Core Conference 2020-21 Resituating the Comedia, Conference 1: Making Classics: Canonicity and Performance

Thursday, November 12 and Friday, November 13, 2020
10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. P.S.T.
Zoom Webinar

Organized by Barbara Fuchs (University of California, Los Angeles)

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 its 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.

Full program schedule is available on our website: http://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/resituating-comedia-1/

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

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: