personaje de Lope de Vega en un claro homenaje al teatro del Siglo de Oro.

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The description of this session will be added later.

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“¿‘Un libro de alabanzas de las mujeres’?: The querelle des femmes and Lope de Vega’s La vengadora de las mujeres”

Valerie Hegstrom, Brigham Young University

In Lope de Vega’s La vengadora de las mujeres (c. 1613-1620), the title character, Princess of Bohemia Laura, loves learning and rejects marriage. More than some Comedia mujeres varoniles, though, Laura seems to recognize the same problem that Christine de Pizan (c. 1364-c.1430) described in her Book of the City of Ladies. The books written by learned men that Christine read led her to “detest” herself and “the entire feminine sex,” until three female virtues instructed her to build her “City of Ladies.” In Lope’s play, books make Laura so sad she wants to die until she decides to avenge women and establish an academy to teach the ladies at her court. Laura’s brother Arnaldo repeatedly insists that she marry, a fate she assiduously seeks to escape by setting up obstacles. Her suitors must compete in a tournament and in a writing contest, each producing a book in praise of women. The play can be read as a defense of women. Laura herself enters the tournament, disguised as the white knight, and she wins. The leading man (Lisardo/Federico) names Laura “un libro vivo” who demonstrates the virtues, excellence, and valor of all women. This reading works well until the inevitable restoration of order at the the play’s end when Laura surrenders, agreeing to marry. The Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico and Teatro del Temple recently collaborated on a production of the play; their performance, particularly that of Silvia de Pé in the title role, presented a strong woman protagonist who, although confused by her attraction to Lisardo, continues to the end of the play to declare herself a “vengadora de mujeres.”

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“A Dramaturg’s Reflection on ‘The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs’”

Kailey Henderson, Michigan State University

This essay reflects on the production dramaturgy of The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs, a Diversifying the Classics translation of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer (1630), staged at Oakland University and directed by Oscar Quiroz. Drawing on transhistorical and presentist methodologies from trans studies and early modern scholarship, the essay examines both the possibilities and limitations of applying a trans lens to Hispanic classical theater.

The essay highlights structural interventions in the production process, including gender-affirming casting practices and collaboration with Oakland University’s Center for Gender and Sexuality, which positioned the production as a community-centered queer and trans theatrical event. At the same time, the reflection critically interrogates the decision to interpret Leonor as engaging in an early modern form of “transing.” While this reading opened productive discussions about historical gender nonconformity and trans embodiment, it also exposed tensions between early modern theatrical conventions and contemporary trans politics. The essay argues that Leonor functions as a “bad” trans object whose narrative simultaneously enables trans visibility and reproduces harmful tropes of disguise and detransition. Ultimately, the reflection considers the ethical stakes of staging early modern detransition narratives for contemporary trans audiences and communities.

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“Collaboration, Uncertainty, and Public Humanities: Lessons from the First-Residencia-Laboratorio Nuevas Dramaturgias del Teatro Hispánico”

Gabriela Villanueva Noriega, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

This contribution revisits the development of the first Residencia-Laboratorio Nuevas Dramaturgias del Teatro Hispánico at UNAM as part of the Project MEX-Clásicos, a collaborative initiative developed through the UCLA–UNAM partnership within Diversifying the Classics, directed by Barbara Fuchs. Conceived within the broader framework of public and engaged humanities, the residency sought to connect research on Hispanic classical theater with contemporary dramaturgical experimentation, collaborative pedagogy, and public-facing cultural work.

Focusing on the challenges and lessons that emerged from the project, the presentation examines the tensions involved in translating specialized humanities scholarship into collective forms of artistic and public engagement. The residency revealed the complexities of sustaining collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, and creative contexts while also demonstrating how active listening can operate as a research methodology that enables dialogue, negotiation, and collective knowledge production across different forms of expertise and public engagement.

The laboratory privileged process, encounter, and experimentation instead of fixed outcomes. Its most significant findings emerged through practices of dialogue, rehearsal, and shared inquiry, suggesting that public humanities initiatives can generate new forms of knowledge precisely through collaboration, uncertainty, and reciprocal exchange.

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“La venganza de Tamar de Tirso en los escenarios anglosajones contemporáneos”

Naima Lamari, Universidad de Avignon. Note: The author will present via live stream.

Este estudio propone estudiar la recepción anglosajona de La venganza de Tamar de Tirso de Molina a través de dos montajes británicos contemporáneos: The Rape of Tamar de Paul Whitworth y Tamar’s Revenge de Simon Usher, realizado con la Royal Shakespeare Company. El objetivo es analizar cómo estas recreaciones escénicas (re)interpretan el drama tirsiano para acercarlo al público contemporáneo.

Pretendo demostrar que las versiones inglesas desplazan parcialmente el tema de la venganza hacia cuestiones relacionadas con la violencia sexual, el deseo y la transgresión. Asimismo, se examinará cómo los directores utilizan herramientas contemporáneas —vestuario, escenografía o estética visual— para actualizar la obra y subrayar su dimensión universal. Este trabajo pondrá también de relieve la importancia que ha tenido La venganza de Tamar en el ámbito académico anglosajón, tanto por el número de estudios críticos y traducciones inglesas como por el interés de los profesionales del teatro británico por el repertorio del Siglo de Oro español. Finalmente, se reflexionará sobre los vínculos entre la tragedia tirsiana y la tradición teatral shakespeariana, especialmente en torno a la violencia, el poder y la pasión.

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“Comparing Two Adaptations of Lope de Vega’s La prueba de los ingenios”

DeLys Ostlund, Portland State University

Lope de Vega’s La prueba de los ingenios was essentially unknown to audiences until the 1980s, when it began to catch the attention of Early Modern Spanish theater scholars. Its modern themes of women’s equality, cross-dressing, and homoerotic desire have resulted in increased interest in this work in recent decades. In addition to a growing body of scholarly studies and a critical edition of the original play published by Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs in 2018, two modern adaptations have been produced: a 2006 English-language adaptation by Caridad Svich and a more recent Spanish-language adaptation by Noelia Pérez (2025). While both adapters geared their works towards a modern audience, Svich adapted the work to make it accessible to English-speaking Americans likely unfamiliar with Lope or his works, whereas Pérez targeted contemporary Spaniards, who would more likely be familiar with Lope and the comedia. Although their different target audiences make each adaptation unique in many ways, both adapters remained true to elements of the original play. In this paper, I propose to compare these two modern adaptations by analyzing and comparing the choices each playwright made in their deviations from Lope’s original text.

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“Translations Spiced with Spanish”

Kathleen Costales, University of Dayton; Ben Gunter, Florida State University / Theater with a Mission; Kerry Wilks, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; Anthony J. Grubbs, Michigan State University; Kerry Wilks, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

Translators prepping a comedia for performance in English sometimes pepper their acting texts with Spanish. Why? What dramaturgical vision, dramatic objectives, and translation goals drive this choice? A coalition of scholars and practitioners seeks insight into this practice and answers to these questions through case studies of such performance-aimed translations as ● El muerto, or Better Wed than Dead, a bilingual translation of a Quirós entremés (published 1658) originated for an American Society for Theatre Research working session (2013) and included in the dramatic reconstruction of a Historic Indian/Spanish Wedding (2015) at Mission San Luis, Florida’s Apalachee-Spanish Living History Museum ● Amigo, amante y leal by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (c. 1620), a translation in progress of the first comedia performed in Florida that historians can cite by title. Across these projects, strategic use of Spanish serves multiple functions: marking the text’s origin, preserving vestiges of the source culture, adding rhetorical weight, and foregrounding the fact of translation itself.

Drawing on Lawrence Venuti’s theory of “invisibility,” this study examines how retaining Spanish promotes production and lowers barriers to reception by resisting cultural erasure, reframing bilingualism as an asset rather than an obstacle, and foregrounding the intrinsic benefits of live theater, including captivation, intellectual stimulation, emotional expression, and social bridging. Rather than “othering” audiences, moments of Spanish invite recognition, affirm pride of heritage within Latinx communities, and function as subtle acts of protest against historical and theatrical erasure.

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“Rewriting Roldán: Bernardo del Carpio as Refundición in the Mocedades Comedias”

Harrison Meadows, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

As in other European contexts, Carolingian material became enormously influential in medieval Iberian ballad traditions and chronicles. However, as jongleurs and chroniclers recounted these episodes from an Iberian vantage over time, those retellings of the Matter of France in the Christian kingdoms south of the Pyrenees grew increasingly marked by an anti-Frankish regionalism. The figure of Roland of course plays a prominent role in Spanish traditions, but so does a rival character who emerges, ultimately to defeat him on the Roncesvalles battlefield: Bernardo del Carpio. As Bernardo’s legend firmly establishes itself in the Spanish repertoire, representations of Roland rarely appear without him. As such, Bernardo comes to serve as a type of transhistorical Spanish foil to Roland, besting him across versions ranging from medieval ballads to Don Quijote. The two figures also feature in plays by major early modern Spanish dramatists, appearing as principal characters in at least eleven comedias. In this paper, I examine the dynamics of Bernardo and Roland’s intertwined theatrical relationship, especially in Las mocedades de Bernardo del Carpio, read as a refundición of an earlier play by Lope, La mocedad de Roldán. In the later play, I suggest that the playwright leverages the mechanics of refundición as a vehicle to show Bernardo surpassing Roldán, not on the battlefield, but as a dramatic character. In light of this reading, I argue that the play engages contemporary notions of a collective Spanish past and the Franco-Spanish political tensions of the 1630s.

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“The Holy Calvary, or the Divine Knights of Calderón’s Las órdenes militares (1662)”

Christopher C. Oechler, Gettysburg College

Although out of fashion as printed texts in the seventeenth century, romances of chivalry nevertheless continued to find popularity on the stage. Lope de Vega, Guillén de Castro, and others penned plays with chivalric themes, some even serving their audiences the exploits of well-known knights-errant like Amadís de Gaula. Calderón de la Barca brought such heroes to the stage in several comedias written over the span of his career: La puente de Mantible, El jardín de Falerina, and Hado y Divisa de Leonido y Marfisa are just a few plays in which swashbuckling swords clash and lamenting lovers swoon. Calderón exploited the utility of this popular genre in autos sacramentales as well, blending chivalry and religion to create works that would resonate with his audiences and inspire an evangelizing message. I will discuss one such auto, Las órdenes militares, to analyze how Calderón appropriates chivalric language and visual cues in this religious drama performed for the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1662. In my reading of the text and its performance records, I will argue that Calderón echoes a particular type of romances of chivalry, the libros de caballería a lo divino, as allegorical and contextual models. Las órdenes militares thus effectively performs spiritual chivalry to provide its audiences with a moralizing message in a popular style.

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“Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid and Nineteenth-Century Performances of Guillén de Castro’s Mocedades del Cid in Madrid”

Alexander J. McNair

Critics have noted for centuries now that Pierre Corneille’s 1636 play, Le Cid, perhaps the most successful adaptation of the Spanish legend outside of Spain, was inspired by Guillén de Castro’s Las mocedades del Cid. Guillén de Castro, for his part, took his inspiration from the popular ballads in circulation in the late sixteenth, early seventeenth centuries; but Guillén’s version of the Cid’s youthful deeds, especially his stormy relationship with Ximena, can claim primacy in the theater. It may seem surprising, then, that some Spanish theater-goers in the early nineteenth century actually preferred Corneille’s version to the Spanish original. Tomás García Suelto translated and recast Corneille’s play as El Cid: tragedia, which was published in 1803 to mark its premier in Los Caños del Peral—with Isidoro Máiquez in the role of Rodrigo and his wife, Antonia Prado, as Ximena. The Biblioteca Histórica Municipal de Madrid (BHM) has a copy of this printing, which also includes handwritten cast lists for productions in 1814 and 1821. But Guillén’s work was not completely absent from the Spanish stage. The BHM has copies of Las mocedades (print and manuscript apuntes) that reveal how Madrid’s theatrical companies adapted Guillén’s text freely. This paper will document the revisions they made to adapt the Mocedades del Cid for performance between the 1810s and the 1830s, revisions perhaps inspired by the popularity of Corneille in García Suelto’s version.

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“El Amor enamorado, de Lope de Vega: Humanización mitológica y deseo en el teatro lopesco”

Adrián Pérez Boluda, California State University, Northridge

En esta presentación se analiza el erotismo en el teatro de Lope de Vega a partir del uso de la mitología en su obra El Amor enamorado. En el Siglo de Oro, la mitología respondía a una doble motivación: por un lado, ofrecía un universo narrativo ampliamente conocido por el público, lo que facilitaba su recepción; por otro, brindaba a los autores un espacio simbólico que les permitía evadir las presiones sociales y explorar temas delicados. En este contexto, Lope recurre al mito como una herramienta para articular una dimensión erótica que, de otra manera, difícilmente habría podido desarrollarse, estableciendo así un vínculo entre tradición mítica y expresión del deseo dentro de un marco ético-estético aceptado.

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“AI Integration in the Advanced Spanish Classroom”

Robert L. Turner III, University of South Dakota

My presentation explores strategies for integrating artificial intelligence into advanced Spanish courses (300–400 level. Rather than framing AI as either a threat or a replacement for language learning, the session proposes a scaffolded pedagogical model in which AI serves as a guided support mechanism that gradually decreases as student proficiency and independence increase.

Using selections from Tirso de Molina’s Marta la piadosa as a practical case study, the presentation will demonstrate how AI can be incorporated into advanced literature and composition classrooms in structured and pedagogically meaningful ways. The lecture will illustrate how AI tools can assist students in navigating the linguistic and conceptual challenges of Early Modern Spanish through vocabulary glossing, syntactic simplification, contextual language support, and clarification of idiomatic or culturally specific references. It will also examine how AI can support the preparation of outlines, organization of arguments, comparative analyses, and thesis-driven literary interpretations prior to independent writing and discussion.

I will also touch on iterative feedback mechanisms, including grammar correction, spelling review, stylistic refinement, register awareness, and targeted explanations of recurring language errors. Emphasis will remain on the distinction between productive academic support and overreliance, with classroom models designed to promote accountability, transparency, and metacognitive awareness.

By using Marta la piadosa as an example, this presentation will provide a concrete example of how AI integration can increase accessibility to difficult literary texts while preserving the analytical and communicative rigor expected in advanced university-level Spanish coursework.

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“La Comedia como herencia: From Performance Studies to Heritage Studies”

Rob Bayliss, University of Kansas

Spanish Golden Age drama has long been studied within the frameworks of literary history and performance studies, where the comedia is analyzed as theatrical form, a historical repertoire, or a canon of texts continually reinterpreted on modern stages. Yet the institutional contexts through which this repertoire circulates today suggest that another framework may be equally productive: heritage studies. This paper proposes to examine the comedia not only as a body of dramatic literature but as a form of cultural heritage actively produced, managed, and circulated by contemporary institutions.

Drawing on concepts from critical heritage studies—especially Laurajane Smith’s notion of “authorized heritage discourse”—the paper explores how Spanish golden Age theater is constructed as cultural patrimony through festivals, national theaters, cultural diplomacy initiatives, and educational institutions. Events such as the Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro, along with international programming by organizations like the Instituto Cervantes, frame the comedia simultaneously as Spain’s national theatrical heritage and as a shared patrimony of the broader Spanish-speaking world. This dual framing reveals a structural tension between national heritage and panhispanic cultural projects.

The paper argues that understanding the Comedia as heritage helps explain both its remarkable institutional persistence and the interpretive conflicts that surround contemporary stagings. Modern productions frequently reinterpret canonical works—such as Fuenteovejuna or El burlador de Sevilla—in ways that foreground questions of gender, power, or colonial history, generating what heritage scholars describe as dissonant heritage: cultural artifacts whose meanings are contested among different communities.

By shifting the analytical lens from performance studies to heritage studies, the paper suggests a new way of understanding the continued cultural life of Golden Age drama. Rather than asking only how these plays are staged or interpreted, it asks how cultural institutions reproduce them as heritage resources within a transnational Hispanic cultural field. In doing so, the comedia emerges not merely as a historical theatrical tradition but as a living heritage regime that mediates between national identity, panhispanic cultural diplomacy, and contemporary artistic reinterpretation.

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“Acrobats, Preachers, and Other Creatures of the Plaza”

John Slater, Colorado State University

There are undoubtedly more entertainment options than ever competing for the attention of potential readers and audiences of the comedia. But if students today spend too much time on TikTok when they could be reading Tirso, it is also true that since the Peripatetics, professors have complained that this latest generation is unserious and too given to frivolous pleasures. Even during Tirso’s life, the comedia had to compete in a broad marketplace of spectacles where the stakes were often life and death. In plazas, acrobats and funambulists defied death on a highwire, while mountebanks and “triaqueros” publicly demonstrated the efficacy of antivenins by first poisoning and then saving themselves (often while a dog or chicken given the same poison met its end). This means that autos sacramentales such as Calderón’s El veneno y la triaca were staged in the same physical spaces in which the power of “triacas” to overcome purported “venenos” was a familiar sight.

The variety of public spectacles almost never constitutes the backdrop for scholarly considerations of the licitud del teatro, even though autos, sermons, and religious pageantry had to complete directly with charlatans hawking powders and buskers juggling glass redomas. However, it is worth considering the competition among dramatic, homiletic, acrobatic, medical, and other spectacles because affinities and appear in unexpected places. This talk will examine how preachers spoke about and often sacralized the spectacular cultures of Spain’s plazas.

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“El hijo pródigo de Lope de Vega desde una visión contemporánea”

Ana Yunuén Castillo Colín, Universidad Internacional de la Rioja

Esta ponencia busca establecer el vínculo entre la investigación y la práctica escénica desde la perspectiva de la dirección de escena sobre el montaje del Auto Sacramental El hijo pródigo de Lope de Vega. La investigación sustenta las pautas de la puesta en escena en tres aspectos: la escenografía a partir de la revisión de iconografía barroca, los movimientos de los actores y el trazo escénico a través de los códigos gestuales y finalmente el vínculo entre la pérdida y el vacío para el análisis del discurso escénico. El montaje buscó comparativos análogos entre el argumento y el contexto contemporáneo respetando la naturaleza del texto. En función de las metáforas escénicas se tomó el código gestual de los estilemas o chironomias de John Bulwer y de Alonso López Pinciano para la expresividad de los actores. Como referente iconográfico para la video escena, se tomaron las pinturas de Bartolomé Esteban Murillo y los grabados de Jacques Callot para crear las atmósferas de los tableaux vivants. El resultado fue una puesta en escena que se estrenó el 23 de enero de 2022 en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Se buscó poner en movimiento la maquinaria del Barroco para devolverle su tensión originaria desde una perspectiva contemporánea. La puesta en escena vinculó los elementos de la investigación teórica donde el dolor, la pérdida, el placer y el arrepentimiento de Pródigo crearon un puente entre el discurso barroco y las problemáticas del siglo XXI.

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“Harmonies of the Siglo: Musical Implementation in Chamizal’s Siglo de Oro Drama Festival (1985–2013)”

J. Yuri Porras, Texas State University

Throughout its forty-six-year history, the Chamizal’s Siglo de Oro Drama Festival has captivated multicultural audiences through its unique adaptations of early modern Iberian drama, while simultaneously serving as an essential hub for Comedia studies in the United States. The festival—endearingly called Siglo—ultimately embodies the foundational tenets of the comedia nueva, a genre in which song, dance, and musical accompaniment served as vital dramatic components. Early modern playwrights like Lope de Vega and his contemporaries possessed sophisticated musical knowledge, strategically exploiting sound to enhance the emotional, structural, and ideological impact of their scenes. Drawing on these historical functions of stage music, this essay analyzes musical implementation within a selection of Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (AHCT) festival recordings spanning 1985 to 2013. This chronological trajectory highlights an evolution in how various modern theater companies utilize music to communicate deeply rooted concepts of harmony and dissonance to contemporary audiences, mirroring the intuitive performance practices of early modern stages.

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“The Force of Costume: De/Re-Constructing Honor with Elisa Sanz”

Bruce Burningham, Illinois State University

During the 2025 Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico one piece of performance art was featured by Elisa Sanz, well-known Spanish scenic and costume designer. Titled Honra: Reinterpretando a los clásicos. Sanz’s performance, which took place in the main cloister of Almagro’s Museo Nacional de Artes Escénicos (MNEA), begin with a simple costume design mannequin standing center stage. As the performance progressed, Sanz entered and, with a voiceover soundtrack that included recorded speeches from a number of Spanish Golden Age plays, began to dress the mannequin in the traditional clothing of seventeenth-century upper class Spanish women. This dressing of the mannequin concluded when the figure was fully adorned in a black dress. At this point, Sanz positioned several stones and square mirrors on the floor. She then proceeded to break the mirrors into shards and glued these broken, mirrored shards onto the dress itself as part of a deliberate decorative design. When this act of performance design was finally complete, the costumed mannequin was featured at the MNAE during the rest of the Festival and was later exhibited at the Museo del Greco in Toledo, where Sanz participated in a public discussion of her performance piece. Through a discussion of this work of innovative performance art, including a display of photos taken during the Almagro performance, this paper will discuss the ways in which this performance piece speaks both to the importance of costuming in the construction of (societal) meaning and to this meaning’s deconstruction by a twenty-first-century costume designer

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“Moving Muses: Sculpture Exhibition of Four Early Modern Spanish Autoras”

Elizabeth Cruz Petersen, Independent Scholar

Moving Muses: Sculpture Exhibition of Four Early Modern Spanish Autoras is a transdisciplinary performance and research project that reimagines the lives of four early modern Spanish actresses and autoras—Margarita Zuazo, Bárbara Coronel, Fabiana Laura, and María Álvarez—who shaped Siglo de Oro theater on and off the stage. This presentation explores the collaborative process behind Moving Muses, a project that debuted in May 2024 at the Kirsten Kjærs Museum in Denmark as an installation, lecture, and physical theater performance.

Developed through a two-year collaboration between playwright and independent scholar Elizabeth Cruz Petersen, sculptor Marit Benthe Norheim, and movement artist Sigrid Norheim Ørntoft, Moving Muses investigates the creative, legal, and embodied histories of early modern women in Spanish theater. Cruz Petersen’s archival and narrative research formed the foundation, while Norheim’s life-size sculptures and Ørntoft’s physical theater performance activated the material through embodied storytelling. Drawing from historical records, contemporary dance, and theoretical reflection, the project traces how themes of domestic violence, artistic labor, and social resistance intersected with women’s theatrical lives in the 17th century—and how those themes resonate today.

This presentation will reflect on the project’s evolution—from academic manuscript to multisensory performance—and its ability to bridge historical scholarship and contemporary practice. It argues for performance as a method of historiographical recovery, proposing Moving Muses as a model for how Siglo de Oro studies can engage broader audiences through embodied, feminist interpretation.

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“Acoustic Transculturation and Eucharistic Bilocation: Teocualo and Transubstantiation in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Loa to Divine Narcissus”

Mayra A. Cortes, UCLA

I borrow the term transculturation from the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. The literary and cultural studies scholar of Caribbean literatures, Jossianna Arroyo, succinctly explains that transculturation “focuses on the process of colonial power and rupture involved in mixing more than one ‘original’ culture with another one: linguistically, racially, economically” (136). My use of acoustic transculturation introduces the idea that sound and listening are essential during moments of colonial encounter and exchange, shaping how diverse communities negotiate communication and ultimately produce new modes of coexistence.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Loa to Divine Narcissus offers a compelling example of acoustic transculturation, staging a sonic and mystical encounter in which Nahuatl peoples and Spanish Christians both clash and connect through the Nahuatl spiritual belief in—and festival celebration of—the God of Seeds. In short, Sor Juana brings together the festive Nahuatl celebration of teocualo and the Christian sacrament of transubstantiation, in which the body and blood of Christ are transformed into bread and wine during Mass. In doing so, she simultaneously Nahuatlizes the Eucharist and Christianizes teocualo, whether performed in Mexico or Madrid. The result is a concurrent transculturation and bilocation of the Eucharist, which in her Loa becomes both a Nahuatl festivity and a Christian sacramental observance.

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“The Threshold of Violence: Hospitality, Emotion, and Female Agency in Golden Age Theater”

Beatriz Salamanca, Universidad Javeriana Cali

This article examines the emotional and political dimensions of the hostess figure in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s ¿Quién hallará mujer fuerte? (1672), in comparative dialogue with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa (1683). Drawing on just war theory and its implications for the law of hospitality — a historical precedent of what we now recognize as international humanitarian law — this paper explores the conditions and limits of violence in contexts of armed conflict and domestic confinement. Calderón’s play reimagines the biblical episode of Jael, who offers shelter to a fearsome enemy captain only to kill him in his sleep, transforming the gestures of hospitality into a lethal instrument. Sor Juana, by contrast, inverts the scheme: it is the unwilling guest herself who must resist a hospitality perverted into captivity. Read together, both works reveal the domestic space as a theater of power where compassion and fear are not passive states but performative forces capable of forging bonds or reinforcing boundaries, both within intimate life and in relations between groups and nations. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from the philosophy of hospitality and the history of emotions, the article foregrounds female agency as the axis of both works, offering new perspectives on what these Golden Age plays reveal about women’s historical experience: their capacity to negotiate, transgress, and reconfigure the codes that constrain them.

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“BADA Spanish Theatre Program: Reimagining the Ibero-American Golden Age”

Paula Rodríguez, The British American Drama Academy

As Course Director, I introduce the Spanish Theatre Program at the British American Drama Academy (BADA), which decenters traditional narratives by reimagining the Ibero-American Golden Age through a transatlantic, gender-conscious, and contemporary lens. The program provides an intensive study of Early Modern Hispanic drama to highlight historically marginalised female playwrights while engaging with the works of Federico García Lorca, an artist who found radical vitality and modern relevance in the Siglo de Oro. I will present the core theme of the 2027 program, focusing on how the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz offer an ideal case study for forging these connections. Her dramatic voice resonates not only with contemporary audiences but also with the inherent modernity of Lorca’s theater. Linked by a shared debt to the Góngoran Baroque aesthetic, both writers challenge us to explore complex intersections of identity, desire, and belonging. This dialogue between the Baroque and Modernity serves as a vital pedagogical tool for the contemporary performer interrogating classical texts and forms the axis of the BADA 2027 curriculum. Students trace these artistic lineages through an immersive one-month program, beginning in London and followed by two weeks in Spain. There, participants encounter the cultural and theatrical heritage of the material through site-specific engagement in Seville, Granada, and Almagro, including the Corral de Comedias and other historic landmarks. The itinerary enables opportunities to attend live performances and engage directly with industry professionals.

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Roundtable: “Radio Comedia: Diversifying the Classics with Podcasts and Audio Drama”

Laura Muñoz, Colorado Mesa University; Marta Albalá Pelegrín, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Rebecca Smith, University of California, Los Angeles; Katerina Levinson, Stanford University

This roundtable explores the process and pedagogical potential of adapting comedias into audio drama and podcast formats. Members of Diversifying the Classics, a UCLA-based initiative dedicated to revitalizing Hispanic Golden Age theater, share insights into producing works such as an audioplay of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer and a new musical production of Calderón’s Amar después de la muerte, in collaboration with Spanish company Jóvenes Clásicos. Recently, the Radio Comedia team, coordinated by Marta Albalá Pelegrín, has begun expanding its production efforts towards younger audiences with Radio Entremés, adaptations of entremeses for children, and with materials for teaching comedia. Panelists will reflect on strategies for choosing and adapting texts, technical and collaborative aspects of audio production, and the educational opportunities made possible by podcast-style presentations. The session will also discuss the integration of performance with interviews and teaching materials for diverse student audiences, positioning radio drama as a vital tool for expanding access to Spanish classical theater as well as fostering transatlantic artistic exchange.

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“Ruly Women, Unruly Banquets: Eating and Drinking on Stage in converso comedias”

Harley Erdman, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Felipe Godínez’s La reina Ester (1611) and Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s Abigail la prudente (1642) are plays by New Christian playwrights who were persecuted by the Inquisition for crypto-Judaism and heresy. Both plays are based on episodes from the Hebrew Bible and both feature exemplary heroines – exceptionally ruly women, to flip a phrase from Margaret Boyle – who arrange banquets that serve as each play’s climax and deliver poetic justice to these women’s enemies. In this paper, I ask: how do these plays adapt their Old Testament source material to emphasize these ritualized acts of eating and drinking on stage, activating them as plot devices? How do these banquets help stage what I call a converso comedia? The crypto-Jewish household was one where women kept cultural traditions alive through private, domestic acts of ceremony, many of them involving food and meals. It may be a kind of converso wish fulfillment that these plays reach their happy endings at meals where previously private, surreptitious identities and activities are finally made fully public, due to the courage of women. Such endings were not possible to conversos in seventeenth-century Spain – certainly not to these two authors, one of whom was impoverished by the Inquisition and the other of whom died in its jails In exploring this topic, I will also ask, more broadly: what are the politics and poetics – not to mention the materiality and practicality – of bringing food and drink on stage in early modern Spanish theater?

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“What the Ear Knows: Sonic Racialization and Corporeal Legibility in María Antonia de Blancas’s El esclavo de su amor, y el ofendido vengado”

Marissa Luquette, Rutgers University

In this paper, I will examine El esclavo de su amor, y el ofendido vengado, a full-length comedia which doña María Antonia de Blancas pens for performance at the Gradas de San Felipe el real in mid-eighteenth century Madrid, approximately 1750 (Aguilar Piñal, 644). In particular, I will center on the poetic representation and embodied performance of race in the text through the lenses of two key theoretical frameworks: Noémie Ndiaye’s “Acoustic Blackness,” and Nicholas Jones’s “Habla de Negros.” I will apply Ndiaye and Jones’s concepts to analyze Blancas’s markedly sonic characterization of race as an essentialized, corporeal script, encoded across the body and the soul, understood not only by unspoken, outward appearances, but by the verbalized expression of one’s interior construct. To elucidate Blancas’s conceptualization of race, I will identify episodes in the comedia where the author details aural responses by listening bodies that react in accordance to the affective likeness or difference of the vocal materials with which they come into contact, and their subsequent racial classifications of the speaker. In doing so, I hope to elucidate how women’s drama dialogues with evolving racial discourse of the period, and attest to the voice as a performative pedagogy for affective discriminatory practices encouraging viewers to assert difference on the racial register of early modern Spain. Additionally, I hope to present doña María Antonia de Blancas (whose current scholarly footprint amounts to mere biographical notation), into focus as a critical new source for investigating Iberian women’s participation in racial discourse.

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“Staging the Small Witness: The Child as a Site of Crisis in Los baños de Argel and Don Quijote de la Mancha” Note: The author will present via live stream.

Habib Zanzana, University of Scranton

This paper examines the role of children in Cervantes, arguing that the child serves as a lens through which the author explores the fragility of early modern protective structures. While Cervantes’s captivity plays, specifically Los baños de Argel, utilize the martyrdom of Christian children to articulate religious and nationalistic anxieties, these depictions find a secular resonance in the systemic abandonment of the shepherd-boy Andrés in Don Quijote.

The analysis centers on the tension between abstract ideological codes and the physical precarity of the children who bear their cost. In Los baños, Francisquito and Juanico are transformed into ritualized icons of resistance, their vulnerability serving as an emotional anchor. As Francisquito declares, “tengo yo el Ave María, / clavada en el corazón / y es la estrella que me guía / en este mar de aflicción.” My study contrasts this spectacle of sacrifice with the suffering of Andrés, where the protector figure (Don Quijote) prioritizes ideological performance over physical safety.

Drawing on Mediterranean Studies and the History of Childhood, the analysis bridges Cervantes’s drama and prose, reframing the child as a witness to the contradictions of masculinity and imperial identity. This paper traces a prehistory of abandonment, illuminating how the early modern failure to protect continues to echo in modern contexts of displacement, imprisonment, and state-sponsored indifference.

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Cutting-Edge Comedia

Barbara Fuchs, UCLA

The theater world often creates unwarranted distinctions between classical theater on the one hand and avant-garde or postdramatic work on the other. How can we as scholars support and visibilize work that eschews these distinctions to bring comedia fully into the now? This talk surveys partnerships and projects that engage theatermakers of all stripes in a vibrant dialogue with an endlessly generative corpus, and explores the techniques that help bring the corpus to contemporary audiences.

Barbara Fuchs is Distinguished Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA, where she also directs the Diversifying the Classics project and serves as Associate Dean for Public and Engaged Humanities. She has published widely on early modern literature and culture as well as contemporary performance. Recent books include Fuente Ovejuna, an adaptation for children of Lope de Vega’s play (UANL, 2026), Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn, 2021) and Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic (Bloomsbury 2021). She is an editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, and recently completed her term as Articles Editor for Renaissance Quarterly.

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“The Devil on Stage: Temptation, Spectacle, and Virtue in the Golden Age Comedia”

Morgan Schneider, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

In the canon of the Siglo de Oro comedia, the devil emerges as one of the stage’s most dynamic recurring figures. In a selection of early modern comedias (El mágico prodigioso, Las cadenas del demonio, El condenado por desconfiado) selected for thematic overlaps and inclusion of the devil as a primary character to the advancement of the plot, I argue that the comedia devil functions primarily as a vehicle for moral testing of protagonists. Rather than operating solely as an antagonist which is as expected of a diabolical character, the devilish figure shifts between modes of helping, tempting, and deceiving in ways that galvanize the heroic actions of his human counterparts. This project demonstrates how the devil’s performances contribute not only to characterization and dramatic conflict but also to broader ideological concerns within the comedia tradition by analyzing representations of demonic magic and theatrical deception. Situating these plays within the cultural and religious anxieties of the early modern period reveals how the devil became a flexible theatrical performing agent through which questions of morality, authority, and social order could be negotiated. Through a character and performance analysis of the devil, it is evidenced that the devil functions less as a purely evil force than as a dramatic mechanism for human moralization, enabling protagonists to demonstrate virtue while reinforcing ideological norms surrounding justice and order. This paper therefore positions the diabolical figure as a key mediator between entertainment, theology, and cultural production in the early modern Hispanic world.

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“El Autor ha salido del escenario: theatrum mundi y la fabricación del sujeto moderno”

Francisco Javier López Martín, Denison University

En esta charla propongo “El Autor ha salido del escenario: theatrum mundi y la fabricación del sujeto moderno.” Desarrollo este argumento mediante tres escenas históricas que funcionan como momentos sucesivos de un mismo dispositivo. El gran teatro del mundo de Calderón muestra el mecanismo operando bajo la cobertura teológica, con el Autor; la teatralidad shakespeariana de As You Like It y Macbeth lo muestra funcionando en su versión secularizada; por último el Trauerspiel alemán, leído desde la perspectiva de Benjamin, muestra el mecanismo en el momento en que la crisis postconfesional posterior a la Guerra de los Treinta Años deja al sujeto actuando en un escenario en el que el Autor ya no responde.

De esta secuencia extraigo tres consecuencias para la historia conceptual de la modernidad: la reubicación del barroco hispánico en el centro de la genealogía moderna; una reinterpretación del cogito cartesiano como respuesta compensatoria al sujeto performativo ya constituido; y una vía no analógica para pensar continuidades estructurales entre el sujeto barroco y el sujeto contemporáneo de las plataformas algorítmicas actuales.

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“Everinta, mujer amazónica y regina fortis en Mártir y rey de Sevilla, San Hermenegildo de Antonio Enríquez Gómez”

Carmen Saen de Casas, Lehman College

Mártir y rey de Sevilla, San Hermenegildo (1651) es una de las comedias hagiográficas escritas por Antonio Enríquez Gómez cuando regresa a Sevilla y vive clandestinamente como Fernando de Zárate para ocultarse de la Inquisición. Aunque el propósito principal de la obra es exaltar la santidad de Hermenegildo, príncipe visigodo especialmente vinculado a Sevilla, Enríquez Gómez la utiliza también para exponer sus ideas políticas y su concepto de la realeza. Uno de los personajes de sangre real que más destaca por su carácter y determinación es Everinta (históricamente Ingunda), la esposa Hermengildo, mujer amazónica que lo apoya sin fisuras en su defensa de la fe católica y lucha contra el arrianismo, hasta enfrentar con él el martirio final. En mi ponencia me propongo analizar cómo Enríquez Gómez reelabora el personaje histórico de esta princesa para hacerlo coincidir con el arquetipo de regina fortis difundido en la España del siglo XVII por los sermones funerarios escritos en honor de Margarita de Austria (1584-1611) e Isabel de Borbón (1602-1644), ofreciendo así un modelo de conducta a la joven e inexperta Mariana de Austria, quien acababa de convertirse en reina consorte en 1649.

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“‘Es tierra dichosa y bella’: una lectura ecocrítica de la obra El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón de Lope de Vega”

Gissaeli Cruz, California State University, Long Beach

This paper presents an ecocritical reading of El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (1614) by Lope de Vega, examining the representation of the American natural environment in Spanish Golden Age theater. It explores how the play constructs an aesthetic and symbolic image of nature that oscillates between idealization and colonial exploitation. Using the concept of ecolonialism (Gasior, 2023), it argues that nature functions both as an object of imperial desire and as a site of cultural meaning mediating tensions between the human and non-human.

The analysis focuses on the second act, where the dense accumulation of natural imagery, the incorporation of the areito, and the staging of Guanahaní create an immersive theatrical ecosystem. The profusion of references to flora, fauna, and landscape enhances the play’s visual and sensory appeal while positioning nature as a central structural element of the dramatic discourse. The play also reveals strategies of ecological syncretism that, although embedded in imperial ideology, suggest a proto-environmental sensitivity.

This study concludes that, despite its alignment with colonial discourse, Lope’s work invites a contemporary reinterpretation that foregrounds ecological tensions and anticipates current debates on the relationship between culture, power, and the environment.

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“On Staging ‘Extremes’: Disability and Melancholy in El Príncipe melancólico”

Alani Hicks-Bartlett, Brown University

Taking the staging and various performances of disability and melancholy in El príncipe melancólico as the point of departure, this paper examines the intersection of disability and melancholy as embodied conditions and theatrical performance in the play. Drawing on critical disability studies and early modern theorizations of illness, it studies how the Prince’s feigned melancholia becomes a strategic performance allowing him to influence courtly outcomes, manipulate political authority, and advance his personal objectives at whim. However, rather than treating melancholy as an individualized symptom, El príncipe melancólico shows how disability and melancholic affect circulate throughout the court, conditioning every social, political, and theatrical relationship, rendering the court itself a prime performative space.

While the bulk of the play’s attentions seem centered around the “problem” of melancholy and the “legitimacy” of the symptoms that appear to validate melancholic behavior and thought, the play complicates any clear distinction between authentic illness and deliberate deception. Indeed, the Prince’s behavior reproduces symptoms associated with “genuine” melancholic suffering and other “diagnosable” illnesses—diagnoses that would have currency in premodern and modern contexts.

Given the diachronic underpinnings of these concerns, this paper concludes with a discussion of pressing critical debates surrounding “retrodiagnosis” in contemporary discussions of premodern disability and performativity. By offering a serious evaluation of performance and verisimilitude—and the limits thereof—El príncipe melancólico compellingly situates disability and melancholy as lenses through which authority, affect, and the relationship between bodily difference and power can be understood.

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“La bobería como disfraz cognitivo en La boba para otros y discreta para sí y La dama boba de Lope de Vega”

Judith G. Caballero Navarro, Millsaps College

Esta ponencia examina el fingimiento de torpeza femenina en La boba para otros y discreta para sí y en La dama boba de Lope de Vega como mecanismo de supervivencia, negociación y poder en entornos marcados por la normativa patriarcal. A partir de una perspectiva que articula la performatividad del género (Judith Butler) y la teoría de la máscara (Ervin Goffman) se argumenta que tanto Diana como Finea despliegan un fingimiento consciente que revela un alto grado de metacognición. Las protagonistas no sólo encarnan una identidad femenina construida mediante actos reiterados y socialmente codificados, sino que también ejercen un control reflexivo sobre su propio saber: regulan cuándo ocultarlo y cómo manipular las percepciones ajenas para alcanzar sus fines.

En este marco, el saber, tanto formal como intuitivo, se convierte en una vía de escape simbólico: una forma de reconfigurar la subjetividad, negociar espacios de autonomía y resistir desde dentro las estructuras opresivas. La «bobería» se revela como una máscara que no encubre debilidad, sino que articula inteligencia estratégica y resistencia silenciosa. El fingimiento constituye una lectura activa del entorno patriarcal y una respuesta táctica que subvierte su lógica desde el interior. De este modo, estas comedias de Lope se convierten en un laboratorio dramatúrgico donde el saber femenino se disfraza, se regula y se performa, desafiando las fronteras entre lo visible y lo oculto, entre lo impuesto y lo elegido.

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