Festival 2025

Mis maravillas 

Santiago Pérez

(Bowdoin C)

https://youtube.com/shorts/-GwcSYNewpY

This audiovisual piece draws inspiration from Miguel de Cervantes’ El Retablo de las Maravillas, reimagining its critique of purity and social hypocrisy through a contemporary voice that embraces impurity as identity and resistance. If in Cervantes’ work “purity” was a mask exposing collective falsehood, here impurity becomes an act of authenticity and freedom. Through this poetic and self-reflexive monologue, I explore how what others deem a flaw—race, sexuality, origins—can transform into a source of beauty, belonging, and truth; a space where impurities are not hidden but illuminate the personal wonders that exist beyond imposed order.

Short film 

¿Qué me quieres, Amor? 

Dakota García & Álvaro Collado

(Universida Complutense de Madrid)

https://youtu.be/p2lPTmpy3jE

Inspired / based on Diana’s monologue in The Dog in the Manger, we follow the story of two people whose encounter never seems to be over, but also never completed. We also revolve around the following questions: is there a real encounter? Is there a way in which one cannot run and hide, or are they doomed never to meet? As in Lope de Vega's work, uncertainty seems to be the emotional state one experiences when in love. In this symbolic piece, we revisit the Golden Age with a theme deeply relevant to the present: always seeking the other is a response that can never be fully guaranteed.

Short film 

Cuando las Mujeres Se Celebran. Un Diálogo entre Siglos 

Rocio Rodriguez

(TTU)

https://youtu.be/lYxTfpODeKY?si=bMkPq20I7J999Jdm

In this project, I create a conversation between the 17th and 21st centuries by bringing together Ana Caro's décimas for María de Zayas (written in 1638) and the contemporary artist Rosalía. I recite two of Ana Caro's original poems and interrupt them with my own reflections, speaking directly about what these words mean today. What struck me most was how Ana Caro's verse "con lo que cantas encantas" (with what you sing, you enchant), written for a novelist almost 400 years ago, works perfectly for Rosalía. It made me realize that women celebrating each other isn't something new. Ana did it in 1638 when she compared María de Zayas to Sappho and the greatest poets in history, not because she was "good for a woman" but because she was brilliant, period. I paired images from Spain's Golden Age with photos of Rosalía to show this connection visually, and I used Rosalía's song "Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti" as the soundtrack because its operatic quality mirrors the theatrical world Ana Caro lived in. Through this format, I wanted to demonstrate that from the quill to the microphone, women have always recognized and celebrated each other's talent across time.

True American 

Luca McKerley Coronado, Calvin Klumpp & Charles Wang.

(Bowdoin College) 

https://youtu.be/BcLSzExosE4?si=AIboCqKn-7KoksNK

This short film/skit is inspired by the classic entremés “El Retablo de las Maravillas” by Miguel de Cervantes. We wanted to modernize the tale by adding an American spin. Instead of an invisible altarpiece showing “true Christianity,” we presented a Zoom meeting in which Americans are being fooled into seeing something only “true Americans” can see. In real life, many regular Americans are being positioned by politicians and billionaires to hate immigrants, but the reality is that we are a nation formed by immigration, and we would be nothing without it. We tried to satirize the current political climate while reenvisioning a classic from the Siglo de Oro.

Short Film 

La Serrana De La Vera 

Sara Adami, Mariam Asim, Alejandra Garcia Costa, Ari-Miyuki Kondylis & Yusra Yathrib

(UCL)

https://youtu.be/PpM8_wyqS8o

A contemporary, East-Enders style reimagining of lines 343-356 of La Serrana De La Vera. 

Short film

Las penas de Vivir 

Evan Braude

(Bowdoin College)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UVC0phCLX8

This short film is inspired by Soneto Salmo XVII by Quevedo, in which the poetic voice explores themes of nostalgia, the beauty of one’s own nation, and death in a Baroque format full of contrast. The video’s first verse comes from a poem by Vicente González, written during his 11 years of captivity in the Castillo of Carabobo State under the regime of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–1935) in Venezuela. González explores feelings of love for his country, the torment of seeing his nation in the wrong hands, and hope for the future. Both authors explore nostalgia within different contexts—Quevedo depicts the nostalgia of time passing, while González presents it through the loss and emptiness caused by injustice. For our video, we drew upon the Baroque aesthetic and wrote poems that respond to the themes Quevedo and González express, exploring defiance, frustration due to the political climate, nostalgia, the passage of time, and hope.

Short film 

Duncan Wheeler is Professor and Chair of Spanish Studies at the University of Leeds. He is President-Elect of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, and is General Editor of the journal "Modern Language Review". In 2016, he became the first non-Hispanic academic to be inducted into the Spanish Academy of Stage Arts. Duncan has collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Spanish Classical Theatre Company. His first book, "Golden Age Drama in Contemporary Spain: The Comedia on Page, Stage and Screen" (University of Wales Press, 2012), was adapted from a doctoral thesis defended at the University of Oxford.  In addition to his academic publications, Duncan regularly collaborates with the media in the UK, Spain and the US through such outlets as the BBC, El Pais, The Guardian, The Economist, Newsweek, Netflix, HBO Spain, London Review of Books Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek and the Village Voice.

Maria Bastianes is a  specialist in the history of theatre and performing arts in Spain, Europe, and Argentina (20th–21st centuries), María Bastianes is a Talent Research Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she leads the project “Federico García Lorca on European Stages (1936–1960)”. She previously held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships, directing the project EStages.UK at the University of Leeds, and has also worked at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Colby College, with research stays at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini; her publications include monographs on La Celestina (Peter Lang, 2020) and Italian stage adaptations (Routledge, forthcoming), as well as articles in leading theatre studies journals and edited translations of works by Pablo Messiez, Dino Campana, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Alexander Samson is a Reader in Early Modern Studies at University College London. His research interests include the early colonial history of the Americas, Anglo-Spanish intercultural interactions and early modern English and Spanish drama. His book Mary and Philip: the Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain is out with Manchester University Press. He runs the Golden Age and Renaissance Research Seminar and is director of UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters.

Cristina Marín-Miró is an actress, director and creator, trained at RESAD. She was part of the Sixth Promotion of the Young National Classical Theater Company (JCNTC), premiering in 2023 La Discreta Enamorada, directed by Lluís Homar; El Monstruo de los Jardines, directed by Iñaki Rikarte, in 2024; Don Gil de las Calzas Verdes by Sarah Kane in 2025; and La Alojería, also directed by herself, in the same year. In 2026, she plays Laurencia in Fuenteovejuna directed by Rakel Camacho for the CNTC. In Summer 2026, she will direct and perform De Ida y Vuelta, produced and premiered by Almagro’s Classical Theater Festival. She is co-founder of the collective La Nomai, with whom she develops collective creation works. She also works in the drift collective, with whom she created and premiered the site-specific piece SANTA EUGENIA at Teatro de la Abadía in 2021. With drift she also led the “+dramas de barrio” workshop at the Centro Dramático Nacional, and premiered Confidencias de Artistas at Teatro Español.

Lara Vivone is an Argentinian performer, theatre maker, writer, director, producer and facilitator based in London. In 2023 she graduated with a first in her BA (Hons) in Musical Theatre Performance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Lara continued her formation through Babel Theatre and Projekt Europa’s INFUSE Residency and Omnibus Theatre’s Omniwright course. She has worked professionally in Latin America and the United Kingdom. Notable performance credits include being part of the Core Young Cast of From Here On, Papayera in the musical short film El Bananero, and Cami in the play Alerta. Lara was an Associate Artist for Blue Bar Production’s show the Wolf of Poyais, and is a Youth Environmental Ambassador with Stanley Arts, where she is learning how to use theatre to interact with her communities and fight the climate crisis. She is currently excited to be starting Highlight Theatre Company with co-director Jade Alvara.

Paula Rodríguez is an award-winning director and writer working internationally. She is a member of Spain’s Academia de las Artes Escénicas. Recent directing credits include Tras ellas (de Celestina a Xirgu) at the Festival Internacional de las Artes Escénicas (Uruguay) and Ana por Ana (Barroco a Compás Flamenco), produced by Histrión Teatro and premiered at the Almagro International Classical Theatre Festival. Paula is the co-founder of Teatro Inverso, known for the award-winning production Rosaura, inspired by Calderón’s Life is a Dream (Walker Reid Prize, Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre, USA ).She directed Lysistrata (Uprising) for the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London (2025) and Mad for Love for the British American Drama Academy in London (2023), where she currently serves as Director of the Spanish Theatre Program. Paula is also the founder of Our New Gold, an international digital festival exploring 17th-century Hispanic theatre today. She is a graduate of the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (RESAD) in Madrid and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD) in London.