Fuente Ovejuna
By Lope de Vega
Adapted by Barbara Fuchs
Directed by Kelsey Mesa
World Premiere
Booking and details
Dates Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 11:30am
Venue Reading Room
Tickets $20; Free for children under 12
Please note: Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
In the little town of Fuente Ovejuna life rolls merrily along, with sheep to tend and weddings to plan. But when the Comendador, the town’s governor, decides that everything belongs to him, life is turned upside down. What to do? How to resist?
This family-friendly adaptation of Lope de Vega’s Spanish Golden Age classic Fuente Ovejuna invites young audiences to imagine what solidarity looks like, with interactive elements such as audience participation, songs, and crafts to engage children while emphasizing themes of justice, unity, and resistance to tyranny.
How to attend the festival
Individual events – $20
Reading Room Festival All-Access Pass – $125
Access to all staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations included in the Festival.
Students – Free admission to readings and conversations
Admitted free one-half hour before event start time, with a valid ID.
Cast
Mason Catharini
Mason Catharini (Storyteller, Mingo) Folger Theatre: debut; Round House Theatre: What the Constitution Means to Me; Avant Bard Theatre: Julius Ceasar; Pointless Theatre Company: Forest Treas & Imogen; Pallas Theatre Collective: Assassins. Regional: StillPointe Theater: Company; The Colonial Players: The Last Five Years; Adventure Theatre MTC: Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. Directing: Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre: The Full Monty.
Fabiolla da Silva
Fabiolla da Silva (Pascuala) Folger Theatre: Valor, Agravio y Mujer (The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs): Reading Room Festival 2025, The Cuban Vote: The Reading Room 2024, Love’s Labor’s Lost; Studio Theatre: The Scenarios; Prologue Theatre: The Revolutionists (Helen Hayes Award), World Builders, MUFFED; Taffety Punk Theatre Company: La Salpêtrière (HH Nomination), Cyrano, The Tragedie of Macbeth; 1st Stage: The Last Match (HH Nomination); The Keegan Theatre: Webster’s B*tch; Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: The Merry Wives of Windsor. www.fabiolladasilva.com
Chris Galindo
Chris Galindo (Frondoso and others) Folger Theatre: debut; Studio Theatre: Mother****er with a Hat, Jerry Springer the Opera; Synetic Theater: Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear; Adventure Theatre: Junie B. Jones: The Musical; Imagination Stage: Small Poppies; Landless Theater Company: Puffs; Wolf Pack Theatre Company: Dog Sees God; Washington Shakespeare Company: Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing; Studio 3 Theatre for Young Audiences: Schoolhouse Rock!
Marcus Kyd*
Marcus Kyd (Esteban) Folger Theatre: The Taming of the Shrew, Henry IV (Part 1), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Director of The Folger Library’s “Bill’s Buddies” educational touring program 2011-2013. Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Devil’s Isle Shakespeare Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Theater J, Center Stage, Olney Theatre Center, The Baltimore Symphony, Happenstance Theater, Anti-Social Music/WPAS, Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, Constellation Theatre Company, and more. Music: guitarist and singer for The Most Secret Method. Training: BFA Emerson College; MFA, Classical Acting, Shakespeare Theatre’s
Academy at George Washington University. Mr. Kyd is a Taffety Punk.
Luz Nicolas
Luz Nicolas (Queen Isabel) Folger Theatre: Romeo and Juliet. GALA Theater: The Palacios Sisters, Bathing in Moonlight, Native Gardens, The Troublemaker (Helen Hayes Award), The House of the Lagoon, Doña Rosita the Spinster, Aunt Julia and the Playwright, Cervantes, The Last Quixote (Helen Hayes nomination), Yerma (Helen Hayes nomination), Mariela in the Desert. Abyss, Miami and Madrid: Alice in Costa Rica, The Kennedy Center: “Iberian Mystics”; Single Carrot Theatre: The VIP; Theatre Project: The Final Draw; Repertorio Español: Exquisite Agony (HOLA/ACE Award); IATI Theater: An Invisible Piece of this World; Alcazar Theater, Madrid: The Merchant of Venice, The House of Bernarda Alba.
Nadia Palacios
Nadia Palacios (Secretary) Folger Theatre: debut; GALA Hispanic Theatre: Héctor, El Niño Eléctrico, The Palacios Sisters; Maryland Ensemble Theatre: Clyde’s; Creative Cauldron: Woman on Fire. Regional: Laurel Mill Playhouse: Fires in the Mirror; Bowie Community Theatre: Witness for the Prosecution; Sandy Spring Theater: William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play; The Montgomery Playhouse: Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley; Greenbelt Arts Center: Five Play; 3DDD Productions: Same Script, Different Cast; Connecting Lives Enterprises: Life, Interrupted, Life: The Diary of a Broken and Healed Sinner; SDH Entertainment: Crucified; Live Garra Theatre: The Window King. Film: Like Gloves for the Cold, Da Kickback, Duplicity, Jimmy Trayner’s Blacklist.
Mauricio Pita
Mauricio Pita (Comendador, King Fernando) Folger Theatre: debut; The Kennedy Center: La Llorona, Shoe; Studio Theatre: The Remains; GALA Hispanic Theatre: House of Desires. New York: The Bushwick Starr: Big Green Theatre; Astoria Performing Arts Center: Astoria Stories; Dixon Place: The Tragedy of Sultan Khalid Bin Barghash; Or, The Entire Anglo-Zanzibar War In Real Time; IATI Theater: La Virgen de Kike; Theatre 167: I Like To Be Here; Fordham College at Lincoln Center: Yasmina’s Necklace; E3 Productions: Blood Wedding; The Directors Company: Alysha: A New Musical; Repertorio Español: Reinar despues de morir, Noel Road 25: a genius like us, La fuerza de la costumbre, La discreta enamorada; Miller Theatre at Columbia University: Undrown’d, 1989: A Concert Theatre; Marymount Manhattan College Theater: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Good Soul of Szechuan. Regional: Raíces Theatre Company: The Night of the Assassins; Seven Angels Theatre: Miss Abigail’s Guide to dating, mating, and marriage; New Zenith Theatre: Big Love. Film/Television: Crystalline; Safe Word; Hidden Heroes; Mohareb; To, Yo, Baño, Sexo, Ahora!
Gabby Wolfe*
Gabby Wolfe (Laurencia) Folger Theatre: debut. The Hub Theatre: The Burn (Helen Hayes Nominee for Best Actor); Spooky Action Theater: Sonnets for an Old Century; We Happy Few Productions: Desdemona: a Play about a Handkerchief, Lover’s Vows, La Llorona; Studio Theatre: The Dinner Party (workshop); Adventure Theatre MTC: The Truth about Krampus (workshop). Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Romeo & Juliet; Virginia Shakespeare Festival: The Tempest. Tours: Virginia Repertory Theatre: Winnie the Pooh, Tales as Tall as the Sky, The Harriet Tubman Story. TV/Film: Ritz Cracker Spot; A Haunting (Discovery Channel). gabbyrwolfe.com
Creative team
Barbara Fuchs
Barbara Fuchs (Playwright – Fuente Ovejuna) Folger Theatre: debut. Distinguished Professor of Spanish and English: UCLA. Founder and Director: Diversifying the Classics. Founder and Director: LA Escena Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater. Playwright: Fuente Ovejuna, a children’s version of Lope de Vega’s classic play. Author: Fuente Ovejuna, a picture-book adaptation of Lope de Vega’s classic play. Co-editor, with Aina Soley and Robin Kello: Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles (Bloomsbury, 2024). Co-translator, with the Diversifying the Classic collective: Ana Caro: The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Love is the Greater Labyrinth; Lope de Vega: The Travels of Teodor, The Beast of Hungary, The Widow of Valencia, A Wild Night in Toledo; Guillén de Castro: Don Quixote, The Force of Habit; Calderón: To Love Beyond Death; Alarcón: What We Owe Our Lies, The Pretender.
Kelsey Mesa
Kelsey Mesa (Director – Fuente Ovejuna) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote (Reading Room Festival); Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Othello, Antigonick, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, The Trojan Women, Charm. The Hub Theatre Company: The Pavilion, The Magi, Wish List; Catholic University: Crimes of the Heart; University of Maryland, College Park: Fefu and Her Friends. Awards: 2024 Helen Hayes Outstanding Production of a Play: La Salpêtrière (playwright). The Inkwell: Artistic Associate. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Manager of Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and Resident Director of the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive.
Madison Lindy*
Madison Lindy (Production Stage Manager) Folger Theatre: Henry 6: The Reading Room Festival 2025; TheatreSquared: A Raisin in the Sun; Greenbrier Valley Theatre: Assistant Stage Manager, 2025-2026; American Shakespeare Center: Assistant Stage Manager/Stage Manager, 2022-2024.
Alexus Wells
Alexus Wells (Production Assistant) Folger Theatre: Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States
**Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
Related events
Fuente Ovejuna Hands-On Craft
Diversifying the Classics
Related
Learn more about the play through these interviews with Barbara Fuchs, the adaptor of Fuente Ovejuna.
Spain's Golden Age of Theater
While Shakespeare was reshaping English drama, Spain’s Golden Age was producing its own theatrical revolution. Barbara Fuchs discusses the innovations of Lope de Vega and his contemporaries and Diversifying the Classics’s mission to bring plays in Spanish to new audiences.
Q&A with Barbara Fuchs
Barbara Fuchs shares insight into her work as founder and director of Diversifying the Classics, which promotes the vibrant, Spanish-language theatrical tradition developed on both sides of the Atlantic. In this Q&A she also discusses Lope de Vega’s prolific career as a playwright and what it’s like to adapt his work for younger audiences.