¡Quijóteres!
Presented in partnership with Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH) at UW-Madison in tandem with the UW Center for the Humanities.
¡Quijóteres! is a bilingual, shadow puppet adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ lovable lunatic, Don Quijote de La Mancha. As a work interpreted by shadow puppets, it takes full advantage of imaginative settings and scenarios to emphasize the novel’s intensely comical depiction of the ridiculous, with all the clashes and crashes, valor and vomit, that have distinguished the Quijote as a funny book for more than four centuries.
¡Quijóteres! was honored to receive the 2024 Walker Reid Comedia
Production Prize awarded by the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre (AHCT) to an outstanding production of a Golden Age play performed in any language during the previous three years.
Dragoncillo Puppet Troupe
Dragoncillo is a puppetry troupe founded in 2018 dedicated to imaginative, bilingual storytelling that educates while it entertains.
Jason Yancey is a Professor of Spanish at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI and the artistic director of Dragoncillo Puppet Troupe. A puppeteer, director, and Spanish theater scholar, he received a PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of Arizona in 2009 and has directed plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, Ángela de Azevedo, Lope de Rueda, and Jerónimo de Cáncer.
Esther Fernández is an independent scholar and was a two-year Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2023-2025). She specializes in Iberian literary, visual, and cultural studies, with a particular focus on early modernity. Her publications include Eros en escena: Erotismo en el teatro del Siglo de Oro; To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain, which received the 2023 Nancy Staub Publications Award from UNIMA-USA and the 2023 Vern Williamsen Comedia Book Prize from the Association for Hispanic and Classical Theater; Alma; and The Life of the Soul in Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture.
Jared White is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. His research interests consistently focus on Spanish theater, although he considers dramatic texts from multiple temporal periods—spanning the medieval era through contemporary forms. He performed as an actor in BYU's 2005 productions of El caballero de Olmedo and Las cortes de la muerte, as well as BYU's 2007 full-length play, El narciso en su opinión. Jared has published widely on the Spanish Golden Age and Spanish theater in general in venues such as MLN, eHumanista/Cervantes, and Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. He has years of experience teaching and sharing his passion for theater to diverse audiences, from elementary-age children to university students.
Jonathan Wade is a Professor of Spanish at Brigham Young University. His scholarly work focuses on early modern Spanish and Portuguese literature, with particular emphasis on the comedia, Don Quixote and Cervantes, and Iberian Studies (1580-1640). Since the early 2000s, when he participated in a series of Spanish Golden Age theater performance classes at Brigham Young University, theater has been a constant part of his learning and teaching. He is the author of Being Portuguese in Spanish: Re-imagining Early Modern Iberian Literature (1580-1640).
Alejandra Juno Rodríguez Villar is an Associate professor at Hannover College. She started performing in her native Galicia when she was seven. At the age of 12, she won her first acting award, and since then, she has not stopped stepping on all kinds of stages. Her theatrical career is very similar to that of the old traveling actors, from large theaters to improvisation in small towns. Convinced of the immense value of the cultural legacy, her love for outreach and pedagogy made her focus on the classical repertoire of Spanish Theater.