David Rodríguez Solas
2025-2026
François Chevalier
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Politics of Global Far-Right Performance in Spain
David Rodríguez-Solás (PhD, The Graduate Center, CUNY) is Full Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He specializes in modern and contemporary Spanish and Catalan theater, cultural memory, and visual and performance studies. He is the author of two books, Performing the Transition to Democracy: Theater and Performance in 1970s Spain (Routledge, 2025), and Teatros nacionales republicanos: la Segunda República y el teatro clásico español (Iberoamericana, Vervuert, 2014). He has edited or co-edited five volumes.
He held visiting positions at both US and Canadian universities. He serves as associate editor of Theatre Research International. He is currently involved in two international projects. First, the multi-volume A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Iberian Peninsula (Brill), and second, a co-edited volume on global far-right performance.
Research project
My project explores the role of performance in global far-right politics, with a focus on Spain. My project examines how Spanish far-right parties make an unapologetic use of fascist symbols and accept Franco’s dictatorship history of repression, colonialism, antifeminism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. As other examples of the global far right, they use performance to socialize supporters, as well as to maintain their identity politics and truth claims. Far-right parties like Vox use protests, media, and cultural events to challenge democratic norms and shape national identity. The project analyzes how historical revisionism and nationalism are incorporated into cultural performances, as well as the role of documentary theater in exposing racism, white supremacy, and the political manipulation of truth within the context of far-right mobilization.
Selected Publications
2025. Performing the Transition to Democracy: Theater and Performance in 1970s Spain. New York, Routledge.
2025. “Performance in Contemporary Times: Processes, Community and Audience,” in L. Elena Delgado and Eduardo Ledesma (eds.), The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imagining, New York, Routledge.
2023. “Cortocircuitar la historia: Shock: el cóndor y el puma y el desbordamiento del teatro documental,” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 27, pp. 181-194.
2023. “Testing the Audience’s Judgement: Please, Continue (Hamlet), by Roger Bernat and Yan Duyvendak,” in María Chouza-Calo, Esther Fernández, and Jonathan Thacker (eds.), Daring Adaptations, Creative Failures and Experimental Performances in Iberian Theatre, Liverpool University Press, pp. 251-265.
