Theater, Politics and the right to the city in contemporary Spain
Matthew Feinberg is the author of the book “From the Theater to the Plaza.”
Poised at the intersection of theater studies and cultural geography, this talk sketches the physical and imaginary contours of one of Madrid’s most iconic neighborhoods: Lavapiés. A diverse, multicultural, and rapidly changing neighborhood, it has long been the locus of resistance movements and also of cultural flourishing. Feinberg will illustrate how the neighborhood’s conflicts over gentrification, its unique role as both a site and subject of Madrid’s theater tradition, and its history of influential squatted social centers reveal much about the key economic, social, and cultural dynamics that have shaped cities in the early twenty-first century.
