Can Comedia Help Us Understand California’s Past?
2025-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012, United States
Co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, Playwrights’ Arena, UCLA Diversifying the Classics, and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with generous support from Snap Foundation, Karsh Family Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Olga Garay-English
During the artistic and literary boom of Spain’s Golden Age, theater known as comedia helped audiences on both sides of the Atlantic understand their past and present. Today, contemporary playwrights have adapted these 17th-century classics to shed light on L.A.’s history, touching on issues including power and sexuality, gentrification, and Black, Korean, and Latino identity.
Join us under the stars at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes for readings of three adaptations from the 2024 anthology Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles. Barbara Fuchs, director of UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics initiative, will introduce central themes of the plays. Playwrights Diana Burbano, June Carryl, and Luis Alfaro will offer brief pre-performance remarks and will sign copies of Golden Tongues, available for purchase from Tía Chucha’s, during a post-reading reception.
About the plays:
In Diana Burbano’s Flickers, a director in early 20th-century Los Angeles becomes embroiled in the perils of Hollywood: ambition and treachery, prejudice and plagiarism. In her version of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s La cueva de Salamanca (The Cave of Salamanca), Burbano recreates the magic of the first days of film while exploring its racism.
June Carryl’s Florence and Normandie adapts Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Amar después de la muerte (To Love Beyond Death) and sets the action against the backdrop of the Rodney King uprising. As tensions boil, two families entwined by location and love find themselves living the American racial nightmare.
Painting in Red is Luis Alfaro‘s “whitewash” of Calderón de la Barca’s El pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Own Dishonor), exploring a Chicano painter’s relationship to a real and imagined Spain and an endlessly gentrifying Los Angeles.
This program is part of California 175 — What Connects California?, a suite of free Zócalo events and essays, bringing together leaders and thinkers from all walks of life to envision California’s next 175 years.

LOS ANGELES–Lanterns in the Dark: Afrolatine LA in Verse
2024-04-06 14:00 - 16:30
LOS ANGELES—Join Lanterns in the Dark: Afrolatine LA In Verse, a poetry and open mic event featuring poets Lucas Rivera, Reggie Myles, Sean Hill, Cameron Mouton, and Jenise Miller and co-sponsored by LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. This program is free and part of the public programming for the Afróntalo exhibit, led by the CSU San Bernardino Anthropology Museum.
Where: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes | 501 N Main Street | Los Angeles, CA 90012
When: 2-4:30 PM
Admission is free!
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About Afróntalo
Afróntalo introduces you to four communities in Mexico and twenty-one Californians, all in their own words, to explore the depth and breadth of Afrolatiné histories, cultures and identities. “Afróntalo” in Spanish means “Face It.” This reflects the intention of our exhibition to recognize the erasure of Afro-descendants and the prevalence of anti-blackness in the Americas. Additional meaning can be found in breaking the title into two separate phrases, “Afro” and “Ntalo.” The first phrase, “Afro,” reflects the Afro-descendant focus of the exhibition. The second phrase “Ntalo,” has at least three meanings in African languages. In Xitsonga, spoken in parts of Zimbabwe and Eswatini, ntalo means “abundance.” In Lingala, a language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ntalo means “value.” Finally in Ganda, the primary language spoken in Uganda, ntalo means “war.” Collectively, these three words reflect the impetus of Afróntalo to make clear the widespread and deep roots of Afro-descendants in the Americas, the incredible importance of Afro-descendant contributions and populations historically and today, and the need for action to bring attention to these matters and the contemporary needs of Afro-descendant communities.
Where: California State University, San Bernardino | Anthropology Museum (SB-306) 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407
Exhibit Runs September 21, 2023 – June 19, 2024
Free and open to the public
Learn more at on the project’s website.
This project is supported by a Humanities for All Project Grant.
