Professor Maria Delgado, BA (Wales), MA (Leeds), PhD (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne)
Professor of Theatre & Screen Arts

Maria Delgado is a critic, curator, programmer and translator who has published widely in the area of Spanish performance and film and contemporary European theatres. She is co-editor of the Routledge journal Contemporary Theatre Review, of the Cambridge University Press Series ‘Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre’, and of the Manchester University Press series ‘Theatre: Theory/Practice/Performance’.  She is a contributing editor for European Stages and TheatreForum, and a member of the advisory board of NoPassport Publications, Don Galán and Episkenion. Her translations of plays by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Susana Torres Molina have been staged in Europe, North American and Australasia.

She is a regular guest on a range of BBC radio programmes and contributor to Sight & Sound. She is a programme advisor for the London Film Festival, programme associate of the Argentine Film Festival London and is currently working with the London Spanish Film Festival on an ‘Acting Across Frontiers’ project. 

She has delivered guest lectures or conducted public interviews at a range of institutions including the ICA, BFI Southbank, the Imperial War Museum London, and the Edinburgh International Festival; Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey (USA), Smith College (USA), the Universities of Castilla la Mancha and Alicante (Spain) and the Instituto Cervantes in Cairo, Berlin and London.

She is currently Chair of the Board of the award-winning theatre company ATC.  In 2003 she was awarded the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica for her academic and curatorial work on Spanish culture and in 2013 the Association for Theatre in Higher Education USA [ATHE] Award for Excellence in Editing.  Her work has been published in seven languages.

Research interests:

Pedro Almodóvar A.M.P.A.S. tribute.
Photograph by Simon Liebowitz © A.M.P.A.S.

Maria is currently working on a book on the performance of historical memory in Spain and Argentina in the twenty-first century. Her current research interests include

• Culture and historical memory
• Performance and film analysis (with particular emphasis on Spain and Argentina)
• Translation for the stage and the interrelationships between translation and mise en scène
• Twentieth- and Twenty first-century Spanish theatre and film.
• Argentine theatre and cinema
• Directors’ theatre in contemporary Europe

Postgraduate supervision:

Maria would welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in any of the areas of her research.

She has recently supervised the following successful PhD projects:

• Caoimhe McAvinchey, ‘Possible Ficitions: The Testimony of Applied Performance with Women in Prisons in England and Brazil’, co-supervised with Paul Heritage (2006)
• Joel Anderson, ‘Theatre and Performance Photography: Documentation and the “Unlive”’ (2008)
• Simon Breden, ‘Beyond the Playwright: The Creative Process of Els Joglars & Teatro de la Abadia’ (2009)
• Margherita Laera, ‘Appropriating Greek Tragedy: Community, Democracy and other Mythologies’ (2010)
• Gabriel Quirós Alpera, ‘Historia de la Dirección Escénica en España: José Luis Alonso’, co-supervised with Javier Huerta Calvo (Instituto del Teatro de Madrid) (2010)
• Una Bauer, ‘Post 1990s Dance Theatre and (the Idea of) the Neutral’ (2011)
• Kate Eaton, ‘False Alarms and Fake Excursions: Translating Virgilio Piñero for Performance’ (2011)
• Geraldine Brodie, ‘Plays in Translation on the London Stage: Visibility, Celebrity, Agency and Collaboration’, co-supervised with Theo Hermans (UCL) (2012)
• Cecilia Sosa, ‘Performance, Kinship and Archives: Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s 1976-1983 Dictatorship’, co-supervised with Catherine Silverstone (2012)

Performance:

Maria is a translator of dramatists including Susana Torres Molina, Ramón del Valle-Inclan, Mario Benedetti, and Bernard-Marie Koltès.  Her translations have been produced by the Vault, Southwark Playhouse (2012), de Singel Theatre, Antwerp (2009); the Avignon Festival (2006); Arcola Theatre, London (2004); the Théâtre de Lorient, Bretagne, France (2002); the Hagley Theatre, New Zealand (2001); 7 Stages, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (2001); the ICA (1992) and Battersea Arts Centre (1990).

Publications:

Selected Publications:

with R. Fiddian, eds, Spanish Cinema 1973-2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory  (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013)

‘Performing Barcelona: Cultural Tourism, Geography and Identity’, in Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Power, ed. H. Buffery and C. Caulfield (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), pp. 173-92

with D. T. Gies, eds, A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

‘Performing Exile: María Casares’, Stages of Exile: Spanish Republican Exile Theatre and Performance, ed. H. Buffery (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 203-27

with D. Rebellato, eds, Contemporary European Theatre Directors (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010)

Federico García Lorca (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2008)

with C. Svich, eds, Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)

'Other' Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)

Other Notable Work:

As Editor

with David George and Lourdes Orozco, ‘Catalan Theatre 1975-2006: Politics, Identity and Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 17, no. 3 (August 2007) [winner of the Joan B. Cendrós Memorial Prize for the Best Publication]

with David Bradby, Bernard-Marie Koltès: Plays 2 (London: Methuen, 2004)

with Caridad Svich, Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Lyme, NH: Smith & Kraus, 1999) and a special issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, vol. 16, no. 3 (Fall 2004)

with David Bradby, The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages )Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)

with Valentina Valentini, Peter Sellars (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1999)

with Paul Heritage, In Contact with the Gods?: Directors Talk Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996)

Valle-Inclán: Plays: One (London: Methuen, 1992)

Articles and Chapters

Articles published in a range of publications including: New Theatre Quarterly, TheatreForum, ALEC, PAJ: A Journal of Art and Performance, Romance Notes, Teatro, Performance Research, Modern Language Review.

Chapters include contributions to Escenarios compartidos: cine y teatro en España en el umbral del siglo XXI (Vienna & Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009); The Cambridge Companion to the Actress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Genet: Performance and Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006); Enciclopedia del español en el mundo (Instituto Cervantes/ Círculo de Lectores/ Plaza Janés, 2006); Shakespeare, Language and the Stage (Thomson/Arden Shakespeare, 2005).

See also Maria Delgado's Queen Mary Research Publications profile

Undergraduate teaching:

In the current academic year, Maria contributes to undergraduate teaching on:

• DRA207: Performing the Play
• DRA306: Dramaturgy and Translation