From the Theater to the Plaza: Spectacle, Protest, and Urban Space in Twenty-First-Century Madrid

Theatre, urban development, and the enduring struggle over the right to the city. Lavapiés - diverse, multicultural, and one of Madrid’s most iconic neighbourhoods - has emerged as a locus of resistance movements and of cultural flourishing. Poised at the intersection of theatre studies and cultural geography, this innovative study sketches its physical and imaginary contours. In From the Theater to the Plaza Matthew Feinberg guides readers on a journey through the development of the theatre, as both art and space, in Lavapiés. Offering a detailed analysis of dramatic texts and productions, performance spaces, urban planning documents, and the cultural activities of squatters, Feinberg sheds new light on the lead-up to Spain’s economic crisis and the emergence in 2011 of the 15-M anti-austerity protest movement. The result is a multidisciplinary account of how the spectacle of the contemporary city connects local, municipal, and global geographies. By linking the neighbourhood’s unique role as both a site and a subject of Madrid’s theatre tradition with its contemporary struggles over gentrification, From the Theater to the Plaza offers new approaches for understanding how culture and capital produce the twenty-first-century city.