Leading theatre historians and practitioners map a theatrical history that moves from the religious tropes of Medieval Iberia to the postmodern practices of twenty-first-century Spain. Considering work across the different languages of Spain, from vernacular Latin to Catalan, Galician, Castilian and Basque, this history engages with the work of actors and directors, designers and publishers, agents and impresarios, and architects and ensembles, in indicating the ways in which theatre has both commented on and intervened in the major debates and issues of the day. Chapters consider paratheatrical activities and popular performance, such as the comedia de magia and flamenco, alongside the works of Spain's major dramatists, from Lope de Vega to Federico García Lorca. Featuring revealing interviews with actress Nuria Espert, director Lluís Pasqual and playwright Juan Mayorga, it positions Spanish theatre within a paradigm that recognizes its links and intersections with wider European and Latin American practices.

“Extraordinary, very lucid and very intelligent”

José María Pou, Actor and Director of the Goya Theatre Barcelona

“The book is a veritable map that allows us to travel the stages of my country from East to West, from North to South, and from Now to Then.  It's a map that does not merely compile what we already know, but that offers us wholly new views on events that we thought we understood completely.  And it does so free of prejudice, fulfilling the first mission of the historian, which is not to close the past, but to open it.”

Juan Mayorga, playwright.

“the project should be received with applause from those of us who become members of the audience as much as participants in the cast of characters"

José Manuel Pereiro Otero, Boletín de la Real Academia Española, Vol. XCII, No. CCCVI (2012)