Professor Javier Patiño Loira’s project “Wild Women on Stage: Gender in Comedia Adaptation” has received a Chancellor’s Arts Initiative Grant.
Part of the LA Escena Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater in 2022 and produced by UCLA’s “Diversifying the Classics” initiative, where it will premiere, this innovative performance piece incorporates cutting-edge scholarship and creates opportunities for public outreach to Los Angeles’s diverse communities. “Diversifying the Classics” seeks to promote awareness of the comedia (a three-act play combining drama and comedy in the tradition of the Spanish Golden Age) and illustrate the importance of including Hispanic cultural heritage in the theatrical canon. The project includes two performances of Lope de Vega’s El animal de Hungría (The Beast of Hungary), a play about two women driven to live in the wilderness, which radically deconstructs gendered socialization while centering female sexuality and desire. Putting into conversation an innovative production of Animal in the original Spanish by Colectivo Állatok and a newly commissioned contemporary English-language adaptation by Amanda L. Andrei, “Wild Women On Stage” provides a platform for diverse community voices, creating a dialogue across centuries, cultures and languages.