A Dream of Cervantes comes true

'Teatros Ejemplares' (Exemplary Stages), the digital publication of 19 stage adaptations by Latin American and Spanish authors, is making the 'Novelas Ejemplares' (‘Exemplary Novels’) of the great Spanish writer available in new form through the unique creativity of contemporary playwrights.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, the Agencia de Cooperación Española and the Centro Dramático Nacional (National Center of Drama) have decided to promote Cervantes’ work through a new project known as Teatros Ejemplares (Exemplary Stages). This is a new way to pay homage to the Spanish Golden Age writer – always obscured by the figure of Don Quixote and estranged from the stage – and to make better known his particular use of language in the Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), in the Ibero-American theater. These ‘exemplary stages’ materialize as 19 stage adaptations that give new life to Cervantes’ words, and which can be publicly accessed through their website. All this began in 2013, when the Centro Cultural de España (Spanish Cultural Center) in Buenos Aires invited nine Argentinean playwrights and a Spanish dramatist to freely adapt for the stage seven of Cervantes’ novellas. Later, the Spanish Cooperation Agency invited many other playwrights from Spain, Uruguay and Chile to tap into Cervantes’ language, creating a cultural exchange on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to the project’s website, readers will be able to access all the stage adaptations that, together with illustrations by Miguel Brieva, recreate Cervantes’ unique world in the most modern way possible. Furthermore, readers will be able to interact offline with the Novelas Ejemplares, without having to be connected to the Internet. This serves as a meeting point between the reader and the original texts, as well as the new plays.

Read more here - El Mundo

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