David RODRÍGUEZ SOLÁS

2019-2020

University of Massachusetts

Spanish Transition to Democracy, Spanish Theater and Performance, Theatrical Audience, Political Engagement

Performing Transition to Democracy: Theatre and Performance in 1970s Spain

David Rodríguez Solás (PhD, The Graduate Center, CUNY) is Assistant Professor of Spanish literature and theatre at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is author of Teatros nacionales republicanos: la Segunda República y el teatro clásico español (Iberoamericana-Vervuert). His research interests are modern and contemporary Spanish and Catalan theatre, cultural memory, and visual and performance studies. He has published on these topics in journals such as Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, and Theater Research International. He is co-founder of the Iberian Theater and Performance Network (ITPN). Currently, he is working on a new book in which he examines the performative culture of the Spanish Transition to Democracy. 

David Rodríguez Solás’s project seeks to analyze how Spaniards participated in and responded to the process of democratization in the 1970s. He pays attention to plays and stagings as both products and practices that need to be re-enacted and require the implication of the audience. He contends that theatrical events brought the people’s demands to the public sphere, and challenged the political consensus of the transition. It is the sense of community inherent to theatre that connects it with the bigger picture of the field of culture in the transition. He studies alternative theatre that attracted audiences seeking unconventional topics and experimental staging of the plays. For this purpose, he studies new theatre troupes, performing spaces and theatre festivals established at that time.

David Rodríguez Solás’s research explores what the tensions were, as reflected in the plays staged in those years, and how theatre responded to demands for more society participation, creating semi-professional troupes that are more accessible to first-time or non-traditional theatergoers.

Rodríguez-Solás, D.Teatros nacionales republicanos: la Segunda República y el teatro clásico español. Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2014.

Fernández, E. and Rodríguez-Solás, D., eds. Marginality in Spanish Theater, double special issue of Romance Quarterly 65.3 (2018) and 66.1 (2019).

Rodríguez-Solás, D. “Occupying Las Ramblas: Ocaña’s Political Performances in Spain’s Democratic Transition.” Theatre Research International 43.1 (2018): 83-98.

Rodríguez-Solás, D. “Dagoll Dagom’s No hablaré en clase, a Postdramatic Response to Francoism.” Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World. Ed. Diego Santos Sánchez. Routledge, 2018, pp. 140-154.

Rodríguez-Solás, D. “El espacio de la crítica, el lugar de la utopía: el teatro de Juan Mayorga.” Iberoamericana 62 (2016): 225-234.




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29/05/2018 - 43min 28s - Espagnol