Olga Celda Real

Educational background

Licenciada in Performing Arts (Dramaturgy) (ESAD, University of Valencia); BA Hons. Drama (University of Manchester); MA in Performance and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Goldsmiths College). PhD in Spanish Cultural Studies (King’s College London).

Diploma Stage Manager (Opera) Teatres de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain)

PGCAP (Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice) King's College London

Professional background

Olga Celda worked in several theatre and opera productions in Spain since 1989, collaborating either as a producer or as stage manager in independent and institutionally funded productions and co-productions with  La Comédie Française, Glyndebourne Opera (with the Teatro La Zarzuela of Marid), Teatres de la Generalitat Valenciana and Teatro La Pavana of Valencia. Her theatrical experience in Spain also incorporates repertoire, street theatre performance, contemporany dance and 'happenings'.

She has  worked extensively as research assistant, here and in Spain, liaising with cultural and academic institutions and individuals;  also worked for relevant cultural events at Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Manchester's Greenroom in collaboration with Manchester Cervantes Institute.

In 1992 Olga was contractor for all the Valencia city theatres' entries for Teatres de la Comunitat Valenciana, published by the Generalidad Valenciana. In the same year, Olga was a shorlisted candidate of the poetry competition for the Bienale de Valencia. Her selection of poems "Palabras de desamor en un bar de provincias" was published by the Generalitat Valenciana and Departament de les Arts's  Collection El Bosque de Birman.

In 1993, she was Movement Director for the Manchester Youth Theatre with the new play Whale by David Holman, produced at Manchester’s Greenroom and was a main collaborator during the I Festival de Teatro Español in Manchester (OLA) in 1994.

In 1998, Olga was Mentor Dramaturg for emerging Spanish playwrights at the Colours of the Chameleon Festival at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. The following year, she was Curator of the new writing project SLICES, directing  eight short new plays (by English and Dutch playwrights) for the East End Collaboration Festival, a festival of Live Arts hosted and organised by Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London. Olga  also coordinated and run the Drama Programme at Marymount College London, part  of Marymount College, Tarrytown (NY),Fordham University (USA), for American undergraduate students for two academic years (1998-2000).

Her translation work encompasses the catalogue for the Spanish Film Festival! VIVA! at Manchester’s Cornerhouse (1995-1999) and the Catalan texts  'Bach, Bach’  by Carles Santos for the Edinburgh Festival (1998). She  has also translated García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba for the Shared Experiences’ co-production with the Royal Court Theatre (1998) directed by Polly Teale;  García Lorca’s Yerma  for the Theatre of Chipping Norton’s production directed by Biyi Bandela (1999) and was translator and Literary Manager for the play The Inmates at the Convent of Saint Mary Egyptian by José Martín Recuerda directed by Viv Gardner, a co-production by the University of Manchester, Manchester’s Greenroom and Manchester’s Cervantes Institute (1998).  In the same year, she also translated the whole version of the Baccalaureate text for Drama in the UK (Spanish to English).

In 2010 Olga was a member of the Organizing Committee  for the I Congrés sobre la dramatúrgia europea. ‘El teatre en l’espai europeu, un altre debat imprescindible’ at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània OCTUBRE  in  Valencia (Spain). During the conference, she  chaired the contributions of important figures in  English drama and organised the commission of two new short plays by playwrights David Edgar and Stella Feehily; plays she subsequently translated for performance. In 2018 Olga won at King's College London the Von Schlippenbach Prize for Outstanding Achivement.

Participation in departamental seminars

 SPLAS Postgraduate Research Seminars Coordinator (2010-  )

Thesis title

An Ignored Dramatic Genre: The Contribution of the Sainet to the Making of Valencian Cultural Capital (1845-1939)

Summary of  Research Project

 Olga Celda’s research focuses on how theatrical languages – both performative and linguistic- functioned in Valencia and examines why their exercise and evolution contributed to the making of notions of identity in Valencian audiences. Structured in chronological historical order from 1845 up to the end of the Civil War in 1939,  the research explores the issue of identity from a contextual and textual perspective, taking as starting point the cultural explosion of the Valencian Renaixença occurring in the second half of the nineteenth century, exploring in detail the process and evolution of the Valencian idiom in its phonetical form in the theatrical arena  and the fundamental role of the culturally devaluated sainet valensià  in the making of Valencian identity. Linking the factors of polyglossia and code-switching in Valencian chronotope, the research approaches the question of performance practice in Valencia during the years encompassed in this study and analyses how the Valencian language and its extraordinary Valencian idiom  produced an unique dramatic genre (Sainet) with no previous referent. Employed by playwrights, enacted by theatre practitioners and understood by a diverse set of audiences with different needs and practices, these plays written in Valensiá constituted a fundamental part of Valencia's social, cultural and political capital. The corpus of  the thesis identifies the ways in which the use of this unique and specific vernacular (Valensiá) crafted an unequivocal performative language via the dramatic genre of the sainet and reasons why the cultural referent manufactured by this specific offer allowed an audience to recognize and absorb distinctive identity traits. 

Areas of interest: Valencian drama and theatre, Valencian idiom (Valensiá),the sainet Valensiá, Valencian language (Valencià), Semiotics, Performativity, Cultural Violence,Cultural Capital, Nationalism, Notions of Identity, Memory, Spanish Civil War, Theatre and drama during Franco’s dictatorship, Censorship and the role of the Censor, Text and Performance, Female Body Representation in Spain and the Falange Española Femenina.