Jose Maria Rodriguez Mendez is a noted playwright, an acerbic cultural critic, and a political dissident under Franco. In Performing Spanishness, the first English-language examination of Mendez’s life and work, Michael Thompson sets the playwright’s lifelong struggle against censorship in the context of Spain’s shifting national identity. Mendez’s work presents Spanishness not as a static trait, but as an ongoing performance; Performing Spanishness is an indispensable resource to those interested in theater, Spain, and the relationship between art and activism.