Latin American Plays Read online

  LATIN AMERICAN PLAYS

  New Drama from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico and Peru

  Rappaccini’s Daughter Octavio Paz

  Night of the Assassins José Triana

  Saying Yes Griselda Gambaro

  Orchids in the Moonlight Carlos Fuentes

  Mistress of Desires Mario Vargas Llosa

  Selected, translated and introduced by

  Sebastian Doggart

  THE INTERNATIONAL COLLECTION

  NICK HERN BOOKS

  London

  www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  An Introduction to Latin American Theatre

  by Sebastian Doggart

  Select Bibliography

  RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER

  by Octavio Paz

  Interview with Octavio Paz

  NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS

  by José Triana

  Interview with by José Triana

  SAYING YES

  by Griselda Gambaro

  Interview with Griselda Gambaro

  ORCHIDS IN THE MOONLIGHT

  by Carlos Fuentes

  Interview with Carlos Fuentes

  MISTRESS OF DESIRES

  by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa

  Copyright and Performing Rights Information

  An Introduction to Latin American Theatre

  by Sebastian Doggart

  Latin American theatre is an untapped goldmine for the English-speaking world. While the region’s novels and poetry are widely read and respected, its theatre remains largely unknown. Few Latin American plays are published or produced in English, and these often suffer from unsympathetic translations. School and university courses mostly ignore Latin American theatre and there is a dearth of critical studies on the subject. The main purpose of this book, therefore, is to encourage the reading, study and staging of Latin American drama.

  The book has three sections. First, it presents original translations of five contemporary Latin American plays, which have been prepared in collaboration with the playwrights themselves, and chosen for their high literary and dramatic quality. Although they have specifically ‘Latin American’ features, they retain qualities that give them a universal accessibility. To test this, all five plays were staged in the UK by English-speaking performers, and these productions have yielded fresh insights into the authors’ intentions, which have been incorporated into the translations. The plays’ broad range of styles and subject matter is representative of the rich diversity of drama written since the 1950s. The chosen writers represent four of the most historically vibrant centres of Latin American theatre – Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and Peru – and their work is concerned with many of the issues and patterns that have preoccupied Latin American dramatists for over five centuries. The second section of the book contains interviews with the playwrights, giving the writers a chance to explain to an English-speaking audience the intentions behind their plays, and to reveal some of their literary and personal sources. The third section is this introduction which contextualises the plays through a historical survey of drama in Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and Peru, and then discusses some of the challenges involved in translating and staging Latin American drama in English.

  A Brief History of Latin American Theatre: Pre-1492

  Our knowledge of the pre-Columbian period is very limited. Europeans who discovered indigenous spectacles judged them to be primitively heretical, banned public performances, and destroyed local records. What information we do have comes from Catholic missionaries, whose reports agreed that throughout the region there was theatre in the form of ‘ritual spectacles’, such as Cuban areitos, in which Arawak Indian actors dressed up to enact historical and religious stories using dialogue, music and dance, until they were prohibited by the Spanish colonial administration in 1511. The Aztecs in Mexico used a mixture of dance, music and Nahuatl dialogue to depict the activities of their gods. According to Fray Diego Durán, a Dominican friar, one Aztec festival required a conscripted performer to take on the role of the god Quetzalcoátl. As such, he was worshipped for 40 days, after which, to help Huitzilopochtli, god of daylight, fight the forces of darkness, his heart was removed and offered to the moon. His flayed skin was then worn as the god’s costume by another performer. While the Incas ruled Peru, the Quechua are reported to have performed ritual spectacles involving dance, costumes and music, but probably not dialogue, to purify the earth, bring fertility to women and the soil, and worship ancestral spirits. The Inca Tupac Yupanqui used his warriors to re-enact his son’s victorious defence of the Sacsahuamán fortress above Cuzco against 50,000 invaders.

  The only pre-Columbian ‘script’ to survive the European campaign against indigenous culture, the Rabinal Achí of the Maya-Quiché Indians of Central America, is the story of a Quiché Warrior who is captured after a long war by his sworn enemy the Rabinal Warrior and, when he refuses to bow down to the Rabinal Warrior’s king, is sacrificed. The story was told through sung formal challenges, interspersed with music and dance, with each actor wearing an ornate wooden mask which was so heavy that the actors had to be replaced several times during the performance. The last actor playing the Quiché warrior was sacrificed. The work was preserved through oral tradition, until 1855 when it was recorded in writing by Charles Brasseur, a French priest in the Guatemalan village of Rabinal. It is still performed there every January – omitting the final sacrifice.

  1492-1550

  The arrival of the Spaniards led to a blending, or mestizaje, of local and European influences, which has since become one of the most distinctive features of Latin American theatre. Catholic missionaries identified the theatre as an effective tool for converting the local people to Christianity, and in Mexico, the Franciscans sought to transform the religious beliefs of the Aztecs by learning Nahuatl and studying their rituals and ceremonies. In doing so, they found that Aztec and Christian religions had much in common: the Aztecs associated the cross with Quetzalcoatl, ‘baptised’ newly-born children, ‘confessed’ to the gods when they transgressed, and practised ‘communion’ through the eating of human sacrifices. The Franciscans dramatised such symbols and rituals in the local language, so that the Aztecs would become more open to conversion through identification with the characters.

  Theatrical presentations were usually staged in ‘open chapels’, built on the site of indigenous places of worship, with wooden platforms resembling end-on stages. Mass preceded performances, which were based on local dance and song, and celebrated European religious and secular authority. In the early 1500s, the Church turned to a more effective technique for storytelling and evangelising: a modified version of the Spanish auto sacramental, a one-act religious allegory which was performed on feast days, especially Corpus Christi. Such Indo-Hispanic autos are the first theatrical works to be described legitimately as ‘plays’, in that they were formally scripted. The Catholic missions also put on large-scale productions for mass conversions and to foster new communities revolving around the Church. One of the most spectacular of these events was the Franciscan production of the auto, The Conquest of Rhodes (La Conquista de Rodas, 1543) in the Mexican town of Tenochtitlán, where construction of the set alone required the work of some 50,000 Indians.

  1550-1750

  From the mid-16th century Indo-Hispanic evangelical theatre began to wane as secular authorities wrested influence away from the Catholic missionaries. Radical demographic changes contributed to this: by 1600, the Indian population in Latin America was estimated to be only one tenth of what it had been 100 years earlier. Many immigrants were arriving from Europe, and there was a growing mestizo (part Indian, part European) population whose idea of entertainment was f
ar removed from evangelising theatre in indigenous languages. European influences became dominant. Spanish baroque dramatists like Lopé de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina refined the auto sacramental, and developed two other dramatic forms which they combined with the auto: the loa, a short dramatic prologue in praise of visiting dignitaries or to celebrate royal anniversaries; and the sainete, a musical sketch, inserted between acts, which made fun of local customs or of the auto itself.

  Such innovations encouraged the emergence of Latin American dramatists like Mexican-born Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Peruvian Juan del Valle y Caviedas and the Argentine Antonio Fuentes del Arco whose best-known play, Loa (1717), celebrated the repeal of a tax imposed in Argentina on the importation of the herb mate from Paraguay. Particularly notable is the work of the Mexican nun, poet, intellectual, scientist, and early ‘feminist’ Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She wrote seventeen loas, three autos, two sainetes, and two secular comedies. Formally her theatre fits within the conventions of the Spanish baroque, and her comedies were particularly influenced by Calderón; yet the content of her work shows an independent mind verging on the subversive. For a Mexican woman in a colonial, male-dominated society, it was a remarkable achievement just to have had her plays performed. Her treatment of subject matter and characterisation boldly questioned colonial, religious, and male power. In her secular comedy of errors, The Desires of a Noble House (Los empeños de una casa, c. 1683), for example, she dressed up a male character in women’s clothes to ridicule the way men expected women to assume subservient roles. She also became one of the first Latin American dramatists to confront the scorn shown by the Spaniards for indigenous cultures, particularly in the loa to her auto, The Divine Narcissus (El Divino Narciso, c.1680), where two characters discuss whether such ‘primitive’ culture as Aztec dance and music would be suitable for performance at the Spanish court.

  Sor Juana’s drama is the first example of Latin American ‘autonomous theatre’, which is defined as theatre attempting to establish personal or cultural identity by using dramatic forms to question, ridicule or resist an oppressive status quo, or to celebrate the beliefs and customs of an oppressed culture or social group. The emergence of autonomous theatre coincided with a growing desire for independence from Spain, which was clearly demonstrated in the Mexican and Cuban insurrections of 1692 and 1717; and the concept of the ‘autonomous’ was to play a major role in subsequent Latin American theatre, including the five plays in this volume.

  1750-1900

  The reign of the autos in Latin American theatre came to an abrupt end in 1765 when the Spanish king Charles III banned them for being religiously corrupt. They were largely replaced by European-inspired neoclassical and romantic plays. In general, the use of European forms stunted the development of home-grown Latin American theatre, perpetuating the region’s cultural dependence on the Old World. The Spaniards contributed more positively, however, by implementing a region-wide programme of theatre construction. Their buildings were generally of a classical style, using proscenium arch stages, and were intended to glorify their colonial sponsors. In the early 19th century, the Cuban Governor Tacón set out to build the biggest theatre in Latin America by levying a hefty tax on slaves imported into the island. The eponymous theatre seated 4000 and had 150 boxes.

  This was also the period when much of Latin America gained its independence from Spain: Mexico in 1810, Argentina in 1816, Peru in 1822 and Cuba in 1898. Theatre contributed to and fed off these social and political upheavals, with many plays depicting the Spaniards negatively, especially historical figures like Cortés and Pizarro, while indigenous and local life was celebrated through costumbrismo. Cuban playwrights were probably the most outspoken critics of the Spaniards during the last decades of colonial rule. José María Heredia used classical stories to draw parallels with the corrupt tyranny of Spanish rule. His The Frightened Peasant (El Campesino espantado, 1820) is a one-act sainete about a man from the country abused by the urban colonial authorities, while The Last Romans (Los Ultimos Romanos, 1829) symbolises the decaying Spanish empire. Heredia’s work angered the Cuban authorities so much that he was forced into exile – as was his compatriot José Triana 150 years later.

  Bufo, another example of Cuban autonomous theatre, developed out of the tradition of the sainete and was influenced by the North American minstrel groups that toured the island between 1860 and 1865. Bufo shows had three main characters: the gallego (a white Galician immigrant), the negrito (a white actor with a black face) and the mulata (an Afro-Cuban woman fought over by the two men). They used a distinctive mixture of Spanish, French, English and Yoruba and were often critical of the colonial authorities. At one show in 1869, a bufonero called Jacinto Valdés was bold enough to shout “Viva Céspedes”, the name of a revolutionary leader. Spanish officials reprimanded him, but Valdés defied them by arranging the next show as a special benefit to raise money for Céspedes’ forces. This time, when Valdés incited the audience to chant “Cuba Libre!”, colonial soldiers broke into the theatre and opened fire on the audience, killing many, and forcing Valdés to flee the country. The following day, the newspaper La Patria Libre published Abdala, a one-act dramatic poem by the 16-year-old poet and subsequent political activist José Martí. Abdala tells of a Nubian soldier who, against his mother’s wishes, leaves home to help save his people from invading Arabs, and dies in battle – a tragic prophesy of Martí’s own violent death fighting the Spaniards in 1895. Like Heredia, Martí’s theatre used historical analogy to encourage resistance to colonial rule.

  A key development in the Argentine theatre, meanwhile, was the emergence of the gaucho, the cowboy of the pampas, as a symbol of cultural autonomy. The gaucho fiercely resisted any constraints on his personal freedom, particularly those imposed by the colonial authorities, and then, after Independence, by the urban government. From these seeds grew the teatro gauchesco, epitomised by the theatrical adaptation of Juan Moreira, a popular serialised novel by Eduardo Gutiérrez. The plot is relatively simple: Juan wants a comfortable family life but a provincial official desires his wife. A shopkeeper reneges on a debt to Juan, and is supported by the covetous official. Angry and dishonoured, Juan kills them both and becomes an outlaw. Although he helps the poor and cleverly avoids capture, he is eventually surrounded and killed. Two different productions were staged. The first version, in 1884, had no dialogue and featured a famous Uruguayan clown, José J. Podestá, in the leading role. It was performed in the round as a pantomime, with horses, musicians and dancers. Two years later, Podestá produced another version, also in the circus ring, adding dialogue in the authentic gaucho dialect. It was hugely popular, ran for five years and inspired a host of other gaucho plays, notably Martiniano Leguizamón’s Calandria (1896).

  Just as the teatro gaucho stood for a particular way of life, other Latin American playwrights used costumbrista theatre to celebrate local colour and customs. Mexican audiences applauded the social comedy of its sainetes, while in Peru the playwright Manuel Ascencio Segura caricatured the army in Sergeant Canute (El Sargentin Canuto, 1839) and delighted audiences with his portrait of a Lima matchmaker, Na Catita (1856).

  1900-1920

  Argentina and Uruguay became the hub of Latin American theatre in the early 20th century. Industrialisation was under way and European immigrants flooded into Buenos Aires which saw a population explosion from 187,000 in 1869 to 1.6 million in 1914. Uruguayan-born Florencio Sánchez powerfully portrayed the way urbanisation was changing everyday life. Sánchez shared with his teatro gauchesco predecessors a preoccupation with the conflicts between the individual and society and between urban and rural lives; but he condemned the idealisation of the gaucho. His two most performed plays are La gringa (1904), about a young European immigrant girl’s struggle to survive in the New World, and Down the Gully (Barranca abajo, 1905), a three-act rural tragedy about an old gaucho whose ranch is threatened by legal action from an immigrant city-dweller. His wife and daughters
pester him to allow them to socialise more. When he resists, one daughter starts a relationship with the immigrant. The other, Cordelia-like, remains loyal to him, but when she dies of tuberculosis, the gaucho decides to commit suicide.

  The conflict between immigrants and locals, or creoles, also lay at the heart of new urban sainetes, which explored the social, cultural and linguistic contradictions of life in Buenos Aires. Throughout Latin America the sainete had become established as a genre in its own right, and the urban form had one act and two central characters, the immigrant and the creole, who usually spoke different dialects. The styles ranged from political satire to social caricature and melodrama, and the most successful writers of urban sainetes were Alberto Vacarezza and Nemesio Trejo.

  In Cuba, dramatists were confronting significant political changes. Cuba obtained nominal independence from Spain in 1898, but in 1901 the USA inserted the so-called ‘Platt amendment’ into the Cuban Constitution, authorising US intervention ‘as necessary’. The USA also forced economic dependence on Cuba by monopolising sugar exports for the US market and by securing free access for US capital and goods. One of the plays which gave vent to the growing resentment to US neo-colonialism was Rebel Soul (Alma Rebelde, 1906) by José Antonio Ramos.

  In Mexico, the cosy cultural conservatism of the Porfirio Diaz regime exploded with the revolution of 1910. The only notable theatrical activity in the ensuing civil war was the emergence of political revue, in which performers used local language to satirise the new leaders. The 1917 Mexican Constitution put education high on the social and political agenda, and with it came the promise of theatrical renewal.

  1920-1940

  Conflicting desires to create autonomous Latin American theatre and to yield to the powerful influences of European and US theatre dominated this period. On the one hand, theatres like Teatro Orientación in Mexico and Luis A. Baralt’s Teatro de la Cueva in Cuba staged works by writers like Pirandello, Chekhov, Shaw, O’Neill, Cocteau and Strindberg, European ideas about the role of the director gained widespread acceptance, as did Stanislavski’s acting ‘system’, and theatres throughout the region were relying on imports for technical innovations in staging, lighting and sound. On the other hand, artists and intellectuals throughout the region were searching for national identities and making determined efforts to free themselves from cultural dependence on Europe and the USA. Nationalist sentiment was strongest in Mexico. Like the Catholic missionaries, the new revolutionary rulers saw theatre as an effective tool of mass education. One of the first big state projects was the construction of a 9000-seater open-air theatre which staged Erfrén Orozco Rosales’ aptly titled Liberation (Liberación, 1929), which set out to teach the glorious story of Mexico City from its conquest by the wicked Spaniards to its triumphant salvation through the revolution. The production had a cast of over 1000 performers, echoing the mass evangelical productions of the 16th century. Pleased with the success of the project, the government instigated an incredible two-year construction programme during which some 4000 new theatres were built in both urban and rural areas. Orozco Rosales continued to write strongly nationalist drama which either celebrated the revolution, as in Land and Liberty (Tierra y Libertad, 1933), or extolled the power of the Aztec spirit, such as Creation of the Fifth Sun (Creación del Quinto Sol, 1934), which used a cast of 3000 to tell the story of two Aztec gods who saved the world by throwing themselves into fire in order to create a new sun and moon.