Carla Della Gatta
Associate Professor, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
TDPS Director, M.A. & Ph.D. Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Theatre Scholarship and Performance Studies
Education
Ph.D., Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University
M.A., Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University
M.A., Literature in English, San Francisco State University
B.A., English, University of California, Berkeley
Research Expertise
Theatre History
Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist who examines ethnic and bilingual theatre through dramaturgy and aurality. She built and maintains the only archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation, LatinxShakespeares.Org. She is the author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (Michigan, 2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh UP, 2021).
Della Gatta collaborated with the UCLA Comedia in Translation and Performance Working Group to translate Ana Caro’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs in 2019 (Juan de la Cuesta Press, 2021). Della Gatta was an academic advisor for the Public Humanities Initiative at The Public Theater in 2019. Her public scholarship can be found online in podcasts, essays, program notes, interviews, and panel conversations with Shakespeare Theatre Company, Baltimore Center Stage, HowlRound, Shakespeare Center Los Angeles, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Classic Stage Company, Shakespeare St. Louis, the Folger Shakespeare Library, The Sol Project, and Victory Gardens Theater.
She is on the Steering Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons, and she is the Digital Humanities Editor for The Fornés Institute. She serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Survey and for the Arden series on Shakespeare and Social Justice. Della Gatta serves on the Executive Council for Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) and she served on the Governing Council for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) from 2019-21.
Areas of Specialization:
Latinx drama, Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, LGBTQ drama, Spanish Golden Age drama, adaptation theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies, theatre history and historiography.
Editorial, Advisory, and Theatre Boards:
- Executive Council, Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
2024-present. - Digital Humanities Editor, The Fornés Institute, 2022 – present.
- Advisory Board, Shakespeare and Social Justice series, Arden Shakespeare, 2021-present.
- Advisory Board, Shakespeare Survey, 2021-present.
- Performance Review Editor (English), Teatro Magazine, 2021-23.
- Editorial Board, Teatro: Revista de Estudios Culturales / A Journal of Cultural Studies, 2021-23.
- Board Member, Expand the Canon Initiative, Hedgepig Theatre Ensemble, 2020-21.
- Governing Council, Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), 2019-21.
- Steering Committee Member, Latinx Theatre Commons, 2017 – present.
Representative Publications/Research Activities:
Books:
Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (open-access), University of Michigan Press, 2023.
Shakespeare and Latinidad. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. Edited with Trevor Boffone.
Digital Public History:
Latinx Shakespeares.Org. Created, built, and manage an online archive of Latinx theatre adaptation.
Representative Recent Essays:
“Documentation,” María Irene Fornés - In Context, eds. Anne García-Romero and Brian Eugenio Herrera, Cambridge UP, 2025. 298-307.
“Ethnic/Ethnicity,” Logomotives: Words That Change the Premodern World, eds. Marjorie Rubright and Stephen Spiess, Edinburgh UP, 2025, 146-55.
“Material Bodies and Object Vitality: Octavio Solis’ Don Quixote and Quixote Nuevo,” The Routledge Companion to Latinx Theatre and Performance, eds. Noe Montez and Olga Sanchez Saltveit. Routledge, 2024. 299-307.
“Casting Shakespeare Today,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 477-489.
“Shakespeare and Race: The Oral Histories,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 30,000 words.
“The Oral Histories: Outtakes,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 1-26. 12,000 words. Available
open access.
“Wrighting Theater History,” Shakespeare Studies, ‘Forum: Shakespearean Second Acts,’ Vol. 52, 2024. 27-36.
“Accruing Gravitas, Or Why There Isn’t a Latino King Lear (Yet),” Shakespeare, Special Edition on Inessential Shakespeare, 2024. 580-95.
“From Metaphor to Metonym: Shakespearean Recognition in the U.S. University,” in Multicultural Shakespeare, Special Edition on ‘The Origins of Shakespeare Studies,’ Vol. 27, No. 42 (2023): 179-94.
“The Aleph and the Space of Shakespeare,” Critical Confessions Now, eds. Abdulhamit Arvas, Afrodesia McCannon, and Kris Trujillo, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
“Octavio Solis,” Fifty Key Figures in LatinX and Latin American Theater, eds. Paola S. Hernández and Analola Santana. Routledge, 2022. 158-162.
Representative Recent Public Work
“Staging Latinx Shakespeares with Dr. Carla Della Gatta,” The Theatre History Podcast , 2024.
“Bilingual Shakespeares as a Pedagogy of Ethics,” Teaching Shakespeare Magazine, Special Edition: “Shakespeare, Race, and Pedagogy,” 2024. 16-17.
“Race and the Classics: An Argument for Empathy,” co-authored with Harvey Young in Theatre Topics Vol. 34, No. 2, July 2024. E11-E14.
“Play as Process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio,” HowlRound, 2023.
“Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet Turns 25,” Shakespeare & Beyond, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2021.
“West Side Story: 60 Years as a Cultural Barometer,” Shakespeare & Beyond, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2021.
“Staging Bilingual Classical Theatre,” HowlRound, 2020.
Representative Fellowships, Grants, and Awards:
- Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) Online Scholarship, Renaissance Society of America, 2023.
- Susan Snyder Fellow, Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 2022-23.
- Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Diversity Grant, 2022.
- First Year Assistant Professor (FYAP) Grant, Florida State University, 2020.
- Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now Citizens and Scholars), 2018-19.
- Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Fellowship, 2018-19.
- The Mellon School of Theater & Performance Research, Harvard University Summer Session, 2018.
- New York Public Library Short Term Fellowship, 2017.
- American Society for Theatre Research Targeted Area Research Award, 2016.
- J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize, Shakespeare Association of America, 2016.