Electra Garrigó: Ancient Echoes, Cuban Voices

GRITA! (Greeks & Romans in the Americas) will host its inaugural event on April 24th, celebrating the vibrant interaction between the ancient world and modern Latin American and Caribbean theater. Please join us for a staged reading of Virgilio Piñera’s Electra Garrigó (1948), adapted and directed by Cuban director Leyma López in a new English translation by Kate Eaton, followed by a discussion moderated by Rosa Andújar.

A cornerstone of modern Latin American theater, Electra Garrigó is a foundational work of twentieth‑century Cuban drama and a powerful example of how ancient Greek drama has been transformed to speak to the sociopolitical realities of Latin America.

Accessibility
The LeFrak Theatre is located on the lower level of the Francine A LeFrak Foundation Center in Barnard Hall.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

About the Speakers
Leyma López is a Cuban-American theater director based in New York City. A graduate of the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, she founded Teatro Columna in 2014. As Resident Director at Repertorio Español, Leyma has directed numerous acclaimed productions, including Aire Frío, Valor, agravio y mujer, La Celestina, La paz perpetua, Filomena Marturano, and La dama boba. Her work has also been featured at Pregones/PRTT Theater, Teatro Círculo, and ID Studio Theater. Leyma's direction has earned her recognition and awards, such as Best Direction at the Latinx LGBTQ Art Festival/Fuerza-Fest in 2018 for El Gos, and honors from institutions like HOLA, ACE, and TALÍA.

Rosa Andújar is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard. Her research addresses ancient Greek drama and its modern global reception, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as among Latinx communities in the US. She is the author of Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025) and the editor of The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro (Methuen Drama, 2020), which won the 2020 London Hellenic Prize. She is currently completing a second monograph entitled Tragedy and Revolución: Ancient Greek Drama as Political Theater in the Hispanic Caribbean, which is under contract with Yale University Press. She joined Barnard in January 2026.

Kate Eaton is a UK-based literary translator, theatre practitioner and researcher. She has been a member of the Ibero-American theatre and translation collective, Out of the Wings, since 2016, and has translated a wide variety of plays from Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain amongst other countries, including multiple works by the renowned twentieth-century Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera. She holds an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in Collaborative Translation Practices and Cuban Theatre from Queen Mary, University of London. She participated as a translator on the 2022-24 Royal Court-Autonomous University of Mexico new playwriting project, and is currently co editing an anthology of Cuban and diasporic adaptations of Ancient Greek theatre.
Sponsored by:
Barnard College Classics Department, Columbia University Classics Department, Arts and Sciences Graduate Council at Columbia University.
Picture: Mariano Rodríguez (Cuba), Woman and Rooster, 1942.

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