Barbara Fuchs

Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA. She is the founder and director of  the UCLA Diversifying the Classics initiative, which has been working to promote Hispanic classical theater since 2014. With Jon Rivera of Playwrights’ Arena, she launched Golden Tongues, an adaptation initiative connecting Los Angeles playwrights with comedia to produce brand-new plays. In 2018, she founded LA Escena, Los Angeles’ festival of Hispanic classical theater.

Professor Fuchs has published widely on both early modern literature and culture and contemporary performance. She has also translated a wide range of early modern Hispanic classics, including seven comedias with the collaborative UCLA Working Group on Comedia in Translation and Performance, now available on their open-access website or in print from Juan de la Cuesta press. Recent projects include a translation of Lope de Vega’s rediscovered Women and Servants and 90 Monologues from Classical Spanish Theater, translated and edited with Laura Muñoz and Jennifer Monti.

Professor Fuchs’s most recent book is Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic (Bloomsbury/Methuen 2021), informed by her experience with the 2020 edition of LA Escena, held in partnership with A Noise Within.