Primary Investigators

Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas

Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas is a Professor and the George and Louise Peters Professor of World Languages and Cultures at Ohio Wesleyan University. Her current research focuses on contemporary productions of 17th century texts, with special emphasis on performance and social issues. She is also working on several pedagogical projects & publications focused on how experiential learning can help students better analyze the Spanish comedia through non-traditional means. She co-edited the volume Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theater (University of Toronto Press).

Erin Alice Cowling

Erin Alice Cowling is an Associate Professor at MacEwan University in Canada. Her research focus is on modern adaptations of early modern Spanish texts, particularly as they can speak to twenty-first-century issues of social justice and characters of the Other. She is the winner of the 2022 Matthew Stroud Comedia Article Prize for her article “Representing the Unrepresentable: A One-Man Retelling of Cervantes’s Entremeses.” She is a co-editor of Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theater, and author of Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature, both available from University of Toronto Press.

Invited Artists

Israel Franco Müller

(2022 - Present)

Israel Franco-Müller (San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a scenic designer (set, costumes, and lighting for theater, film, and television). With an international career, he participates in prestigious festivals and theaters, serving as a resident designer at notable venues such as Teatro Círculo in New York, Escena Latina, and Teatro Público in Puerto Rico. He is also an active member of the Association of Spanish Performing Arts Scholars. He teaches at the Department of Drama at the University of Puerto Rico School of Humanities. His publications include "El Catálogo Escenográfico" (The Scenographic Catalog) and several articles found in the "Repository of the University of Puerto Rico." He is an avid believer and practitioner of "light dramaturgy," a term he has developed and put into practice both in his designs and in the collective "Watts." His designs have been presented in cities such as New York, Georgia, Washington D.C., Almagro, Madrid, Murcia, Santiago de Compostela, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Medellín, Cali, Juárez, and Chihuahua, among others.

Fernando Villa Proal

(2025 Microcomedias Project)

Fernando Villa Proal is an actor, director, and learning facilitator with a solid track record in classical theater and the academic dissemination of the performing arts. He graduated from the College of Drama and Theater at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). As a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York (2018), he has performed in over 40 plays and directed numerous productions in Mexico and abroad.

He is the founder and director of EFE TRES TEATRO, a company dedicated to reimagining the Spanish Golden Age with a playful and irreverent approach for contemporary audiences. With this company, he has directed and adapted productions such as El príncipe Ynocente by Lope de Vega, El Merolico based on Cervantes, La firmeza en la ausencia by Leonor de la Cueva, and Empeños by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, which have performed in Mexico, Spain, Argentina, the United States, Canada, Romania, and Brazil. He is also the Artistic Director of the MX International Classical Theater Festival, a platform that brings together companies and experts specializing in the repertoire of the Golden Age.

In the academic field, he has taught workshops at institutions such as CITRU-INBA, the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, and McEwan University (Canada), as well as various international festivals, addressing topics including improvisation applied to the Golden Age, bululú, ñaque, and stage communication strategies in the classics. His work combines research, pedagogy, and performance practice, building bridges between tradition and contemporary languages.

Leyma López

(2025 Microcomedias Project)

Cuban-American theater director currently living in New York City. She graduated from the Provincial School of Art Instructors with a specialty in Theater. She earned a degree in Pedagogy and Theater Direction from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana in 2008. López is the founder of the Rompecalle Theater Project in Cuba (2007) and Teatro Columna in New York (2014). She is currently the resident director of Repertorio Español in New York. She was a 2012 Van Lier Fellow, and her company credits include directing Aire Frío, Valor, Agravio y Mujer, La Celestina, La Paz Perpetua, Filomena Martirano, and La Dama Boba, among others. She has also directed for various companies, including Pregones PRTT Theater, Teatro Círculo, and ID-Studio. She has collaborated on several readings with Two River Theater and RedBull Theater as a director.

Her group, Teatro Columna, has won awards at several festivals, including the 2016 Dominican Culture Commissioner's Festival, where she received the award for best production, performance, and direction for the play La Boda, and the 2018 Latinx LGBTQ Art Festival/Fuerza-Fest, where she won the award for best direction for the play El Gos.

Nominated and awarded by prestigious New York theater institutions such as HOLA, ATI, and the Latin Entertainment Critics Association of New York (ACE), TALÍA, and LaTA for her outstanding direction in Classical Theater, Drama, and Comedy. From 2012 to 2025, Leyma López directed over 20 shows in the city.

Juan Carrillo

(2025 Microcomedias Project)

Director, actor, and theater teacher, a graduate of the National School of Theater Arts (INBAL). He has been a FONCA scholarship recipient for Young Creators and the National System of Creators in stage direction. As a director, he has received notable awards, including the La dama de la Victoria (2017) award for Numancia and the Best Play award at the Almagro Off International Competition (2014) for Mendoza, a production that was also recognized in Spain as one of the five best foreign productions of 2017. In 2019, he directed Somni for the Institut Valencià de Cultura in Spain.

He has performed in over 60 productions and directed approximately 40 professional productions. He is the founder and artistic director of Los Colochos Teatro, a company with which he has participated in more than 20 international festivals (Bogotá, Almagro, Cádiz, Heidelberg, among others) and with which he has developed a repertoire of five Shakespeare-inspired plays (Mendoza, Nacahue, Silencio, Reina, and Tuta). His work has been presented on tour throughout Mexico (including the Cervantino Festival, the National Theater Showcase, and the Nuevo León International Festival) and in countries such as Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.

In the academic field, he has 12 years of teaching experience, leading workshops and master classes in Mexico (ENAT and CUT–UNAM) and in countries such as Cuba, Spain, Portugal, and the United States, focusing on dramaturgy and the stage intervention model.

Guadalupe Fuentes Castellanos (LUPE GALLO)

(2025 Microcomedias Project)

Multidisciplinary performing artist with a background in theater and architecture. Her creative and academic interests are related to intertextual, performance, and audiovisual experimentation, as well as Nahuatl tradition, Sufi poetry, and the classics of the Golden Age and New Spain.

Lupe Gallo is the co-author of "Voces del Patio Novohispano," an academic journal titled Patio Efímero (2022). She is also the author of Exilio y Porvenir (Exile and Future) by Elena Garro, as well as "Encantamiento en el teatro" (Enchantment in the Theater), an article in the book Mujeres Escribiendo Mujeres (Women Writing Women), published by Collectiva MEDEAS in 2023. Gallo is also a member of the Mexican Association of Theater Research (AMIT) and coordinator of the research group Siglo Aúreo, Escena, Teatro, Actoralidad (SAETA). Some of her notable projects include: Gossip Nuns, the Magnánimo Verbo (Recollections of the Magnanimous Verb), Comedy, Cabaret, and Golden Chacoteo, Metaversos Berrocos, and SANGINÉS-CULTURE. In her 30-year stage career, she has had the opportunity to present her work in several countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Korea.

Lupe Gallo is a woman in her 50s who enjoys her diverse roles: mother, teacher, costume designer, good cook, apprentice witch, devil dancer, and whirling dervish.

Graduate Research Assistants

Natalia Soracipa / Social Media Director

(2023 - Present)

Natalia Soracipa is a doctoral student at the University of Calgary in Canada. She is from Colombia and is in her third year of her Ph.D. program. Her research focuses on using theatre techniques to teach second languages. Her research assistant work consists of managing social media, guiding undergrads' work, and conducting and transcribing interviews. Natalia has experience working as an actress and researcher in both Latin America and North America.

Lorena Rojas / Project Manager

(2023 - Present)

Lorena is a graduate student at Western University. She is Ecuadorian, and she is in the 4th year of her Ph.D. in Hispanic studies. Her research is about voices, gender, and cinema. Specifically, she studies how feminine voices are represented in films directed by Latin American women. Her work seeks to understand how the materiality of these voices is inscribed in the narrative of the films and how the filmmaker’s voices can be thought metaphoric and symbolic ways. Her research assistant work consists of project management and organization. She is passionate about arts and community projects, as well as intermedial studies.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Georgina Rivero (2023-Spring 2024)

While working for Siglo Latinx, Georgina was in her final year of undergraduate studies at Grant MacEwan University, where she pursued a major in English with minors in Spanish and Philosophy. Having grown up in Mexico, she found comfort in studying Hispanic literature.

Her work as a research assistant involved conducting literature reviews, as well as conducting and transcribing interviews.

Amanda Fuenmayor (2022-Spring 2024)

Amanda Fuenmayor graduated from MacEwan University in Canada in 2024. She majored in psychology and minored in Spanish. Her work as a research assistant involved conducting literature reviews, as well as conducting and transcribing interviews. Amanda's work was supported by a 2022 Project Grant from MacEwan University's Office of Research Services.

Ashley Bernal (2023-2024

Ashley graduated from MacEwan University in Canada in 2024. She majored in psychology and minored in Spanish. Her work as a research assistant involved conducting literature reviews, as well as conducting and transcribing interviews, and working with EFE TRES Teatro on their latest adaptation La firmeza en el ausencia.

TRANSLATOR

Ana Juana Vicente Foster (Spring 2024)

Ana Juana is a graduate student in Translation Studies at the University of Alberta where she also works as an editorial assistant for Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. She previously completed her B.A. in Translation and Interpretation (Spanish, English, and French) at the University of Málaga (Spain) and the University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). Her latest publication is a chapter in the book Interpreting in a changing world: new scenarios, technologies, training challenges and vulnerable groups in which she argues whether interpreters in war zones need to be military-trained. As a linguist with a plethora of interests, she is currently researching narrative translations from Spanish into English (her two mother tongues). Her MA thesis specifically unearths the challenges and translation strategies when rendering dialects and how this practice has evolved over time. Besides her academic work, Ana Juana Vicente Foster is also a professional translator and interpreter for several Alberta-based agencies and a Spanish language instructor.

INTERNS

Lilly Colbeck (Fall 2025)

Lilly Colbeck is an undergraduate student at Ohio Wesleyan University. Currently in her third year, she is triple-majoring in Spanish, History, and Business, with a minor in Latin American Studies. Her work as an intern will involve translating and adapting primary theater texts for modern audiences. She is excited to continue building her connection to the Spanish language, the Latinx community, and her knowledge of the many great works by Hispanic artists.

Emerson Freas (Fall 2025)

Emerson Freas is in her final year of undergrad as a student at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, OH. She double-majored in Educational Studies and Spanish, with a minor in Music for vocal performance. She has years of experience in theatre, performing on stage as well as behind the scenes. Her work in this project involved adapting Spanish Golden Age dramatic works.

Frida Ramirez (Fall 2025)

Frida Ramirez is an undergraduate student at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, OH, where she is majoring in Film Studies, Communication, and Spanish. She is passionate about storytelling and representation in media, with a special focus on uplifting underrepresented voices in film. Her interest in Spanish literature and cinema deepened during her study abroad experience in Spain, where she analyzed cinematic adaptations and engaged with Hispanic cultural perspectives.

Madison Cartnal (Fall 2023)

Madison Cartnal graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University (Delaware, OH) in 2023, with majors in Pre-Medicine and Spanish, and a minor in Chemistry. Her passion is to make healthcare more accessible to all, including, but not limited to, across different languages. Her work with the project involved translation and coordinating workshops and artist visits at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Elizabeth Sumoza (Fall 2023)

Elizabeth Sumoza is an undergraduate student at Ohio Wesleyan University in the United States. She is completing majors in Sociology/Anthropology and Theater, and is minoring in History and Spanish. She has experience in both acting and doing work backstage. Her research assistant work included conducting and transcribing interviews. She is excited to continue to create meaningful art that contributes to conversation around social justice in the Latinx community.

Eric Flores-Moreno (Winter 2023)

While working for Siglo Latinx, Eric Flores-Moreno was an undergraduate student at MacEwan University in Canada. He was in his third year, pursuing a Bachelor of Music with a major in Performance. He was passionate about creating and sharing performing arts with the community. His position as a student intern included interviewing artists, working on the events website, and promoting the event. Eric's position was supported by a Level UP grant.

Image credit: Israel Franco Muller. Scenography of Fuente Ovejuna by Teatro Círculo (2022). Used with permission of Israel Franco Muller.

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