Based on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously
unpublished photos, this book provides the most detailed reconstruction
ever of one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history.
Winner of the 2019-20 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize
On 18 June 1933, one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical
history took place before an audience of 3,000 spectators in the ruins
of the Roman Theatre in Mérida. Translated into Spanish by philosopher
Miguel de Unamuno, staged by the renowned Xirgu-Borràs Company and
funded by the government, the performance of Seneca's Medea was a
triumph of republican culture and widely hailed for its new dramatic and
scenic languages.
This book provides the most detailed reconstruction of this pivotal
production to date, setting it in context and analysing its origin and
legacy. Early twentieth-century intellectuals considered Seneca, 'the
philosopher from Córdoba', the epitome of Spanishness and the first in
an illustrious line of playwrights stretching from Spain's Roman
Antiquity to its Silver Age. His play was seen as the ideal vehicle to
showcase the Second Spanish Republic's cultural, social and educational
agenda but provoked a furious backlash from opponents to the
government's progressive programme. The book shows how the performance
became a cultural ritual which stood at the centre of critical
discussions on national identity, politics, secularism, women's rights
and new European aesthetics of theatre-making. Based on extensive
archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos,
it will be of interest to theatre historians, scholars of Classical
Reception and historians of the Second Spanish Republic.
