Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World 9781138223301, 9781315405100

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Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World

Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World explores the discourses that have linked theatre and dictatorial regimes across Spain, Portugal and their former colonies. These are divided into three different approaches to theatre itself – as cultural practice, as performance, and as textual artefact – addressing topics including obedience, resistance, authoritarian policies, theatre business, exile, violence, memory, trauma, nationalism, and postcolonialism. This book draws together a diverse range of methodological approaches to foreground the effects and constraints of dictatorship on theatrical expression and how theatre responds to these impositions. Diego Santos Sánchez is a researcher at the Universidad de Alcalá, Spain.

Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre–Performance-Studies/ book-series/RATPS

Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre Translation, Performance, Politics Edited by Sirkku Aaltonen, Areeg Ibrahim Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights Making the Radical Palatable Jacob Juntunen Global Insights on Theatre Censorship Edited by Catherine O’Leary, Diego Santos Sánchez, Michael Thompson Performance and the Politics of Space Theatre and Topology Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte, Benjamin Wihstutz Adapting Chekhov The Text and its Mutations Edited by J. Douglas Clayton, Yana Meerzon Food and Theatre on the World Stage Edited by Dorothy Chansky, Ann Folino White Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance Meetings with Remarkable Women Virginie Magnat Art, Vision, and Nineteenth-Century Realist Drama Acts of Seeing Amy Holzapfel Performance and Phenomenology Traditions and Transformations Edited by Maaike Bleeker, Jon Foley Sherman, Eirini Nedelkopoulou Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theatre Edited by Ronda Arab, Michelle Dowd, Adam Zucker

Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World

Edited by Diego Santos Sánchez

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Diego Santos Sánchez; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the Diego Santos Sánchez to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 9781138223301 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315405100 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to my mother. A mi madre. I would like to express my sincere and wholehearted gratitude to María Teresa Vera Rojas, David RodríguezSolás, Magdalena López and Graciela Foglia for their careful reading of my Introduction to this volume and for their insightful suggestions: gracias. I am also very thankful to all the contributors to this volume, who enthusiastically embarked on this project and made it possible with their illuminating essays. I would also like to thank Michael P. Thompson for his comments on the book proposal at the initial stage of this project. And last, but in no way least, I sincerely thank Ursula Meany Scott for her patient, devoted and meticulous editing of my English. This work has been made possible thanks to the support of the Vicerectorate for Research at the Universidad de Alcalá. Este trabajo ha sido posible gracias al apoyo del Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universidad de Alcalá.

Contents

1 Weaving the Luso-Hispanic fabric: an entangled world of dictatorial constraints and theatrical responses

1

D IE GO S AN TO S SÁN CHEZ

PART I

Policies/Practices 2 Theatre censorship and foreign drama in Estado Novo Portugal during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War

43

45

Z S Ó F IA GO M B Á R

3 Censorship on the Brazilian scene: the “distribution of the sensible” and art as a political force

58

M ARIA CRIS T IN A CAS T I L HO CO STA AN D WALT E R D E SOUSA JUNIOR

4 José Tamayo: foreign policy and cultural opportunism

71

CARE Y K AS T E N

5 Galician independent theatre: a breach in Franco’s dictatorship

86

CIL H A L O URE N ÇO MÓ DI A

6 The aftermath of dictatorship in contemporary Basque theatre

99

ARAN T Z AZ U FERN ÁN DEZ I GL ES I AS

PART II

Performance 7 Are all tyrannies the same? Rebellion against Spanish oppression as a re-enactment of resistance to totalitarianism in Marcos’ Philippines RO C Í O O RT UÑO CASAN OVA

109

111

viii

Contents

8 Puppet theatre as response to dictatorship in Catalonia and Chile

126

CARIAD AS TL ES

9 Dagoll Dagom’s No hablaré en clase, a postdramatic response to Francoism

140

DAV ID RO D R Í GUEZ- S O L ÁS

10 The politics of community and place in o bando’s Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso!

155

VAN E S S A S ILVA P EREI RA

PART III

Texts

171

11 Bridging literary traditions in the Hispanic world: Equatorial Guinean drama and the dictatorial cultural-political order

173

E L IS A RIZ O

12 Soldiers without orders, actors without stages: Carlos Manuel Varela’s Interrogatorio en Elsinore and Bosco Brasil’s Novas diretrizes em tempos de paz

188

K AT YA S O L L

13 Complicitous acts in Argentina’s theatre: La nona and De a uno

200

ARIE L S T RICHART Z

14 Paraguay between dictatorships: El Edificio, an unknown play by Josefina Plá

214

YAS M IN A YO US F I L Ó P EZ

15 Negotiating sexuality and censorship in Las sábanas by José Corrales

231

L O URD E S B ETAN ZO S

16 Appropriating the past under Somoza and the Sandinistas: the polyvalent sign of El Güegüence

245

E . J. W E S T L A KE

Index

261

1

Weaving the Luso-Hispanic fabric An entangled world of dictatorial constraints and theatrical responses Diego Santos Sánchez

The goal of this introductory chapter, and by extension, this volume, is twofold. Firstly, it aims to understand the Luso-Hispanic world and thereby lend it theoretical sense – a prerequisite for the second goal of addressing how dictatorship constrained theatre across the Luso-Hispanic world during the 20th century, and how theatre reacted to these constraints. To this end, this chapter is presented in three sections, each corresponding to one of the three notions that inform this volume: the Luso-Hispanic world, dictatorship and theatre. First, the idea of the Luso-Hispanic world is theoretically defined in the light of colonial history and global South discourses before a working definition of it is offered. The second section briefly discusses dictatorship and argues that the shared experience of having lived under such regimes further weaves the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. This section also provides brief accounts of the dictatorships mentioned in the volume. In the third section the entanglements between theatre and dictatorship are classified on three epistemological levels, which are discussed in and illustrated by the volume’s case studies. The short final section concludes by proposing an intertwined reading of these entanglements across the region and contends that this interconnectedness metaphorically strengthens the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world.

Mapping the Luso-Hispanic world: from cartography to academia The label Luso-Hispanic is frequently applied at the organisational level of academia. Anglo-Saxon universities have led this practice of merging the study of the languages and literatures of Iberia and its former colonies into single university departments. These combined Spanish and Portuguese departments encompass the languages, literatures and cultures of Spain, Portugal and Latin America. While there are departments with broader scopes (to include former Asian and African colonies) as well as narrower (Latin American Studies), the vast majority of such academic units across Britain and the United States have conveniently brought together the study of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking literatures and cultures. This organizational phenomenon responds to the fact that Spanish- and Portuguese-language cultures are kin and share deep cultural

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ties. However, this approach does not go unchallenged. The resulting departments are built upon the juxtaposition of areas of study – which also happen to be juxtaposed geographically – rather than necessarily providing a single, coherent methodological understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world as a whole. The growing tendency to amalgamate departments in this way has resulted in an outstanding array of academic initiatives, including a variety of journals and conferences. These, like the previously mentioned departments, understand the term Luso-Hispanic as an all-encompassing label under which research on distinct national traditions is smoothly accommodated. However, this label has so far been used only in an organisational, but not necessarily epistemological way. Albeit in a somewhat different manner, scholarly works in this field reveal some of the same issues. While Kern and Dolkart’s volume on caciquismo (1973) is the first work to include the phrase Luso-Hispanic World in its title, consolidation of the term in research volumes is rather recent. The term Luso-Hispanic is usually understood as the corpus that allows us to reflect upon diverse topics such as race, colonialism (Branche 2006) and female writing (Blanco 2016), among others. Works that adopt a comparative approach of this region without necessarily labelling it Luso-Hispanic are also thriving (Fiddian 2002; López et al. 2014). In many of these recent works, especially edited volumes, the LusoHispanic notion mostly serves as a spatial parameter: everything falling within these geographical limits can therefore be labelled Luso-Hispanic. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, the first Google result for the term is, at the time of going to print, a series of maps of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires,1 which strongly reinforces this merely cartographic understanding of the notion of the Luso-Hispanic world. Maps juxtapose territories in the same way that umbrella conferences and edited volumes bring together heterogeneous works on the cultural traditions settled in these territories. While geography is central to any attempt at concocting the idea of a world, in the case of the Luso-Hispanic world, this has been the almost exclusive approach. The term has traditionally lacked an epistemological rationale that would have allowed for the idea of a cultural entity. Steps towards the formation of a cultural unity have been taken quite successfully, as will be discussed later, in the case of Iberia or Latin America for example, but the idea has been virtually nonexistent when it comes to the Luso-Hispanic world as a whole. However, recent works are endowing the term Luso-Hispanic with this new layer that allows it to behave not only as a spatial scope (what happens within its territories), but also as subject matter (what happens throughout its territories). Previous collections of unconnected works on Bolivia, Portugal, Catalonia, the Philippines, Brazil and Mozambique, to name but a few, have paved the way for deeper reflection on transnational phenomena across these regions. This suggests that the merely geographical juxtaposition of territories (scope) is now beginning to be perceived as a unity based upon a series of historical and cultural ties (subject matter). Geographically, the Luso-Hispanic world is composed of a discontinuous set of territories with two main nuclei – the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America – and a series of scattered locations throughout Asia and Africa. These include

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countries and regions that are very diverse both geographically, since they span four continents, and politically, given that they include former metropolises and colonies, sovereign states and stateless nations. Moreover, the Spanish and Portuguese languages coexist with many other languages and cultures throughout these locations and therefore play very different roles, both administratively and culturally, across the region. This informs a world of great diversity that implies theoretical challenges. In order to set the foundations of the Luso-Hispanic world it becomes mandatory to closely consider each of its three main blocks – the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America and African/Asian locations – and understand how they have translated into academic disciplines. These will, in turn, pave the way for the very notion of the Luso-Hispanic world as unitary scholarly subject matter. Spain and Portugal are neighbouring countries with a very close linguistic proximity, which was best exemplified by canonical authors such as Gil Vicente and even Camões, who wrote both in Spanish and Portuguese. The two countries share a common space, that of Iberia, a peninsula cut off from the European continent by the Pyrenees, facing the Atlantic and separated from Africa by only a few miles. This peripheral and to some extent isolated location has been a significant factor in the history of the two countries, and has allowed for their remarkable singularity within Europe. The first episode of this cultural detachment from the continent was the 711 Muslim Conquest that would determine Iberia’s Middle Ages: while the Crusades in the Holy Land became a panEuropean endeavour, Iberian kingdoms were focused on their own Reconquista. Coincidentally, the last Moors were expelled from Granada as Columbus landed in America in 1492. Interestingly, during the Early Modern era, the two countries merged for a number of decades (1580–1640). However, the most remarkable aspect of this period is the colonial mission on which Spain (then Castile) and Portugal embarked, and which would determine that for an extensive length of time the attention of both countries would be focused more on the Atlantic than on Europe. The two resulting global empires collapsed after centuries of splendour to leave two impoverished countries. In the wake of this collapse, Spain and Portugal would continue to share some distinctive features during the 20th century: neither of them participated in Europe’s worst debacle – World War II – nor did they see their fascist-inspired dictators ousted after the Allies’ victory. The ensuing decades-long dictatorships in Spain and Portugal were unique in Western Europe and determined both countries’ isolation from the rest of the continent. Their 1986 joint entry into the EU put an end to this historic displacement and brought the Iberian countries definitively into Europe. These many similarities have sparked academic interest that has developed into the thriving discipline of Iberian Studies. Although it has gained momentum over the last number of years, especially in Europe, Iberian Studies is an epistemic proposal whose origin dates back to 19th-century Iberian nationalism (Resina 2013; Pérez Isasi 2014; Rocamora 1994; Sardica 2013). Romanticism-era Iberianism translated into an understanding of the Iberian Peninsula as a single cultural entity, both from abroad – as Europeans turned their romantic gaze upon

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the two exoticised countries – and domestically – as local intellectuals fostered dialogue between Iberian literatures and advocated for the joint study of the literatures of Spain and Portugal (Pérez Isasi 2012, 2014). During that period of national awareness, a culturally prosperous Catalonia undergoing its Renaixença (rebirth) swiftly assumed the leading role of this entrepreneurship (Harrington 2010), which counterbalanced Castilian-led Spain by adding Portugal to the equation. This project shaped a cultural triangle with vertices in Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, and allowed for full recognition of non-Castilian Spanish literatures and cultures (including Basque and Galician). While Franco’s denial of vernacular languages in Spain signified a long hiatus for the project during almost 40 years (Mainer 2010), recent acknowledgement of Spain as multi-national has paved the way for 21st-century Iberian Studies. Today’s thriving discipline accounts for a solidly established discourse on Iberia as an academic object of study, as attested by the increasing number of associations and research groups across the world. Following Area Studies’ multidisciplinary approach, the thriving development of Iberian Studies has resulted in a profusion of literature spanning from socio-political studies (Ortiz Griffin 2003) to literary and cultural studies (Araújo 2004; Buffery 2007; Ribeiro and O’Leary 2011; Fernandes and Pérez Isasi 2013). While some of these works propose independent chapters on Spain and Portugal and fail to provide a true transnational discourse, others are setting the theoretical foundations of the discipline (Resina 2009, 2013; Winter 2013; Feldman 2010) and offering a new critical paradigm that problematises the notions of state and nation and questions the compartmentalisation of literatures and cultures. Under these transnational and trans-state lenses, the Iberian Peninsula is no longer seen as a mere juxtaposition of states/nations/cultural domains, but rather “as a specific field of knowledge which encompasses a wide set of literary, artistic and cultural phenomena that can neither be properly understood or explained from a national perspective” (Pérez Isasi 2013: 11). This transnational approach goes beyond national/linguistic boundaries and understands Iberia as a (macro) polysystem (Even-Zohar 1990), i.e. as a group of cultures historically interconnected and subject to interference streams (Casas 2003). By adopting this approach, Iberian Studies offers a theoretical response to the obsolete trend of addressing Literary Studies from a state-centred perspective, which has traditionally overlooked the close ties between Spain and Portugal. Consequently, Iberian Studies redresses a situation that had traditionally disdained non-hegemonic national literary traditions, like that of Catalonia. While Catalan, Galician and Basque Studies are thriving and enjoy full academic recognition per se, Iberian Studies provides a context in which they can be considered jointly and together with Spanish Studies, thus fleshing out, in academic discourse, the understanding of Spain as a multi-national country. This is best addressed in the Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula, which departs “from a historical recognition of the Iberian Peninsula as a supranational whole perceived as a possible community,” and seeks to “question the foundations of national literatures” by not confining them to state boundaries (Cabo et al. 2010: xii). This is in line

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with the preceding argument: there is an epistemological twist that transforms mere charts into subject matter. Iberia’s ventures into the Americas resulted in Spain and Portugal becoming colonial superpowers. The vast number of former colonies left behind by these endeavours make up the second block of the Luso-Hispanic world – Latin America. In this case, cartography has also translated into academia thanks to the solid discipline of Latin American Studies. However, this field has not been exempt from theoretical controversy stemming from the intertwined, multi-lingual and colonial past of the region. The mere naming of the region is problematic, especially in common language, where different labels denoting different realities seem to be somewhat interchangeable. The most widespread term is Latin America, which was firstly coined in 1836 in Europe and, in the wake of Martí’s work, swiftly adopted a non-Saxon nuance vis-à-vis North America. Despite the term’s wide acceptance both in common language and academia to refer to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking America, it does not go unchallenged. Firstly, it renders non-Spanish-speaking communities, such as Quechua, subaltern by imposing a Latin identity on them. Secondly, it sometimes includes French-speaking territories due to the Latin filiation of French. Thirdly, it excludes significant English-speaking parts of the Caribbean, which are deeply connected with the Spanish-speaking areas. This has resulted in the more inclusive phrase of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has found political expression in institutions such as CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), and even includes Dutch-speaking Suriname, to cover the whole geographic region. A more restrictive alternative to this wide understanding of Latin America, the term Ibero-America is, in principle, an adequate label for the former Iberian colonies and contemporary Spanish- and Portuguesespeaking territories in the Americas. This definition, however, is also commonly used to include Spain and Portugal as well, as happens in the OIE (Organization of Ibero-American States). This renders it useless for our purposes. How to refer, then, to former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas? Despite the preceding arguments, Latin America has, both in the public imagination and international media, come to denote precisely this, i.e. the combination of two blocks: on the one hand Brazil, the South American giant and global actor, and on the other hand, what is usually referred to as Spanish America in the Anglo-Saxon world and Hispanoamérica in Spain, i.e. Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. This understanding of Latin America excludes neighbouring former French, British or Dutch colonies and puts the focus on territories previously subject to Spanish and Portuguese rule. This use of the term Latin America is not based upon languages – despite being predominant, Spanish and Portuguese coexist with indigenous languages that in some territories hold official status – nor upon political status quo – the status of Puerto Rico differing from that of the other countries mentioned. Instead it refers to the particular cartography resulting from an area that was previously

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colonised by Spain and Portugal, and later turned into an object of study for an academic discipline – that of Latin American Studies. The main criterion behind the rationale for using this term is therefore neither linguistic nor political – rather it refers to a shared history that has resulted, in the present, in a shared culture. Thus Latin America encompasses former Spanish and Portuguese colonies regardless of their current political or linguistic idiosyncrasy. This book adheres to this more restricted understanding of the term. Central to this term is Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power. The setting of a colonial society in the Americas led to a social-racial classification resulting in two groups: on the one hand the white rulers and, on the other, a heterogeneous group of new subjectivities conceived of as a continuum, which included, as labelled by Europeans, mestizo, Indian and black groups. Following independence in the 19th century, this hierarchy imposed a relentless Eurocentrism by which rulers of Latin America were much more likely to identify their interests with those of Europe than with those of their subalterns (Quijano 1998: 231–233). Within the cultural domain, this translated into the simulation of the other (Iberian) and the shame of the self (native, black). This translated in turn into the dichotomy of civilisation/barbarianism and resulted in Latin America’s century-long cultural dependency upon their metropolises: Spain and Portugal. Given that a local population made up of non-white subalterns was deemed insufficient, “people wrote as if their ideal public was in Europe and thus often dissociated themselves from their own land,” resulting in “exercises of mere cultural alienation” (Cândido 2004: 43). This dependency on metropolitan values determined, among other things, the literature in the region until the 20th century. Yet besides the implications this had for cultural development at a national level, it also hindered the construction of a unified Latin America. However, following Bolívar’s initial attempts to forge a shared identity across former Spanish colonies, José Martí’s Nuestra América (1891) marked a turning point in the shaping of a unified Spanish-speaking America, calling for integration vis-à-vis an imperial otherness that was no longer in Spain but in the United States. Despite this remarkable progress in the drive for cultural unification, dialogue between Spanish America and Brazil has not always been duly implemented. Drawing upon the historical construction of the Latin American literary system, Schwartz (1993) presents the shortcomings in the shaping of the region as a real cultural (literary) entity: the cultural disconnection between Spanish America and Brazil and the latter’s problematic inclusion in this understanding of Latin America. To solve this, Schwartz advocates for the fall of the Tordesillas wall, alluding to the treaty between Castile and Portugal in which it was decided to split the New World into two areas of influence that would later result in Spanish America and Brazil. More recent literature discussing the cultural integration of Latin America still refers to Brazil as a problem and advocates for “an academic approach that calls for sustained comparative analysis of literary and cultural actors, artefacts, and discourses originating in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking areas” (Newcomb 2012: 2).

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Departing from Martí’s overcoming of the civilisation/barbarianism dichotomy, with the 20th century came official recognition of both the re-appropriating, hybrid cultural practices and the subversion of European symbols. This kicked off Latin America’s gradual detachment from foreign, metropolitan influence in order to forge its own identity, thus giving greater weight to transnational dialogue within the region, including ties with Brazil. From 1959, initiatives such as Casa de las Américas made a solid contribution to this endeavour by raising Latin America’s voice as a single cry against imperialism during the second part of the 20th century. Similar institutional projects such as the more recent São Paulo Memorial da América Latina (1989) have only reinforced this shaping of a culturally unified Latin America. Consequently, this led to a thriving academic discipline that focuses on Latin America not only as a mere geographical scope, but as a subject matter, thus allowing for the transit from cartography to academia: Latin American (Cultural) Studies. This discipline has challenged metropolitan epistemic hegemony and shaped new discourses to understand Latin America, from Fernando Ortiz’ transculturation (1940) to Cornejo Polar’s conflictive heterogeneity and García Canclini’s hybrid cultures (1989) amongst others. Today, Latin American Studies is a momentous academic discipline that can be mostly epitomised by LASA, the Latin American Studies Association, which gathers numerous scholars from around the world to reflect upon Latin American identity and untangle the contradictions of what Latin America is today. Whether Latin America can be addressed within Postcolonial Studies is a complex question. This discipline usually deals with African and Asian nations undergoing their decolonisation after World War II, meaning that “major Readers and discussions on postcolonial studies barely take Latin America into account” (Coronil 2004: 226). Latin American countries are therefore considered as “old postcolonial nations” (Coronil 2004: 223), as they gained their independence during the 19th century and can then, from this point of view, be compared to the United States. However, in the era of international capitalism, the latter has played a key role in the economic, political and social development of the former, placing Latin America in a position of subalternity in the neo-imperialistic dynamics of today’s world. So the inclusion of Latin America in Postcolonial Studies is subject to theoretical controversy, because it would also require a widening of both the geographical and temporal scopes of the discipline. However, this inclusion would also reveal “the links between the development of modern colonialism by Northern European powers and its foundation in the colonisation of the Americas by Spain and Portugal” (Coronil 2004: 239). Therefore, the urge to link these old and new former colonies – Latin America and Luso-Hispanic territories in Africa and Asia – becomes crucial in the weaving of the Luso-Hispanic world within the context of Postcolonial Studies’ shift from a historical category into an ideological one (Lazarus 2004: 2–4). To achieve this, new epistemologies that question the West as the locus of enunciation are required. While Subaltern Studies could have been an operative option, the emerging discipline of Global South Studies will be used, as described later, to articulate this bridging.

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The third block of countries informing the Luso-Hispanic World belong to these new former colonies: African and Asian nations that gained their independence from Portugal and Spain more recently. This list of countries includes Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor2 on the one hand, and the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea, on the other. These countries have current cultural links with the rest of the LusoHispanic world, though to a lesser degree than those between Latin America and Iberia. There are various reasons for this, the first of which is language. Portuguese and Spanish were never as widespread in these countries as they were in Latin America. Consequently, they coexist today with local languages and their relevance varies greatly throughout the region. Secondly, Spanish and Portuguese are not in close proximity, as they are in Iberia and Latin America. This results in a reduced awareness of the kinship of these languages and cultures and, consequently, in a weakened consciousness of any cultural ties between countries such as Angola and the Philippines. Thirdly, these countries are scattered throughout the world, the geographical discontinuity undermining any notion of belonging to the Luso-Hispanic world, which is sometimes secondary to the links established with African and Asian neighbours. However, there is a sense of belonging to the Luso-Hispanic world, although it varies dramatically between the two groups of countries. Portuguese speakers have a deeply rooted notion of the lusofonia, mostly embodied in the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (Community of Portuguese Language Countries). This forum for cultural cooperation between countries where Portuguese is an official language does in fact represent a multi-centred world the majority of whose members are located outside Europe and America. The situation in the Spanish-speaking world is dramatically different, as a vastly broad and populated Spanish-speaking Latin America acts unarguably as a centre, while Spain still holds a genuine status within this context. This situation consequently leaves the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea right in the margins, their presence in the collective mind of the Spanish-speaking world being minimal. Although there exists an Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (Association for Spanish Language Academia), where the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea have their own corresponding academias, the implications of this organisation do not even come close to those of the CPLP, as it deals exclusively with language. In addition, Equatorial Guinea has only been participating in this since 2016. The cultural isolation of this country may well be the reason behind Guinea’s seeking acceptance in other international institutions such as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (1989) and the previously mentioned CPLP (2014). The study of these cultures clearly falls under the heading of Postcolonial Studies given that this discipline deals with African and Asian nations that seceded from Western powers mostly in the second half of the 20th century. In addition, Said’s foundational notion of the Orient (1978) can be unequivocally applied to these countries. However, there are differences in how the discipline deals with the Spanish- and the Portuguese-speaking worlds that echo the previously mentioned differing status quo of shared cultural identities within the two areas.

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While Portuguese-speaking literature enjoys a long tradition of joint study resulting in well-established research groups and a vast bibliography, the attention paid to Spanish-language literature in Africa and Asia has been minimal and is limited to the work of scarce individual scholars. Awareness of this scarcity has been growing in recent years and attempts to redress this situation have been put forward. Initiatives in this line include, among others, the creation of an encompassing website devoted to the Spanish-speaking literature of the Philippines.3 There is, however, much work to be carried out in order to attain the degree of integration that English-, French- and Portuguese-language literatures of Asia and Africa enjoy, both in the canon of these languages and in Postcolonial Studies generally. Recent moves in the academic domain advocate for the need to integrate the study of these Luso-Hispanic nations with that of Latin America. The term global South has been gaining momentum within Postcolonial Studies since the beginning of the 2010s and taking over the notion of third world to propose a new and more dynamic network of countries, usually referred to as developing, in the Southern hemisphere across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Growing South-to-South political and economic cooperation based upon mutual benefit and solidarity has become pivotal in the 21st-century multi-centred world. While global South countries generally share a history of colonialism, current neo-imperialism is of greater importance in the shared identity of these countries. Hence, the connection between African/Asian Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries with Latin America is to a degree logical. The former may seek advice from the latter regarding emancipation from the ruling power, reconstruction of a national culture after colonialism and creation of a new future. Additionally, mutual cooperation also proves critical in confronting rampant neo-imperialism. However, these motivations are by no means new and may well have been the basis for the Tricontinental Conference of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America held in Havana in 1966, which can arguably be considered the founding moment of postcolonial thought (Coronil 2004: 228), but which also laid the foundations of the global South. Revolutionary and anti-imperialist Cuba, described as an “admirable vanguard of the Americas in the fight against underdevelopment and its causes” (Cândido 2004: 51), was certainly involved in the fight for freedom within the Luso-Hispanic world and played a key role in the guerras coloniais (Colonial Wars) that led to the independence of former Portuguese nations in Africa. This episode epitomised and initiated South-to-South cooperation and, at the same time, shed light on how central this is to the notion of the Luso-Hispanic world: a country from the Spanish-speaking Americas taking the situation of Portuguese oppression in Africa as its own. Growing ties between global South countries have also found translation within academia beyond Postcolonial Studies. This is well exemplified by a growing number of publications in recent years (Levander and Mignolo 2011) and is probably epitomised by the 2014 inception of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) at the University of Cologne (Germany). By taking into consideration

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new criteria beyond the fact of having a colonial past, Global South Studies overcomes the polemical inclusion of Latin America in Postcolonial Studies and allows for a new corpus of study in which the region dialogues with Africa and Asia as global actors in a multi-centred world. This has resulted in recent publications concentrating on South-to-South intercultural dialogues within a frame labelled, accordingly, as Luso-Hispanic world. Initiatives such as Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World stand out within this context in two ways. Firstly, by merely acknowledging the existence of a LusoHispanic world and fostering the study of “‘South-to-South’ dynamics between formerly colonized peoples”. Secondly, by decentring its interests and focusing on the peripheral, a crucial effort is made towards “disrupting the traditional centerperiphery dichotomy, thus bringing about multiple and interchangeable centers and peripheries, whose cultures interact with one another without the mediation of the European and North American metropolitan centers”.4 This renders the notion of horizontality central to the Luso-Hispanic world. The term Luso-Hispanic appears then as a logical consequence of research on the links between Latin America and other former colonies and, in this sense, provides a framework within which Latin American Studies and Postcolonial Studies converge. Indeed, the term departs from and overcomes Postcolonial Studies’ shortcomings by tying Latin America to other former colonies by means of global South discourses. Hence, the Luso-Hispanic world is here understood as a transnational network of cultures with a shared colonial past which, however, eschews referring to Iberia in any sort of centripetal flow. On the contrary, South-to-South dialogue is fostered as a way to un-think Eurocentrism and build new cultural identities that are not modelled upon Western canons. Following in this vein, recent research has put special attention on the links between the Luso-Hispanic World and the Orient (López Calvo 2012; Tinajero 2014), for instance. Further initiatives may include thriving work on the so-called black Atlantic, which, albeit originally conceived as an Anglo-Saxon axis, has been developed to also link Afro-Latin Americans with the Hispanophone and Lusophone populations of Africa, addressing these dialogues and thus further weaving the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. Latin America is the de facto acting hub of the Luso-Hispanic world since, as discussed earlier, most of the cultural flows within the region either depart from or are addressed to it. Simple, objective reasons (the largest population, the vastness of its geography, the proximity of a large number of countries, the region’s cultural importance as an irradiating point of Portuguese and Spanish languages and cultures) are responsible for this fact. In addition, Latin America’s somewhat intermediate status as an old colony allows the region a neither-this-nor-that political identity that counterbalances the otherwise (former)-metropolises-vs-newer(former)-colonies bipolar structure that informs most postcolonial networks, such as the Commonwealth. For all these reasons, Latin America acts as a bridge between Iberia and its former Asian and African colonies and, to some degree, brings the Luso-Hispanic world closer together. This does not mean, however, that Latin America’s role as acting hub makes it a centre of the region, for this

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would be problematic and entail various theoretical challenges. The first is merely logistical: Latin America accounts for a vast territory which hosts over 600 million people from different ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Were it the centre, then this centre would include most of the population and territory of the Luso-Hispanic world, rendering the margins even more marginal and leading to a totally unbalanced structure. The second reason is of theoretical nature and plays a more decisive role: the Luso-Hispanic world, as conceived in this volume and described elsewhere (refer to Transmodernity mentioned earlier), should resist any attempt at having a centre. In the notion of the Luso-Hispanic world proposed here, the postcolonial dynamics of power usually encapsulated in the dichotomy centre/periphery are seen as overcome. Instead this world is understood as a cosmopolitan region based upon horizontality and not hierarchy, drawing on South-to-South cooperation. In fact, the Luso-Hispanic world is a multi-centred region that resists having a single centre for three main reasons. The first is the rejection of the notion of centre stemming from the postcolonial nature of most countries in the region. Having experienced subalternity under foreign rule, the Luso-Hispanic world eschews this familiar power structure in favour of new formulas such as South-to-South cooperation dialogue, which in turn demonstrates how Iberia’s former power has been left out of the equation. Secondly, central to the region is its twofold, balanced linguistic nature, which would be put in jeopardy if one of these languages were privileged by a centre. Third, the Luso-Hispanic world is composed of a number of diverse cultural minorities that resist the centre/ periphery dichotomy. Native American cultures and non-Castilian national cultures within Spain are conceived as indispensable threads of the Luso-Hispanic fabric, for they coexist and interact with Spanish- and Portuguese-language cultures to varying degrees and also share the history of colonialism. These minorities are mostly subject to local centre/periphery dynamics, which they seek to overcome. Similarly, Spanish- and Portuguese-language cultures also coexist with other cultures in Asia and Africa, undergoing in turn varying degrees of subalternity. A broader frame, like that of the Luso-Hispanic world, should address and endeavour to move beyond these existing, more local dynamics of power, while simultaneously resisting the imposition of new dominances for the sake of horizontal dialogue. If colonialism and the notion of the global South are, as has been shown, central to the shaping of the Luso-Hispanic world, what role do Spain and Portugal play within this framework? It has been argued that Southern Europe is intimately tied to the global South, for it is produced by the same logic (Dainotto 2011). In addition, Central and Northern Europe have usually subjected Spain and Portugal to an orientalising gaze, especially during the Romantic period. Even today, both countries’ somewhat peripheral position within Europe, which includes economic subordination, would allow for such an interpretation. This allows, at least, for a partial understanding of Spain and Portugal as global South countries. But can they fulfil the requirement of having endured colonial rule? While readings of Portugal as a colonised coloniser have been put forward

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(de Sousa Santos 2002) and are subject to contentious debate, Spain was quite clearly never colonised. Whatever the interpretations, both countries have an undeniable imperialist past and have directly brought about subalternity in the countries they colonised. Therefore, they do not fully qualify as such and are, then, third party to the South-to-South debate that greatly informs the LusoHispanic world. Nevertheless, Spain and Portugal still share many elements with the rest of the countries involved, the most paramount of which are their own languages. This determines that Iberia cannot be alienated from the dialogues, especially cultural ones, existing across the Luso-Hispanic world on the grounds of shared Spanish- and Portuguese-language cultures. How to resolve this, then? The fact that the very foundation of this shared culture is colonialism puts this phenomenon at the very centre of the Luso-Hispanic world. However, while this common history of colonialism may be central to the term, this volume advocates for an epistemological twist that allows for overcoming it and, in turn, for a new synchronic understanding of relations between Luso-Hispanic countries, following the model provided by global South discourses. Hence, this approach favours an understanding of the region as a network of cultural dialogue between free and equal countries. The inclusion of former metropolises in this block does not, by any means, imply that the colonial past was equally lived by all parties. On the contrary, this inclusion aims to deconstruct the Western gaze, that which allowed Spain and Portugal to become such centres of power and rulers of two vast empires. In fact, the inclusion of Iberia in the equation may prove critical as it creates a platform on which horizontal dialogue between former colonies and their metropolises can take place. In this way, the former dynamic of dominance/subalternity might be fully and eventually overcome. For this reason Spain and Portugal need to be part of the Luso-Hispanic tapestry. As Cândido puts it, although “Latin American literatures [. . .] are basically branches of the literature of a mother country”, these historical links should no longer be understood in terms of dependency in the present, but rather as “a way of participating in a cultural universe to which we belong, which crosses the boundaries of nations and continents” (Cândido 2004: 46–47). This approach, with which this book engages, advocates for such a joint study within the framework of the Luso-Hispanic world. It could be argued that this inclusion may lay the foundations for a reemergence of former hegemonies. However, central to this understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world is the shift from a diachronic reading, which privileges a uniquely colonialism-based understanding of the region, into a new, synchronic reading, deeply rooted in global South dynamics. This epistemological shift prevents new hegemonies from being articulated within this framework, for they exist exogenously. Neo-imperial centres of the Luso-Hispanic world allow new forms of shared subalternity that make links within the Luso-Hispanic horizontal and strengthen the regional fabric vis-à-vis the new other. This overcoming of former centre/periphery dichotomies from the colonial-era, even if they are replaced by new ones, renders new international power structures more relevant. The focus is, so to speak, displaced from the diachrony to the synchrony.

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Despite not fully qualifying as global South countries then, Spain and Portugal find themselves on an even footing with the other Luso-Hispanic countries in the broader picture of 21st-century world power balances. Further to this, as will be discussed in the next section, the fact that all LusoHispanic countries have been subject to dictatorship in a more recent, postcolonial temporality strengthens the argument for including Spain and Portugal in the region on an equal-to-equal basis with the rest of its members. Indeed, shared traumatic experiences such as dictatorship render all Luso-Hispanic countries peers and, by so doing, further tighten the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world, as this volume contends. Interestingly, the interwoven nature of cultural links across the region can be best observed in the common ground of dictatorship: the Spanish Civil War’s impact upon the Salazar regime, Cuba’s involvement in the guerras coloniais, the linked dictatorships of the Southern Cone or the welcome offered to Spanish Republicans across Latin America, among many other examples, give rise to multi-centred dialogues across the Luso-Hispanic world. What is more, the fact that a neo-imperialist reading of Luso-Hispanic dictatorships is possible allows for further horizontal links among peers opposing an exogenous centre, another facet that will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter. In a world of thriving globalisation, transnational integration has become a must. While Spain and Portugal now belong to the EU, many Latin American countries have come together in different organisations such as Mercosur/Mercosul. Moreover, links across the Atlantic have fleshed out in initiatives such as the already mentioned Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (Organization of Iberoamerican Countries) and its annual Cumbre Iberoamericana (Iberoamerican Summit). Further initiatives, especially in HEI cooperation, are fostering exchange and academic dialogue, thus contributing to the strengthening of the Luso-Hispanic fabric. Interestingly, the inclusion of Equatorial Guinea in the OEI demonstrates a widening of boundaries beyond Europe and America and a more complex and diverse understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world. All these integrative movements have their counterparts within academia. While the status and full recognition of Latin American Studies are undeniable, Iberian Studies are also gaining momentum. They are jointly responsible for creating a solid scholarly tradition of bringing Spanish- and Portuguese-language cultures together, thus taking the step from cartography to academia. Further to this, the combined study of Iberia and Latin America has also gained momentum, as described at the beginning of this chapter. However, phenomena such as a multicentred lusofonia and Equatorial Guinea entering into the institutional space call for a wider understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world that also includes Asian and African nations which share, albeit to varying degrees, the Luso-Hispanic culture. One of the main aims of this volume is to articulate a notion of the Luso-Hispanic world in terms of “possible community”, to recall Cabo’s words. Therefore, the Luso-Hispanic world can be understood, for the purposes of this book, as a region sharing a common culture that traces back to Iberian colonialism. Despite being based upon this shared experience, the proposed understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world goes beyond colonial narratives

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of centre vs periphery and pays attention to neo-imperial dynamics and new exogenous centres that, in turn, strengthen endogenous ties. Hence, in the 21st century, the Luso-Hispanic world is conceived as a region in which cultural dialogue flows between peer countries/territories, building upon and expanding a common cultural heritage. This results in a world of interconnectedness and a growing shared identity that should prove central to placing the region in today’s globalised and multipolar world.

A world of dictatorships As seen earlier, central to this understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world is the shift of focus from the diachronic colonial past to a postcolonial, more recent present, in which the ubiquitous presence of dictatorship and its legacy is still tangible. Regardless of their political status as former metropolises, old former colonies, stateless nations or newly born states, all members of the Luso-Hispanic world have endured traumatic, non-democratic regimes, mostly during the second half of the 20th century. However different in nature, these dictatorships share basic features and, most importantly, have had a comparable impact upon societies. The fact that transitions into democracy are either recent or have yet to take place makes this common feature of the Luso-Hispanic world one of much more recent nature than the shared history of colonialism. This determines that dictatorship has been a contributing factor in displacing the focus from previous, diachronic categories of centre and periphery, to a homogenising synchrony in which all countries are (post-)dictatorial societies facing similar challenges. Thus, the threads connecting these countries go beyond cultural, diachronic links and enhance horizontality and cooperation among peers, in the sense that countries where dictatorships have been more recently abolished have sought help from those that have had a longer run into democracy. It could be argued, however, that some of these cases entail a neo-colonial component, as may have been the case with the Spanish transición being marketed as exemplary across Latin America or with the Spanish justice system suing Pinochet. Yet these arguments can be easily countered with examples showing former metropolises and longer-standing democracies being helped by former colonies and newer democracies, as in Argentina’s recent attempts to make a case of crimes against humanity in Franco’s Spain. Such experiences show how the centre/periphery dichotomy no longer operates in a post-dictatorial understanding of the LusoHispanic world. In fact, this volume argues that this shared experience and its legacy levels the role of all countries and crucially strengthens the very fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. If the Luso-Hispanic fabric is understood as a network through which cultural dialogue can flow, the implications of these shared experiences of dictatorship on cultural production deserve particular attention. As this volume shows, the impact of dictatorship upon theatre has been pivotal not only at a national level, but also in fostering dialogue throughout the Luso-Hispanic world: political connections, exile and common aesthetic responses to dictatorship can be

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observed at the transnational level, which further strengthens the cultural fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. In this sense, this volume is not so much a study of dictatorship in the region, but a study of links between theatre and dictatorship across it. Two hypotheses are integral to this approach. First, the assumption that a shared experience of dictatorship reinforces the construction of a region originally defined by a shared culture and colonialism, as described earlier. Second, the understanding that theatre and dictatorship react to one another in ways that can be addressed transnationally across the region, as will be discussed in the next section. Before proceeding, a brief insight into dictatorship in the region is required. However, this cannot be undertaken without offering a working definition of the term, which is no easy task. Etymologically, the word stems from the Roman constitutional law term dictatura, which referred to “the temporary rule of a dictator granted powers above the law for the sake of defending the republic” (Behrends 2017). Thus, initially, this state-of-emergency tool was aimed at preserving constitutional order and defending the law. The term retained this notion of legitimation over the course of many centuries, while words such as tyranny or despotism were used to refer to situations of illegitimate rule, which we would rather label as dictatorial today. During the 20th century, Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism saddled the term dictatorship with the negative connotations it bears up to the present day. Academic research on the topic, tracing back to Aristotle’s reflection on good/true and deviant/perverted regimes, enjoys great momentum in the 21st century. Current studies nevertheless reveal one main shortcoming: dictatorship has been traditionally presented as a negative concept, i.e. as the opposite of democracy. This has resulted in the fact that “there are no coherent theoretical models for explaining dictatorship as is common in the literature of democracy” (Lidén 2014: 62). Despite this shortcoming, the contemporary debate focuses primarily on overcoming Linz’s (2000) classic distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. While these discussions lie outside the scope of this volume, we shall adopt a general definition of dictatorship as any regime that lacks democratic traits and can thus be labelled as non-democratic. This is Lidén’s neither-much-minimalist-nor-much-in-detail definition, which is based upon two mainstays: dictatorships are regimes which “use methods other than competitive elections to distribute political power” and “frequently violate individual’s political and civil rights” (Lidén 2014: 63).5 While this definition perpetuates the dictatorship versus democracy dichotomy and does not pay much attention to hybrid regimes, it serves to address the 20th century, which is the temporal scope of this book. Of particular interest to this work is the second part of the definition, which directly addresses freedom of speech and artistic creation. However, the regimes dealt with in this book feature both of Lidén’s prerequisites and can therefore be considered dictatorships. During the last century, two main political philosophies arose that sought to fight liberal democracy and the social injustices it was deemed to have brought about in Europe. These movements, loaded with a large degree of modernity in contrast to old, bourgeois, stagnant politics, were Fascism and Communism.

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The former’s unprecedented spread under Hitler triggered World War II, which can be best summarised as the battle between Fascism and anti-Fascism. This clash, despite having taken place worldwide, had its epicentre in Europe, which, in 1945, awoke physically devastated and profoundly shaken when the horror of the Holocaust came to light. While the post-war period saw Eastern Europe turned into a series of URSS-satellite states where freedom was compromised, the West rejoiced in the defeat of Fascism. The processing of the trauma brought about the urge to avoid new confrontations, which is the idea upon which the EU would later be founded. Despite the rhetoric that Europe has since enjoyed its longest period of peace and democratic rule, Fascism had not been entirely defeated. Indeed, fascist-inspired dictatorships endured South of the Pyrenees well into the 1970s. The 1926 coup against the First Republic led Portugal into a Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship) that would, in turn, pave the way for the openly dictatorial Estado Novo (New State) from 1933. Under the rule of Salazar, the country became a fascist-inspired, single-party regime. Along with anti-liberalism, antiCommunism, a positive stance on violence, leader cult and other key features of Fascism, Salazar’s Portugal placed a great emphasis on nationalism, which was inextricably linked with imperialism. However, its pluri-continentalist territorial policy cracked as Indian colonies were lost and colonial wars kicked off in 1961 in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. These never-ending wars were at the root of the 1974 Carnation Revolution that deposed Salazar’s follower, Caetano, finally putting an end to Europe’s longest dictatorship. Along similar lines, the Franco regime in Spain accounts for Europe’s longest one-person dictatorship (1939–1975). But while war had marked the end of Portugal’s dictatorship, civil conflict was the first episode of the Franco regime. Indeed, the 1936 coup against the Second Republic echoed that of 1926 Portugal, except for the fact that it evolved into a three-year civil war that ultimately resulted in Franco’s 1939 victory. The ensuing regime would be similarly defined by fascist-inspired features such as the strong cult of its leader and lack of freedom. In addition, repression of those defeated in the war was fierce. However, following the 1945 defeat of Fascism, Franco’s need for international recognition led to his orchestrating a cosmetic operation to give Catholicism and traditionalism a greater role in his agenda, thus giving the impression that his politics diverted from Fascism. This is usually referred to as National-Catholicism. Rampant nationalism was indeed central to the regime’s agenda. The recognition of Catalan, Basque and Galician national identities during the Second Republic had sparked fears that Spain would be divided, which was part of what drove the rationale behind the 1936 coup. From his victory in 1939, Franco imposed a Castile-centred understanding of Spain that entailed these national minorities being systematically repressed. Cultural diversity was fiercely attacked and minority nation-building initiatives became unconceivable. However, from the late 1960s, very limited degrees of freedom allowed opposition to the regime to burgeon. Responses to the dictatorship fleshed out in different ways, one of which was ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, Basque Homeland and Liberty), a group

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promoting Basque culture that evolved into a terrorist group. Franco’s death in 1975 opened the door to a period of transition resulting in a quasi-federal modern state that, nonetheless, still struggles to acknowledge its multi-nationalism, as current problems in fitting Catalonia into the Spanish state show. This is partly a consequence of almost 40 years of unquestionable centralism, a result of Franco’s imperial aspirations. Indeed, central to both Iberian dictatorships was a relentless imperialist agenda. While Portugal waged colonial wars, desperately clinging to an empire that was breaking apart, Spain launched a recolonising campaign under the fake slogan of cultural brotherhood with the Americas. This included fostering the very notion of Hispanoamérica and strengthening ties with former colonies across the Atlantic. Echoing fascist rhetoric, the old name Día de la Raza (Day of the Race) was recalled from 1939 to refer to Columbus Day. Thus the idea of empire was central to Iberian dictatorships, as both fascist-inspired regimes were deeply rooted in a strong idea of nation aspiring to recreate their splendorous past. Beyond Iberia, dictatorship is unavoidably linked to and woven into the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. Latin America best epitomises this. As Cândido points out, it was thought that independence from metropolitan rule would render America “the home of liberty, thus consummating the destiny of the Western man” (Cândido 2004: 36). However, not only did Latin America fail to accomplish this, the region is also responsible for the figure of the caudillo. Indeed, once Spanish colonial rule collapsed and these countries gained independence, caudillos took control of these weakened nations across the board from Mexico to Argentina during the 19th century. However, despite having been very castigated by various forms of non-democratic governments since its very independence, it was during the 20th century that the region underwent the most repressive of these regimes. Especially paradigmatic are the Southern Cone countries, some of which endured various dictatorships during the last century. A first wave of far-right, populist regimes took place in the first half of the century, fleshing out comparable regimes in Brazil and Argentina. Both were based upon populism and economic nationalism as well as on fear of rampant Communism and the rejection of capitalism. Echoing the advent of Salazar, the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 put an end to the Old Republic and power was yielded to Getúlio Vargas. After a period of constitutional rule following the 1934 fascist-influenced constitution, Vargas carried out a self-coup invoking a supposed Communist plot to overthrow him. The adoption of a new authoritarian Constitution that placed all the power into his hands gave rise to the Estado Novo (New State), a regime that disabled political parties, prosecuted dissidence and imposed censorship. This regime was discontinued following Vargas’ deposition in 1945. The following year, Juan Domingo Perón came to power in Argentina via democratic elections. His mandate, arguably seen by many as a dictatorship, followed along similar populist and economic lines as well as enforcing censorship and imprisoning and torturing members of the opposition. He was deposed by a coup in 1955 and found shelter in Franco’s Spain. Today, the debate around both figures

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remains contentious: while they have been compared to fascist dictators, their progressive social agendas have also been extensively praised. However, the second wave of dictatorships in the Southern Cone resulted in unprecedented levels of violence and repression. In the Cold War context, US-backed coups led to military junta regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile. Their utmost priority was the dismantling of internal opposition as well as the fight against Communism and the revolutionary left, and the measures taken to those ends were atrocious. While other countries have enjoyed much more presence in global collective consciousness and received greater academic attention, dictatorial regimes in Paraguay have been largely overlooked. Indeed, the country has had a tough history throughout which dictatorship seems to have been the norm. Following political instability in the wake of the Chaco war, the 1940 Constitution echoed Brazil’s Estado Novo and allowed Higinio Morínigo’s regime (1940–1948) to ban opposition parties and drastically limit liberties. This, however, paved the way for a subsequent, longterm dictatorship. Military officer Alfredo Stroessner’s 1954 coup was intended to keep the country in order amid fears of rampant Communism. He then became president and led a severe dictatorship that was the longest in modern South America, and was characterised by staunch anti-Communism that translated into the harsh repression of political opposition. His rule lasted until 1989, when he was deposed by a military coup. It was not until the 1992 Constitution that democracy arrived in Paraguay. The junta regimes in Brazil and Argentina have, however, attained higher degrees of attention. Amid fears of falling into the Communist bloc, and supported by the United States, Brazilian Armed Forces launched a coup in 1964 against President João Goulart. For the sake of national security, the ensuing dictatorship engaged in the mass suspension of human rights and used atrocious means to gather information against opposition in order to deter potential opponents from acting against the junta. This involved arbitrary arrests, imprisonments without trials, kidnapping and various forms of torture, which included rape and castration. Following approval of the Fifth Institutional Act in 1968, which gave the president full dictatorial powers, dissolved congress and accentuated already-existing censorship, the situation worsened dramatically. This regime, which lasted until 1985, became paradigmatic and provided a model for similar military regimes across the region. The regime in Argentina also gained international renown for its barbarian nature. In the context of economic collapse and violent clashes between rightand left-wing Peronism, a military coup removed Isabel Perón from office in 1976. This gave way to the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process), a violent junta dictatorship obsessed, like its Brazilian counterpart, with the dismantling of revolutionary left-wing groups and the elimination of the social base of insurgency. The ensuing Guerra sucia (Dirty War), as the junta labelled it, resulted in the assassination of students, intellectuals and labour organisers, in systematic baby stealing and in thousands of desaparecidos (disappeared), i.e. those arrested, tortured and secretly executed without trial.

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Corruption, a disastrous economy and, most importantly, public discontent after the 1982 defeat in the Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas) ultimately resulted in democratic elections in 1983. Uruguay and Chile experienced similar regimes. Economic crisis and social conflict fuelled by Tupamaro guerrilla groups and their right-wing opponents in Uruguay led to the Bordaberry government’s repressive policies and to the military taking an active role in the name of hindering Communism. This situation eventually resulted in a coup and an ensuing dictatorship, lasting from 1973 to 1985, which did not see Bordaberry deposed, but supported by a military junta. Like elsewhere in the Southern Cone, the defeat of Communism became pivotal in the political agenda and, under this premise, the constitution was suppressed, political parties were banned, trade unions were made illegal, censorship became ubiquitous and citizens suspected of opposition were prosecuted, imprisoned and assassinated. Brutal torture was also routinely carried out against Tupamaros and their supporters, resulting in large numbers of desaparecidos, a vast exile throughout the world and unprecedented numbers of political prisoners. In 1984, strikes in support of these prisoners resulted in constitutional restoration and a shift to democracy in 1985. Similar in nature to this regime is that of Chile, which gained an international reputation for its atrocities against human rights. Marxist, democratically elected Allende was overthrown by a coup with the support of the United States amid fears of democratic breakdown. Aiming at national reconstruction, a military junta lead by Pinochet took power in 1973, dissolving the congress and outlawing both the constitution and political parties. Beyond the horrifying numbers of desaparecidos, and the torture and imprisonment of suspected leftists, the Pinochet regime became known for its infamous methods of murder, including the dropping of pregnant women out of aircraft. A large-scale exile, like those that occurred in the countries already mentioned, also took place. As well as this, the Chilean dictatorship is notorious for having implemented a new economic agenda led by the so-called Chicago Boys. Based upon unconstrained neoliberalism, the laissez-faire and free-market policies adopted were devastating in areas such as public education and resulted in the decline of the lower classes but, nonetheless, became the model for other countries in the region. Having lost the 1988 referendum to extend his presidential term, Pinochet retained the presidency of Chile until 1990, when Aylwin took office as a democratically elected president. In the lead-up to and during World War II, the first wave of dictatorships had more thorough ideological agendas, in the sense that European Fascism was taken as a model, populism and economic nationalism were broadly implemented, and both capitalism and Communism became paramount anathemas. The second wave of dictatorships, however, took place in the broader context of the Cold War, which rendered anti-Communism the singular priority of these military regimes. Focused on eliminating all remnants of this ideology, repression reached atrocious heights, as described earlier. These initiatives enjoyed the support of the United States and were deemed a necessary firewall to prevent

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the expansion of Communism, which had already gained a foothold in Latin America following the Cuban revolution. There, the insurgence leading to the overthrow of US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and the termination of foreign imperialism in Cuba began in late 1958 and reached a climax as Fidel Castro’s forces entered Havana in January 1959. The new regime went about legalising the Communist party and became a socialist republic based on the ideas of José Martí along with those of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Castro’s regime outlived the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the USSR and even Castro himself, having gained continuity through the figure of Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother. Whether Cuba is a dictatorship is an extremely controversial question that usually sparks passionate debate on both sides. The country’s excellent performance in indicators such as the Human Development Index, its outstanding health and educational systems and the popularisation of a thriving, worldclass cultural scene are the arguments usually made to differentiate Cuba from dictatorships. However, the regime is also responsible for initiatives such as the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (Production Military Units), a series of camps where members of the LGBT community, among others, were brutalised in the aim of “re-education”. In addition, human rights organisations have accused the government of further human rights abuses. Indeed, political rights and civil liberties such as freedom of expression, association and assembly are limited. Moreover, censorship operates under constitutional indications that free speech is allowed if it is in keeping with the objectives of socialist society, and artistic creation is allowed as long as it is not contrary to the Revolution. Hence following the definition of dictatorship adopted in this volume, Cuba may be considered a non-democracy, i.e. a dictatorship, lacking competitive elections and frequently violating an individual’s political and civil rights. However, Castro’s regime has granted Cuba a paramount place in the political consciousness of the 20th century. The many failed attempts by the United States to remove Castro from power along with Castro’s uncompromising anti-imperialism, as demonstrated by a series of initiatives including the lending of support to revolutionary groups in Latin America and to independence wars in Africa, have all contributed to cementing Cuba’s reputation. Castro’s support of insurgents in Pinochet’s Chile and of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas are examples of his commitment to Latin America. Beyond this, his open involvement in the Angolan war of independence indicates the leading role Cuba played on the global stage during the years of the Cold War and decolonisation, adding to the weave of a fabric of subaltern countries that would together form part of the global South and the Luso-Hispanic tapestry. The cultural initiatives mentioned earlier also contributed to this long-term endeavour. Nicaragua was subject to a family dictatorship, that of the Somozas, from 1937 to 1979. This regime, which was allowed to flourish thanks to the support of the United States, was marked by the repression of political opposition, growing inequality and political corruption. However, the Cuban Revolution strengthened opponents of the regime who, from Costa Rica and with Castro’s

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support, formed the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinist Front for National Liberation), which was hardly tackled by the US-backed Somoza family. The FSLN gained popular support after corruption following the 1972 earthquake, and the ensuing insurrection would end with the ousting of the last Somoza, who fled to Paraguay and was assassinated there. The Sandinistas ruled the country from 1979 until 1990 in what is known as the Revolución Sandinista (Sandinist Revolution). This left-wing democratic government was continuously hindered by CIA-funded Contra groups, in a paradigmatic example of war by proxy during the Cold War. Spanish Guinea gained independence from Spain in 1968 to become the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. As has generally been observed across the globe, decolonisation paved the way for dictatorship. Francisco Macías Nguema was elected president, and shortly thereafter declared himself president for life. Accusations of mass killings came in the 1970s, not only against the Bubi ethnic minority, but also against thousands of suspected opponents. Teodoro Obiang overthrew Macías Nguema in a coup in 1979. The 1982 constitution granted him extensive powers that ushered the country into a new dictatorship. Although the country is now officially a multi-party democracy, elections are usually considered a sham. In addition, international NGOs have documented severe human rights abuses in jails, including torture, unaccounted deaths and illegal detentions. The country is also ranked as one of the most corrupt states in the world. Similarly, the recent increase in oil extraction has also raised concerns over Obiang’s accumulation of personal wealth. He currently stands as Africa’s longest serving dictator. After a ten-year war of independence fuelled by Communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread across Africa, Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1974. This process was part of the so-called Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974), which included similar conflicts in Angola and Portuguese Guinea and came to an end with the 1974 deposition of Portugal’s Estado Novo. Crucial as it had been during the war, Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) took control of the country when it became officially independent in 1975. The new government established a Marxist one-party state that received support from Cuba and the USSR. Subsequently, anti-Communist opposition forces waged a civil war against Frelimo that devastated the country from 1977 to 1992. During these years, Frelimo did not have control over substantial parts of the country, which were de facto governed by their opponents – Renamo. Mass human rights violations occurred on both sides. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, reforms in 1990 allowed for a swift transition to a multi-party system based on free elections. The civil war came to an end in 1992. The history of the Philippines is somewhat more complex than that of the other countries mentioned. The end of Spanish rule at the close of the 19th century did not bring independence, but a subsequent colonial rule by the United States, which in turn included Japanese occupation during World War II. The country thus forms part of the group of postcolonial nations born in the aftermath of WWII, though having previously suffered under Spanish colonial rule

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for over three centuries. Elections were held in the independent Philippines in 1946 and a series of democratically elected presidents came to power, including Ferdinand Marcos in 1965. After years in government amid massive corruption and insurgency from the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front, Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972. This implied the abolition of Congress, a rise in political repression and human rights violations, and the curtailment of press freedom, including blanket censorship. Years of merciless dictatorship followed. The People Power Revolution led to Marcos fleeing the country and the restoration of democracy in 1986. For the sake of brevity, short accounts of the dictatorships in the countries covered in this book have been provided. However, the other members of the Luso-Hispanic world have also suffered non-democratic rule at various periods during the 20th century and for varying lengths of time.6 These encompass very different regimes, such as military juntas and single-party regimes in postindependence wars, which also qualify as dictatorships. These countries share a common traumatic experience that contributes to the previously mentioned strengthening of the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. Moreover, these experiences foster the horizontality of relations between countries in two significant ways. Firstly, and as pointed out earlier, post-dictatorial support reinforces mutual collaboration. Secondly, the former colonial centre/periphery axis is somewhat relocated by the irruption of a new power exogenous to the Luso-Hispanic world – the United States. Many dictatorships in the region were backed by the United States. The country’s fight against Communism during the Cold War extended to the support of many harsh regimes, mostly in Latin America, but also in other locations across the Luso-Hispanic world. Such was the case, for instance, with Marcos’ regime in the Philippines, where the United States had an interest in maintaining military bases in case of an eventual war against the Communist bloc. The same need for having military bases applied to Spain. Interestingly, both Spain and Portugal can be easily included in this list of dictatorships that were useful to the United States: indeed, the Allied powers only partially defeated Fascism, leaving two fascist-inspired dictatorships in Iberia that would later prove useful to the United States for their uncompromising anti-Communist stance as well as for their strategic location. While this power structure relates to the preceding discussion on Southern Europe as a potential region of the global South, it also demonstrates a shift in focus from Iberia as the historical metropolis, towards a neo-imperialist, exogenous power that would play a central role in the dictatorships of the Luso-Hispanic world. Such dictatorial regimes were perceived as replicating previous colonial rule. Indeed, nation-building efforts by dictators usually had postcolonial echoes, although they no longer engaged in self-affirming confrontation with former metropolises but rather vis-à-vis neo-imperial powers. Interestingly, sometimes theatrical critique towards Iberian countries became a way of fighting these neoimperial powers, as will be seen in some chapters. In this context, Argentina’s all-out war against Britain epitomises how dictatorships forged their national

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identities upon subaltern and global South models and against new powers. As discussed previously, the leader in this attempt to confront imperialism was the Cuban regime. Its involvement in the fight for independence by Portugal’s colonies in Africa allowed for the formation of a global South that linked Latin America with other parts of the world under the banner of anti-imperialism. This was followed by new dictatorships that also saw third countries, and not former metropolises, as new exogenous powers to confront. Central, then, to this understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world is the overcoming of former metropolitan patterns that takes place in the context of ubiquitous dictatorship across the region. As has already been stated, the fact that the centre exerting power on the region did not lie within its borders enhanced horizontality. All in all, dictatorship is a shared experience that, despite different nuances across the region, threaded deep ties throughout the Luso-Hispanic world. While this common feature belongs to the political realm, it is inextricably linked with that of culture, for non-democratic regimes have a profound effect on culture. The following section analyses the role played by theatre in dictatorship, as illustrated by the case studies covered in this volume.

Theatre under constraint Theatre is based upon two fundamental pillars. First, the message it conveys is unique, in the sense that it can never be repeated in the same way, and immediate, for it is transmitted directly to the audience. Second, this message is addressed to a group of people who are brought together for the sole purpose of receiving it. This puts collectiveness at the core of theatre, which is then understood as a solidary phenomenon, as opposed to solitary activities such as reading a novel. These features have made theatre a one-of-a-kind forum for collective exploration, which in turn has paved the way for the empowerment and politicisation of audiences. Consequently, theatre stands out among society’s other cultural manifestations as having the capacity to be hugely transformative and hence to pose a serious threat to the status quo. The case of Argentina’s Teatro Abierto members being encouraged to form a political party and to run for office (Graham-Jones 2000: 89) is but one of multiple examples of theatre’s political implications. Accordingly, the genre’s potentially explosive and inflammatory impact upon society has led to reactions more vehement in nature than those sparked by other cultural manifestations: “Riots have been provoked by cinema and by live music, but there does not seem to be quite the same history of public troublemaking as that provoked by the stage” (McEvoy 2016: 1). While theatre’s political nature can be observed whatever the context, it is most apparent when it operates under dictatorial regimes. In regimes where basic rights such as the freedom of speech and association are compromised, theatre can provide access to immediate discourse and anonymous, safe gathering – otherwise unthinkable – that may give birth to forms of resistance. This potential has determined that entanglements between theatre and dictatorship are bidirectional. On the one hand, dictatorial states have traditionally

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been aware of theatre’s capacity to harbour and foster resistance and have therefore constrained it by various means. This constriction has usually taken the form of tight and ferocious control – censorship. However, theatre has also been utilised to disseminate the dictatorship’s hegemonic ideology with the ultimate aim of imposing obedience upon society. These two attitudes towards theatre – control and propagandistic exploitation – can be put in relation to the two different kinds of non-democratic rule during the last century and the differing importance they grant to theatre: Communist regimes tended to value theatre (including experimental forms) and aimed to use it to legitimise and lend cultural prestige to the Party’s political and ideological control. In contrast, right-wing dictatorships tended to display suspicion or even contempt towards the arts, allied to conservative attitudes towards aesthetics, and concentrated on keeping theatre quiet rather than attempting to exploit it. (Thompson 2016: 263) On the other hand, theatre has been understood as the space for resistance. For this reason, opposition forces have traditionally used it to promote dissension and contestation to non-democratic regimes and their imposed constraints. Indeed, theatre has been signalled as “the instrument of authentic democracy” (McGrath 2002: 133), and its role in assisting revolutionary movements to overthrow oppressive regimes, especially during the atrocities of the 20th century, is amply documented. In this broader context, Luso-Hispanic countries share the experience of having developed their theatre in non-democratic contexts. The cases presented in this volume attempt to demonstrate that this fact builds upon the entanglements mentioned earlier – a common colonial past and the common ground of living under dictatorship – to strengthen the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. In order for thorough revisionism to exist, a non-dictatorial locus of enunciation becomes mandatory. Hence, academic attention that focuses on past dictatorships, which had initially come from outside the boundaries of the Luso-Hispanic world, is gradually coming from within now, as 21st-century Luso-Hispanic societies have, in their majority, undertaken or completed their transit into democracies. The legacy of dictatorships can be assessed through a combination of political, historical and cultural approaches. This volume is a contribution to the latter, for it addresses how dictatorships constrained theatre and how theatre responded to these constraints. Moreover this study will contribute to the largescale task of addressing the increasing desire in post-dictatorial societies for a Vergangenheitsbewältigung, i.e. a way for them to surmount the past that allows them to come to terms with it and move into the future. This term, central to contemporary Germany’s public debate on national socialism, has been broadly presented as a means for other post-dictatorial societies to digest their traumatic past. It departs from the argument that the role of memory in the construction of post-dictatorial societies is essential to laying sound and solid foundations.

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Such an understanding draws on Freud’s mourning/melancholia dichotomy. While the former denotes consciously declaring the past dead, melancholia implies unconscious processing of a past that cannot be fully comprehended and remains, therefore, unresolved. Consequently, while mourning is considered natural, melancholia is deemed pathological (Freud 1917). Hence, revisionism’s goal is to avoid melancholia and allow a mourning through which traumas can be healed. Committed to the recovery of memory and the fight against oblivion, academic research on the impact of dictatorship upon culture has been thriving in recent years. Despite the fact that theatre’s role in dictatorship may have been more prominent than that of other literary genres, scholarly work on film and the novel have somehow overshadowed research on theatre. This situation is, however, being redressed as the critical attention paid to theatre under dictatorship has been gaining momentum of late. Ambitious archival-based research initiatives on the history of theatre under dictatorship in particular countries, such as the Miroel Silveira Archive project in São Paulo described in this volume, have paved the way for a vast bibliography on specific countries, especially those in Iberia and the Southern Cone.7 More recent works focus more broadly on the role of theatre and performance in conveying memory (Dean et al. 2015), and also focus attention on the implications of dictatorship in theatre from a transnational perspective (Losambe and Sarinjeive 2001; Puga 2008; Barnett and Skelton 2007; Orlich 2017). The present volume follows this latter thread. All these endeavours, which build upon seminal works on collective memory (Halbwachs 1950; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Nora 1996–98) and more especially on the notion of cultural memory (Assmann and Czaplicka 1995; Assmann 2008), face the challenge of shedding light on the nature of dictatorship’s theatrical agenda and on the way theatre responded to them. This mammoth task should involve confronting official, uncontested and imposed versions of the past on the one hand, and restoring distorted cultural memories on the other. The implications of this recovery for the theatrical canon are enormous, for if the canon is not subject to close, critical reassessment post-dictatorship, then the regime will continue to cast its shadow over culture long after it ends. Aleida Assmann’s notion of “state of latency” (2006) is central to this recovery. Both material evidence of dictatorship’s constraints – which can bear the form of censorship files or documents pertaining to the theatre agenda, among many others – and theatrical responses to this – spanning exile and unpublished texts, for instance – are key documents to further research in this field. Some of these materials have survived dictatorships and been duly addressed (research has been carried out, documents have been made available, plays have been published/ staged), while others have been lost (theatre practitioners have died and taken with them potential testimonies, compromising documents have been disposed of). There are, however, still large numbers of documents that have neither been examined nor lost yet – files buried under dust, unpublished manuscripts of plays stacked away in the libraries of exiled writers’ descendants, potential testimonies by living dramatists who have been tortured. The analysis of these

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latter kinds of source, which await attention in state of latency, is critical to the process of reversing the consignment to oblivion of a significant portion of the Luso-Hispanic cultural, theatrical memory. The question is, then, what kind of research needs to be carried out? Which materials best showcase the impact of dictatorship upon theatre and of theatre upon dictatorship? At which epistemological levels do these entanglements take place? The number of ways in which the links between theatre and dictatorship can be observed is extraordinarily long and heterogeneous, including phenomena that are epistemologically varied: discourses on obedience/resistance, theatre policies, theatre business, exile, performance, violence, memory, trauma, nationalism and postcolonialism, to name but a few. To better address all these phenomena, this volume adopts a three-tiered understanding of theatre to effectively illustrate the different ways in which dictatorship affected theatre. Accordingly, chapters are grouped into three blocks that correspond with this structure: Policies/Practices, Performance, Text. The twofold nature of theatre, conceived both as text and performance, has traditionally determined the pendulous nature of academic approaches to the genre. While the “Aristotelian, logocentric conception” of theatre, which was mainstream until the 20th century, disdained performance as something superfluous that distracted the focus from the true object of study – the literary text, the Avant-garde-triggered “Copernican turn of the stage” removed theatre from the sphere of logos and made performance the only phenomenon worthy of academic attention (Pavis 1998: 473–474). These polarised approaches to theatre have since been resolved, and the current acknowledgement of the genre’s double nature as text and performance has resulted in both aspects receiving equal or at least more balanced academic attention. These two approaches are reflected upon in the two corresponding sections of this book – Performance and Text. In addition, this volume presents a third block – Policies/Practices. This section addresses a more recent approach to theatre that goes beyond its very boundaries and pays attention to its links with other cultural agents, with society and with power. This theoretical perspective responds to the thriving interest in theatre from disciplines such as Cultural History and Cultural Studies, which focus on the social and ideological implications of a fundamentally collective cultural practice. In the context of dictatorship, this analysis should include both the constraining agenda of the regime – its policies – and theatre’s responses to this – practices. Thus, the resulting tripartite structure reveals how dictatorship operates at various levels – that of cultural practice subject to policies, that of performance and that of texts. However, the assignment of chapters to sections is mostly organisational and readers should be aware that chapters, albeit primarily focused on one of these three aspects, may allude to other epistemological aspects of theatre as well. Under the label Policies/Practices, theatre is understood as a cultural practice taking place within a broader network of multiple cultural practices which, in turn, operate within a particular socio-political structure – that of dictatorial regimes. The first measure dictatorial regimes tend to impose upon theatre,

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and the one that has the greatest impact, is to silence it. This measure is a result of the administration’s awareness of the genre’s capacity to shape heterodoxy. Consequently, censorship has been the most commented upon and researched phenomenon to affect theatre in non-democratic contexts and, accordingly, studies on the topic make up vast bibliographies. Thanks to increased interest in this phenomenon at the national level, comparative studies encompassing rightwing and Communist dictatorships as well as democracies are gaining momentum (O’Leary et al. 2016). In short, these point to the consistency of censorship regardless of location, time period or political regime (O’Leary 2016: 16), despite basic differences such as more distributed action carried out by multiple agencies vis-à-vis centralised and bureaucratic systems in communist regimes and rightwing dictatorships, respectively (Thompson 2016: 263). Broadly, censorship can be understood by drawing on Foucault’s notions of discipline and the panopticon. The ultimate aim of the latter is to produce a constant sense of control over everything that goes beyond the limits of the norm, thus setting a red line between that which is allowed and that which is banned, that which is normal and that which is abnormal (Foucault 1995). This mechanism is perfectly homologous to that of a dictatorial state, which imposes upon theatre the labels of banned or approved according to the norms it has created through non-democratic legislation. Censorship in this case can be considered official state regulation, and it is this kind of censorship that has received most academic attention. However, other subtler forms of censorship usually go hand in hand with it in political contexts that do away with freedom of speech, ranging from religious censorship to self-censorship. Although numerous references to censorship are made throughout this volume, the first two chapters pay exclusive attention to this phenomenon. Gombár’s chapter surveys the presence of foreign drama in Portugal and discusses the political aims of Salazar’s censorship during two of the main conflicts in 20th-century Europe: the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The author explains how Salazar’s interest in the rebel forces’ victory in the Spanish conflict, which would prove critical to the continuation of his Estado Novo, translated to censorship: increased numbers of censored plays at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the absence of left-wing, Republican Spanish authors. This work illustrates how partisan political interests determine, through censorship, the repertoires to which audiences have access. Interestingly, the second chapter of the first part shows how censorship can also exert its castrating action beyond dictatorial rule. Castillo Costa and de Sousa Junior’s work focuses on the inter-dictatorial period of 20th-century Brazil and discusses the way in which censorship outlived the Vargas regime, somehow linking its repressive cultural policies with those of the still-to-come military dictatorship. Through four case studies, the authors reveal censorial views on topics such as politics, repression and racial relations. In addition, non-State forms of censorship such as religious censorship are also discussed. Overall, these two chapters approach censorship from various angles – survey-based, theoretical and case-study analysis – allowing in sum for a manifold understanding of this phenomenon as inextricably linked with dictatorship.

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It has been pointed out that censorship, albeit the most visible, is by no means the only tool dictatorships possess to exert their grip upon theatre. Drawing on Foucault’s understanding that power needs to be productive as well as prohibitive to endure (“what makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse”, Foucault 1980: 119), it can be argued that dictatorial power’s discursive agency cannot rely exclusively on censorship. Indeed, control over theatre is actually exercised by a rather complex network of institutions and practices that enable the state to impose its ideology on the public. Censorship, then, is only one of these Theatre State Apparatuses (Santos Sánchez 2015). The TSAs impact theatre in a twofold manner: on the one hand, by hampering heterodox discourses and, on the other, by creating, disseminating and imposing their orthodoxy upon the public. This notion allows for an understanding of censorship within a wider network: while it is responsible for hindering inconvenient voices, a group of other TSAs foster the discourse of the rulers. Among these, National Theatres and the teaching of dramatic literature have a large impact on shaping a canon that serves the regime. Other TSAs exist in regimes with limited freedom of the press, including press reviews in state-controlled newspapers, state-sponsored companies, state prizes, official festivals, public funding and state publishers, among others. Paradoxically, the TSAs that produce discourse and respond to the propagandistic purposes of dictatorship have received much less attention than censorship. By focusing on the theatre industry’s propagandistic role, the press and the figure of a prominent director, Kasten’s chapter on Francoist Spain makes, nonetheless, a brilliant contribution to this area of research. The author dissects the 1949– 1951 Latin American tour of José Tamayo, a well-reputed theatre director who enjoyed a privileged position in the theatrical scene of the Franco regime. His tour was conceived and presented in Spanish media as a way of spreading official Spanish culture in the former empire, thus fostering the Franco-endorsed notion of Hispanidad, based upon the superior and universalising role of Spanish culture in Latin America. However, Kasten unveils Tamayo’s contradictory relationship with Francoist Spain: while his reports to Spanish media gave the impression that his neo-colonial mission was being accomplished and deliberately omitted contacts with exiled and anti-Franco playwrights, Latin America media highlighted Tamayo’s interest in local culture and revealed premieres of playwrights uncomfortable for Franco. This chapter also brings to light the privileged role of theatre companies and press reviews in shaping the discourse of the Franco regime through the figure of Tamayo, who would later direct the National Theatres, thus continuing his role within the TSAs. However, although partisan and selfish, his actions are seen as an attempt to undermine the conservativeness of the regime’s theatre, thus providing some sort of germinal opposition to the regime from within. The last two chapters of this section pick up this thread and concentrate on more explicit forms of opposition to dictatorship – the independent theatre

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companies. Such initiatives, which were commonplace across the Luso-Hispanic world, show the inextricable nature of relations between the theatre industry and dictatorship. Lourenço Módia’s chapter on the Spanish region of Galicia provides a well-outlined account of non-commercial theatre in Galicia throughout the Franco regime. While chamber theatre companies are depicted as part of the TSAs, thus implementing the state’s highly centralised agenda and denying a platform to non-Castilian cultural expression, independent theatre companies are presented as resisting state-centred centripetal forces and being, instead, more oriented towards Galician language and culture. This chapter sheds light on how the Galicianisation of Galician stages exemplified resistance to the Franco regime. Drawing on the theatre industry and theatre policies too, Fernández Iglesias’ chapter on Basque theatre also addresses the construction of a non-hegemonic national identity within Spain, but does so mostly from a post-dictatorial point of view. As in the Galician case, Basque theatre had been overshadowed by Spanish-language theatre, and the chapter outlines attempts to redress this situation during the final period of the Franco regime. Paradoxically, the institutionalisation of theatre infrastructures after autonomy was devolved to the Basque country through democracy did not result in the clear support of Basque-language theatre. This theatre was ignored by official institutions and left to non-market-oriented and community-committed companies. The author remains critical of the current condition of Basque theatre, for which she blames both the legacy of Francoism and the ill-conceived theatre policies of the transition period, thus centring her study on theatre policies both during and after dictatorship. Performance, the second block of the volume, focuses on performative responses to dictatorship. Broadly understood, performance is not unique to theatre. Indeed, Taylor understands it both as subject of analysis and epistemology, since daily embodied practices from obedience to resistance, from ethnicity to gender and sexual identity, can be viewed through the lens of performance (Taylor 2003: 3). Attention has been paid, certainly, to performance in diverse cultural practices beyond theatre, such as ritual, play, games and sports, which all involve “the doing of an activity by an individual or group largely for the pleasure of another individual or group” (Schechner 1966: 27). Central to all these activities is performance’s capacity to create an as if, i.e. a frame based on playfulness and removed from ordinary life in which participants have the chance “to temporarily experience the taboo, the excessive, and the risky” (Schechner 2002: 45). Taboo and excessive, dictatorship is a phenomenon about which commentary is far from straightforward. In the Luso-Hispanic world, citizens have, however, taken the risk of standing up and questioning dictatorship – notably through performance. Taylor’s account on performativity in Argentina, to give a representative example, includes H.I.J.O.S.’s escraches as well as the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo protests. The author argues that “trauma becomes transmittable, understandable through performance – through the re-experienced shudder, the retelling, the repeat” (Taylor 2003: 208). Hence performance plays a pivotal role in processing traumatic experiences such as dictatorship as “the embodied

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experience and transmission of traumatic memory [. . .] make a difference in the way knowledge is transmitted and incorporated” (Taylor 2003: 173), thereby allowing for a more comprehensible representation of the traumatic memories that may, in turn, result in their overcoming. Performance is thus inextricably linked to memory. Fundamentally based on performance, Schechner defines rituals as “a way people remember” (Schechner 2002: 45). Both the grandmothers and mothers’ actions, defined as “trauma-driven performance protest” (Taylor 2003: 170), can then be taken as rituals based on the performance of traumatic memories that are recalled from the past and made vivid in the present. Indeed, performance’s power lies in the fact that it embodies memory and renders history comprehensible onstage, in the present. Drawing on Nora’s notions of memory and history, Bennett defines performance as what lies between these two notions, as “an experience of the past that creates the sort of embodied memories that historical sites or archives fail to impart”, for memories are not fixed but “evolve and mean something unique to each spectator” (Bennett 2015: 166). By addressing spectators in a visceral manner, the ultimate aim of performing such events is to engage the audience, “to provoke recognition and reaction in the here and now rather than rely on past recollection”, i.e. to perform the live process of bearing witness, “a doing, an event that takes place in real time, in the presence of a listener” (Taylor 2003: 188, 167). In this sense, performance’s collective and communicative nature also addresses the collective aspect of memory, which is crucial in the wake of the shared trauma of dictatorship. The links between theatre and other forms of performance such as ritual have been amply documented. On the one hand, rituals differ from theatre in that they are based neither on the impersonation of the other nor on the high regard for the performer’s virtuosity. On the other hand, the boundaries between the two can be easily crossed: “The shift from ritual to aesthetic performance occurs when a participating community fragments into occasional, paying customers. The move from aesthetic performance to ritual happens when an audience of individuals is transformed into a community” (Schechner 2002: 163, 72). In these lines, both theatrical performance and the previously mentioned forms of performance fall under Taylor’s fundamental category of the repertoire, for they represent the ephemeral, that which is not subject to strict control and challenges the official truth. Indeed, the engaging capacity of theatrical performance intensifies this identification with other forms of performance because, committed to do more than entertain, theatre becomes “a metacommentary, explicit or implicit, witting or unwitting of the major social dramas of its social context (wars, revolutions, scandals, institutional changes)” (Turner 1990: 16). Despite not being included in this list, dictatorship stands out as a major social drama to which theatre cannot but react. Theatre’s connection with its current, surrounding circumstances is best observed in the performances addressed in Ortuño Casanova’s chapter on the Philippines. Drawing on an understanding of US-backed Marcos as a sort of foreign power and thus an extension of colonialism, the already distant Filipino

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fight against Spanish rule was recalled and re-enacted as a way of denouncing present oppression without explicitly mentioning Marcos. Likewise, the chapter features an analysis of how the staging of Spanish playwright Lorca had the same purpose. Benefiting from censorial leniency towards foreign playwrights, provocative performances of Lorca’s theatre in the Philippines accentuated the otherwise rather implicit cries for freedom of the protagonists, making them echo in the political context of the Marcos regime. The other chapters in this section examine the use of different kinds of performance as a way to recall and overcome the past in post-dictatorial societies. Astles’ double account of Catalonia and Chile assesses the merits of puppetry as a means of processing dictatorial trauma. A genre fostered by socialism’s desire to elevate popular culture, and much valued during Avant-garde attempts at re-theatralisation, puppetry bore political and aesthetic connotations that made it a convenient medium through which to tackle dictatorship in its aftermath. While in Catalonia puppet companies lampooned dictatorship and encouraged a look into the future as they questioned the role of Catalan identity vis-à-vis the Spanish state, post-Pinochet puppet theatre preferred to look back over its recent, traumatic past by giving voice to the disappeared and reflecting upon absence through the puppets’ presence onstage. Following this chapter, Rodríguez-Solás’ contribution, which takes non-dramatic theatre as its subject, offers a second insight into how non-conventional styles of performance address a recent dictatorial past. Concentrating on Catalonia’s independent theatre scene in the aftermath of Franco’s death, the author explains how non-dramatic performance became a common strategy to produce political theatre by means of non-linear, neither-Aristotelian-nor-Brechtian narration, which eluded censorship more easily, resisted narration in an effort to stand against inherited concepts of Francoism and, in turn, fostered political engagement. The result of this was a more active spectatorship that allowed for previously banned left and nationalist political stances to be displayed through flags and related paraphernalia. In short, both aesthetic and political subversion were encapsulated in performance. Finally, Silva Pereira’s article on, Nós matámos o Cão Tinhoso!, proposes a reading of the stage performance of the quintessential anti-colonial Mozambican text in contemporary Portugal in an effort to denounce the power/powerlessness dichotomies at work in contemporary Portuguese society. Based on temporal and spatial displacement, the site for the show, a Salazar-era school, represented the centre of the Estado Novo’s authority and control, somehow equalising Mozambique’s non-explicitly mentioned colonial past and Portugal’s struggle with its own role in history through the shared experience of dictatorship. So while the performance highlighted the difficulties of processing memories about dictatorship and Colonial War, it also addressed power relationships in contemporary Portugal, enhancing this message through participatory community theatre strategies. Interestingly, this performance of a text, written in a former colony and staged in the former metropolis, inversely mirrors the use of Spanish theatre in the Philippines, which shows how dictatorship-related foreign theatre can deal effectively with local issues.

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The third block of the volume, Texts, is devoted to the study of theatre as textual artefact, making it fit clearly with Taylor’s notion of the archive, which mostly, albeit not solely, includes written texts (Taylor 2003: 24). Interestingly, while the majority of the performance case studies in this volume deal with post-dictatorial periods and focus on the links between performance and memory, the chapters in the Texts section mostly revolve around plays written during dictatorship, and therefore concentrate on strategies that convey resistance within the text in a context where this may entail great risk. In fact, academic research on theatre and dictatorship has paid extensive attention to the ways in which dictatorship has shaped playwriting. While most of this work puts the focus on how dictatorship is depicted and criticised, less attention has been paid to how theatre’s propagandistic potential has been taken advantage of to support dictatorship. This section, however, opens with an illuminating analysis on this subject. Rizo’s chapter on Equatorial Guinea reveals how the play El hombre y la costumbre advocates for the integration of modernity and local customs – which in the Guinean context means ignoring African traditions and following government regulations – as a way of achieving state’s prosperity. Paradoxically, this message conveys a colonial-like, neo-conservative agenda that, albeit not explicitly, advocates dictatorship. As this volume reflects, however, texts confronting dictatorship are much more common than texts supporting it. Nonetheless, explicit references and attacks on the state are impossible in contexts that deny freedom of speech. So the circumvention of censorship and other forms of coercion becomes central to playwriting, whose archival – as opposed to repertorial – nature has determined its being subject to a more systematic and thorough scrutiny than performance. Accordingly, dramatists have developed various aesthetic methods that allow them to criticise a dictatorship without explicitly mentioning it with the aim of escaping disciplinary measures for them or their work. Among these methods, the actualisation of classics to suit new contexts masks the subversive intention of the author, thus mitigating the likelihood of censorship. Consequently, this practice has traditionally been widely exploited. Rizo’s chapter goes on to analyse a second Guinean text that points out the responsibilities and privileges of the dictator through the figure of Antigone. This aesthetic option allows for Equatorial Guinea to be located in the universal realm and for the process of building the nation around one single person to be discussed. Outliving the tyrant, Antigone questions the limits of state authority over people, calls for resistance and turns the play into a warning to Obiang. Subsequently, Soll’s chapter on Uruguayan and Brazilian texts further explores the actualisation of classics – Shakespeare and Calderón de la Barca, respectively – to depict dictatorial repression. The first play, written during the military dictatorship in Uruguay and portraying a world comparable to Hamlet’s, revolves around the function of art as living memory and, at the same time, as a path forward for those who embrace it. The second, written after Brazil’s military dictatorship and rewriting La vida es sueño, depicts the end of the Vargas regime and an encounter between an actor and a torturer that forces both to re-examine their life’s work. While dating from different

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periods – dictatorial and post-dictatorial – Soll connects the texts as adaptations of classics in order to highlight the relevance of art in times of repression. Strichartz’ chapter also concentrates on the theatrical depiction of dictatorial repression through two Argentine case studies which, interestingly, question audiences about their responsibility for possible complicity with the regime. Both texts set the action in a kitchen – a synecdoche for the private realm – where the citizens’ lack of questioning about dictatorship – the public realm – can be best observed. While in La nona, written at the very beginning of the Proceso, the characters fail to pin down the cause of their problems and look outward to an off-stage public sphere, in De a uno, written at the end of the dictatorship, the public sphere is transported to the middle of the kitchen through under-the-table voices of the disappeared. The author highlights how, despite the characters’ complicity remaining the same, the onstage presence of dictatorship becomes more evident as the Proceso years pass, making audiences uncomfortable and forcing the self-examination necessary to process the trauma of dictatorship. Much more optimistic is Josefina Plá’s El Edificio, to which Yousfi López’ chapter is devoted. If Strichartz focuses on the use of spatial configurations to avoid directly mentioning dictatorship,Yousfi López shows how dictatorship can be depicted through allegory without being explicitly put into words. Written at the end of the Morínigo dictatorship, El Edificio uses lyric expressionism and Orwellian allegory to depict how totalitarian regimes destroy the individual in a rather universalising manner, while avoiding Paraguayan references. Citizens living under the oppression of the constructor are deprived of their awareness and memories, and thus turned into mere numbers in a paradigmatic dystopia. However, this dystopia finally gives way to a utopia embodied in the figure of the Poet. As in Soll’s chapter, an artistic challenge to dictatorship finally allows room for hope. Following this contribution, Betanzos’ analysis of a Cuban text also looks at how to say without saying to avoid censorship. The protagonist’s alternation of voice and silence endows the latter with a powerful symbolic capacity. Silence provokes a breakdown of communication and engages the audience in recreating the character’s sexuality as well as the evident, bleeding action of self-censorship. By so doing, the text tacitly brings to the forefront the impossibility of expressing opposition in Cuba, the frustration caused by the Castro regime, and the Cuban exile. Finally, Westlake’s chapter on Nicaragua’s Spanish- and Nahuatl-language dance drama El Güegüence examines how a given text can be subject to different and even contradictory readings in dictatorial and subsequent post-dictatorial contexts. The 17th/18th-century drama, lampooning Spanish colonial rule, is usually considered Nicaragua’s foundational text. However, while the Somoza dictatorship enhanced the hybrid and mestizo embodied in the protagonist as the paramount feature marking the beginning of Nicaraguan culture, Westlake shows how Sandinista interpretations turned Güegüence into a native who thereby represented the nation-founding moment of struggle against Spanish colonial power and a belligerent Cold-War-era anti-imperialistic agenda.

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A fabric of entangled constraints and responses The transnational study of theatre in countries that were afflicted by dictatorship is on the rise. Despite dictatorship not featuring in the title or not being the main focus of the volumes, recent works on Africa (Losambe and Sarinjeive 2001), Latin America (Puga 2008) and Eastern Europe (Barnett and Skelton 2007; Orlich 2017) to give some examples, are presenting us with new ways to comprehend how dictatorship constrains theatre and how theatre reacts to these constraints beyond national boundaries. This present volume adopts this rather recent approach, thus making a contribution to both Area Studies and Theatre Studies. Indeed, the primary aim of the volume is to promote the idea of the Luso-Hispanic world as an object of study. This is supported by the two main features discussed earlier: a history of colonialism and the common experience of non-democratic rule, which puts post-dictatorial societies on a level field and encourages horizontal cooperation between them. Diverse as they may be, the countries and territories covered in the chapters that follow have been subject to various forms of dictatorship that have profoundly determined culture and, particularly, theatre. Thus, the second aim of this volume is to address this shared experience of having developed theatre under dictatorship across the Luso-Hispanic world. This contributes to Theatre Studies as it unravels the entanglements between dictatorship and theatre by analysing the many constraints imposed by the former and the responses of the latter to those constraints, which have been briefly presented in this chapter and are more fully addressed in those that follow. Lastly, the cases presented in this volume suggest that this common theatrical experience further strengthens the fabric of the Luso-Hispanic world. Phenomena such as the ubiquitous presence of censorship, intra-Luso-Hispanic exile, similar aesthetic responses to dictatorial trauma, international tours and re-appropriation of foreign Luso-Hispanic texts, to name but a few, are all aspects discussed in this volume that demonstrate interconnectedness and act, metaphorically, as threads that weave together the very notion of the Luso-Hispanic world. These threads become interlaced through multidirectional movements across the region. The first of these metaphorical threads is exile. The politically motivated displacement of large contingents of people, playwrights and theatre practitioners among them, is certainly a common consequence of dictatorships. These groups, who tend to seek refuge in cultural and linguistic closeness, often settle in other Luso-Hispanic locations. Paradoxically, exile results in cultural impoverishment of the home country while simultaneously enriching the welcoming one. Josefina Plá is, like many other Spaniards, one of the individuals who contributed hugely to the development of theatre in the Americas after leaving Spain, in her case the theatre of Paraguay. Exile can, however, also be exogenous, like that of the Miami-based Cuban diaspora. While on the one hand this phenomenon questions the very limits of the Luso-Hispanic world, on the other it becomes a subject matter of theatre, as Betanzos suggests in her reading. Finally, the end of a dictatorship generally puts an end to exile, allowing

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for fruitful projects initiated by those returning, as Silva Pereira suggests regarding o bando’s formation in 1974 Portugal. Exiles have suffered physical and emotional removal, but some have also had access to forms of theatre banned or unknown at home, including Luso-Hispanic theatres, which become precious knowledge upon cultural reintegration. In addition to the experiences they bring home with them though, exiles become key players in the shaping of post-dictatorial societies grounded in memory. Despite the aforementioned differences in the way in which Communist regimes and right-wing dictatorships understand, use and control theatre, censorship always goes hand in hand with dictatorship and has been notably omnipresent throughout the Luso-Hispanic world. Being keenly aware of current situations, censorship thrives during times of turmoil, as noted in the case of Portugal during the Spanish Civil War. This not only shows the entanglements between both countries and the inseparable nature of theatre policies and political affairs – it also results in distortion of the repertoires, limitations in the theatre audiences have access to and, ultimately, a rise in evasion theatre, which becomes commonplace on the stages of Luso-Hispanic dictatorial regimes. Strict, suffocating scrutiny of all forms of theatre, both archival and repertorial, textual and performative, makes those who are critical of an oppressive regime aware of the necessity to fight it by seeking out alternative ways to circumvent censorship. The common need to respond to this constraint resulted in an array of aesthetical strategies, both textual and performative, across the Luso-Hispanic world, spanning from the use of allegory to the enhancement of silence as a way of saying something by saying nothing. Appropriation of the classic was, as the chapters that follow will show, an aesthetic solution adopted in a variety of contexts. Interestingly, this usage subverts the canon’s traditional role as a controlling tool, divests the classics of their assumed authority, partially dismantles their narrative and gives shape to new versions of the classic that not only do not support power, but also denounce oppressive, dictatorial authority. Such responses to theatre policies came from within the theatrical genre as well as from the theatre milieu. The emergence of new kinds of theatre practice, most of the time in the form of self-sufficient ventures, can be observed throughout the Luso-Hispanic world: from small, austere troupes in the Philippines via the Argentine Teatro Abierto cultural movement to independent theatre companies in the Iberian Peninsula. All of these arise in the wake of the Avant-garde and understand theatre as a tool to reach broader audiences, usually making use of new, non-theatrical venues that make theatre accessible to the masses during dictatorial oppression. This trend is particularly present in this volume through case studies relating to Iberia. Interestingly, teatro independiente can be found in both Spain and Portugal and in all three stateless nations in Spain. While the companies o bando and Dagoll Dagom are more thoroughly commented upon, accounts of independent theatre in Galicia and the Basque Country also provide insight into further groups. In the context of radical centralist policies and the predominance of Spanish-language theatre, the use of non-Castilian languages became a sign of resistance, to the point that Catalan became, for many, the language of freedom, as

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Astles mentions in her chapter, during the final stage of the Franco regime. Catalan, Galician and Basque independent theatre groups fought centripetal forces and placed the focus on their national cultures – Galizanization is, for instance, the descriptive term used by Lourenço Módia in her chapter. These activities, sometimes drawing upon Marxism, were seen as a way to oppose dictatorial rule and an oppressive state, and were inextricably linked to the fight for democratic rights through the expression of national identities. While transitions to democracy both in Spain and Portugal saw the effervescence of this kind of theatre, the situations that followed transition required degrees of professionalisation that had various consequences: some Catalan groups earned world-class reputations while some companies that had been pivotal in the fight against dictatorship vanished. Paradoxically, theatrical policies in post-dictatorial societies are sometimes partially responsible for this situation, as Fernández Iglesias laments in her chapter. Fascist-inspired dictatorships are deeply bound to the notion of empire. While Franco’s Spain attached great importance to spreading an allegedly superior Spanish culture across Spanish-speaking America, Salazar’s Portugal struggled to hold together an empire that was violently falling apart. This meant that both dictatorships tried to reinforce the centre/periphery dichotomy anew, thus restoring old colonial rhetoric. This discourse has, however, been challenged and subverted by theatre, which has amply exploited the similarities between colonial and dictatorial rule. If postcolonial is that which questions colonialism’s discourse, mostly based upon polarised power structures, then theatre, from a postcolonial perspective, has “to dismantle the hegemonic boundaries and the determinants that create unequal relations of power based on binary oppositions such as ‘us and them’, ‘first world and third world’,‘white and black’,‘coloniser and colonised’” (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 3). This dismantling resonates greatly within Marxism in the wake of the Cold War, allowing for the fight against dictatorship to echo previous fights for national liberation. While such discourses can sometimes be found in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, their presence was much greater in other parts of the Luso-Hispanic world that had actually suffered colonial rule. In many postcolonial countries, the fight against the invader is seen as a founding myth and a cornerstone of national identity, and national history was understood, especially through a Marxist lens, as a continuous struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. This meant that dictatorship was often understood as a continuation of colonialism, and resistance against it was seen as an extension of the fight for national liberation. This understanding resulted in paradoxical situations. Dictatorships in Nicaragua, the Philippines and Guinea, for instance, drew upon national liberation rhetoric to legitimise themselves. However, their discourses were subsequently subverted by their opponents to portray the dictators as new, foreign invaders who should be thrown out in the continuing fight for freedom. In such contexts, theatre has become, across the Luso-Hispanic world, a particularly adequate means of exploring these historical connections, for in performative genres, unlike in literary modes of representation, narratives unfold in space as well as through time. Whereas words on a page must be

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interpreted sequentially, theatre offers the possibility of a simultaneous reading of all the visual and aural signifiers embedded in the text as performance. It lends itself particularly well to the interrogation of spatial and temporal (teleological) aspects of imperialism. (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 109) In postcolonial contexts, theatre’s capacity to link different times allows criticism of how dictatorships are informed by metropolitan values. This can be seen in the reading of Marcos as a new foreign ruler and, interestingly, in the anti-dictatorial readings to which colonial theatre has been subject. It has been pointed out that this theatre “can be viewed ambivalently as a potential agent of social reform and as an avenue for political disobedience” (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 8). Accordingly, the hybrid nature of protagonists in Nicaragua’s El Güegüence and Mozambique’s Nós matámos o Cão Tinhoso!, neither-colonisednor-coloniser, have surprisingly been exploited to unravel the contradictions of dictatorship. This can be best observed in the partisan, conflicting readings to which both the Somoza regime and the ensuing Sandinistas subjected El Güegüence, reflecting dictatorial and post-dictatorial shifting agendas. This is possible thanks to theatre’s capacity to make the historical connections referred to earlier facilitate “the telling/showing of oppositional versions of the past that propose not only different constitutive events but different ways of constructing that past in the present” (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 109). The same can be said of the performance of Nós matámos o Cão Tinhoso! that evokes the Colonial Wars and dictatorship from a Mozambican perspective in post-dictatorial Portugal, thus showing the country’s shortcomings in dealing with its recent, colonial past. In this way, colonial theatre is placed in new, postcolonial contexts so as to subvert not only colonial discourse, but dictatorial discourse as well. Interestingly, this understanding of history as a continuum of colonialism and dictatorship unavoidably introduces a new phenomenon – neo-imperialism. If, in postcolonial societies, “discourses of nationhood are sometimes continuous with the epistemologies of imperialism” (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996: 268), the idea of empire in the 21st century has mutated, as the use of colonial theatre in postcolonial contexts shows: while El Güegüence tells the struggle against foreign imperialism, Sandinista readings equate Spanish and US rule of Nicaragua. This understanding of continuous rule has the same resonances in the Philippines and even in Guinea, as the centre of the new, 21st-century empire seems to be exogenous to the Luso-Hispanic world. As discussed earlier, the complicity with/support of many dictatorships and the direct confrontation with others in the context of the Cold War has made the United States the new other and the de facto centre that neutralises previous centre/periphery dichotomies within the Luso-Hispanic world. The ensuing horizontalisation of previous vertical, colonial-based relations is best exemplified in o bando’s performance of a Mozambican text. Firstly, the company takes a political stance in fostering Portuguese-language theatre, opposing what they understand as English-language imperialism and somehow positioning Portugal as subaltern

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vis-à-vis Anglo-Saxon neo-imperialism. This stance is briefly discussed in Silva Pereira’s chapter and echoes the suggestion of the potential inclusion of Iberian countries in the global South discussed earlier. Secondly, the performance uses a colonial text to display on the stage Portugal’s failure to deal with its past. This is central to subverting the centre/periphery logic within the LusoHispanic world for it puts both countries on a par, denying centripetal relations between them and establishing a collaborative cultural dialogue. In short, both post-dictatorial societies seek mutual help and benefit through the fabric of a shared theatre. On the whole, this volume shows how these interconnected experiences of dictatorial constraint upon theatre together weave the Luso-Hispanic fabric. While these entanglements have so far received much attention in areas such as the Southern Cone and the Iberian Peninsula, this work widens the scope of the Luso-Hispanic world and offers interesting case studies such as those looking at Paraguay or Guinea, which have unfortunately received far less attention. However, further research should also take into consideration how theatre and dictatorship interact in other Luso-Hispanic countries as well as within stateless communities such as Native American ones. It is hoped that this volume will encourage further study in this fascinating field.

Notes 1 The Luso-Hispanic World in Maps is a Library of Congress source fully available online: www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/luso/ 2 These are current sovereign states. To this list, however, Goa, Damão and Diu (India) and Macau (China) could be added. 3 Portal de la literatura filipina en español: www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/ literatura_filipina_en_espanol/ 4 TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World: http://escholarship.org/uc/ssha_transmodernity 5 Political scientists provide various tools which measure and classify regimes into dictatorships and democracies. US-based NGO Freedom House, data series Polity IV and dataset Democracy-Dictatorship Index are useful in assessing the situation of all world countries. 6 Territories such as Goa, Damão and Diu, on the one hand, and Macao, on the other, are left aside in this account for they became part of already-existing larger countries – India and China respectively. There are two further cases that do not feature on the list. East Timor was invaded by Indonesia days after its independence from Portugal and was internationally recognised as an independent country in 2002. Puerto Rico’s one-of-a-kind relationship with the United States since independence from Spain has meant that the country enjoyed democratic rule throughout the 20th century. 7 The vastness of this publication list makes a comprehensive citation of titles impossible. However, a glimpse at Argentina, one of the countries that has received a great deal of attention, would include Graham-Jones’ fundamental work on the dictatorial period (2000) and Page’s on post-dictatorship (2011).

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Pavis, P. (1998): Diccionario del teatro. Dramaturgia, estética y semiología. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. Pérez Isasi, S. (2012): “Imágenes de la Península Ibérica en la historiografía literaria romántica europea”, in Imagologías Ibéricas. Construyendo el otro peninsular, M. J. Fernández García and M. L. Leal (eds.). Mérida: Gabinete de Iniciativas Transfronterizas, 181–198. ——— (2013): “Iberian Studies: A State of the Art and Future Perspectives”, in Looking at Iberia: A Comparative European Perspective, A. Fernandes and S. Pérez Isasi (eds.). Oxford: Peter Lang, 11–26. ——— (2014): “Literatura, iberismo(s), nacionalismo(s): Apuntes para una historia del iberismo literario (1868–1936)”, 452ºF. Revista de teoría de la literatura y literatura comparada 11: 64–79. Puga, A. E. (2008): Memory, Allegory, and Testimony in South American Theatre: Upstaging Dictatorship. London and New York: Routledge. Quijano, A. (1998): “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina”, Ecuador Debate 44: 227–238. Resina, J. R. (2009): Del hispanismo a los estudios ibéricos. Una propuesta federativa para el ámbito cultural. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. ——— (ed.) (2013): Iberian Modalities. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Ribeiro de Menezes, A. and C. O’Leary (eds.) (2011): Legacies of War and Dictatorship in Contemporary Portugal and Spain. Oxford: Peter Lang. Rocamora, J. A. (1994): El nacionalismo ibérico. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid. Said, E. W. (2003[1978]): Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. Santos Sánchez, D. (2015): “Los Aparatos Teatrales de Estado. Una propuesta teórica para abordar las relaciones entre teatro y dictadura en la España de Franco”, Iberoromania 82: 170–184. Sardica, J. M. (2013): Ibéria. A Relação entre Portugal e Espanha no século XX. Lisboa: Aletheia. Schechner, R. (1966): “Approaches to Theory/Criticism”, The Tulane Drama Review 10.4: 20–53. ——— (2002): Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Schwartz, J. (1993): “¡Abajo Tordesillas!”, Casa de las Américas 33.191: 26–35. Taylor, D. (2003): The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thompson, M. (2016): “The Power of Theatre”, in Global Insights of Theatre Censorship, C. O’Leary, D. Santos Sánchez and M. Thompson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 259–267. Tinajero, A. (ed.) (2014): Orientalisms of the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian World. New York: Escribana Books. Turner, V. (1990): “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?”, in By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, R. Schechner and W. Appel (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 8–18. Winter, U. (2013): “Asymmetry and the Political: Paradigms for a Cultural History of the Iberian Twentieth Century”, in Iberian Modalities, J. R. Resina (ed.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 129–142.

Part I

Policies/Practices

2

Theatre censorship and foreign drama in Estado Novo Portugal during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War1 Zsófia Gombár

Historical background António de Oliveira Salazar’s (1889–1970) sympathies with General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) were an open secret right from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, since Salazar was perfectly aware that the survival of his recently created Estado Novo (New State) greatly depended on the Nationalist victory in Spain. Although Portugal also signed the Non-Intervention Agreement in 1936 – mostly due to Anglo-French pressure – Salazar continued to support the rebel nationalist forces either by sending Portuguese volunteers to fight on Franco’s side or by facilitating arms trafficking from Nazi Germany via Portugal to the nationalist troops in Spain (Stone 1994: 10–11).2 Besides direct military help, the Estado Novo also backed the rebels by manipulation of mass public opinion at home as well as in Spain through pro-Nationalist propaganda and information control.3 The Spanish Civil War also triggered growing authoritarian, if not totalitarian tendencies, in the Portuguese political system. For instance, the first prison camp for political detainees was set up at Tarrafal, in the Cape Verdean Island of Santiago. Tarrafal was not merely a prison, but rather a concentration camp, also known as the campo da morte lenta (camp of slow death), where malnutrition, torture and diseases were rampant.4 Moreover, the creation of mass organisations such as the Mocidade Portuguesa (Portuguese Youth), where membership was compulsory for boys aged ten upwards along with the fascist salute, and the anti-communist Legião Portuguesa (Portuguese Legion), a paramilitary organisation modelled on the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung) (Torgal 2009: 159–226) and the establishment of the Portuguese secret police, Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado, PVDE (Police of Vigilance and State Defence), later renamed PIDE, whose first instructors were indeed imported from Italy and Germany (Gallagher 1983: 118), all point to the existence of an obvious political and ideological link between the Estado Novo and totalitarian fascist movements in contemporary Europe (Sapega 2008: 2).5 Notwithstanding all this, a great number of historians such as Rosas (2002: 268–282) and Meneses (2010: 222–273) argue that despite some of Salazar’s proNazi tendencies and activities, the Estado Novo’s foreign politics reveals more of

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a pro-British stance during the Second World War. In fact, diplomatic relations between Britain and Portugal existed much earlier than the outbreak of the war, dating back as early as 1294, when Portugal first entered into a commercial treaty with England, reinforced by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386. Centuries later, during the First World War, Portugal fought on the side of the Allies, sending 50,000 troops to the Western Front. The relationship between Portugal and Germany, however, did not have such deep roots, dating only back to the time of the Spanish Civil War (Reginbogin and Vagts 2009: 127). Although Portugal greatly benefited from trading with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, Britain remained the main supplier and investor in the Portuguese economy throughout the war, which means that the maintenance of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance continued to be of vital importance for the Salazar administration (Rosas 2002: 269). Additionally, for Portugal, neutrality during the Second World War also served as a guarantee against a possible German-Spanish aggression (Leitz 2000: 150). Nonetheless, in 1939 press censorship was reinforced in order to ensure that the news coverage would not offend any of the belligerent countries, which might compromise the neutral position of Portugal in the war. Although censorship applied to pro-Axis as well as pro-Allied propaganda, at this phase, cuts were mostly made on the grounds of protecting Germany and Hitler’s reputation (Meneses 2010: 228). Moreover, even if Salazar, himself, might not have favoured – temperamentally – the Axis, the majority of his cabinet ministers along with Salazar’s close political confidants were believed to be staunch Germanophils. Also, in the face of rigid censorship, the semi-official newspaper, Diário de Manhã, for instance, was discernibly fascist-biased, and until almost at the end of the war, Alerta, a fascist weekly, was also legitimately authorised to be published in the country (Gallagher 1990: 170). Figueiredo also suggests a pro-Axis bias on the part of the Portuguese government. He states that while newspaper articles and BBC broadcasts were strictly monitored, and banned forthright if they should offend or criticise the Axis Powers to any degree, Nazi propaganda was given far freer rein (1976: 92).

Theatre censorship in neutral Europe and in Portugal Nonetheless certain cautions on the part of the Salazar administration are certainly understandable. In neutral Sweden, for example, for fear of a possible German invasion, censorship policy was reintroduced in order to prevent any possible insult against the Third Reich. Although hostile and scathing criticism of the Allies and the Swedish government was blissfully ignored, public disapproval of Hitler, Germany or the Nazi policy was strictly forbidden (Levine 2002: 321). Indeed, sanctions imposed were far from being modest, and besides confiscation of the newspaper issues and books in question, could also involve incarceration.6 Despite the new wartime censorship policy, Swedish theatre seemingly managed to escape censorship. Although the German influence was profound and

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pervasive in the country, the Gothenburg City Theatre remained a bulwark of strength to those who opposed the undemocratic and inhuman Nazi regime. The theatre managed to pursue a prevailingly liberal and anti-fascist repertoire throughout the war without any official reprimand or serious penalties (cf.: Domsa 2011). By way of comparison, the same could not be said of the theatre policy in non-aligned Ireland. Although it is true that just like in Sweden, the draconic censorship legislation affected mostly the press and news release, while the theatre was largely overlooked, the effective prohibition of the play Roly Poly in 1940 certainly served as an important precedent, and might also have acted as a powerful deterrent to other theatre practitioners later on. The play, in fact, was a modern adaptation of Maupassant’s (1850–1893) famous short story “Boule de suif ” (1880) set in the Franco-Prussian war, and was withdrawn after its second performance upon intense pressure from Nazi Germany and Vichy France.7 With reference to Portugal, theatre censorship has a long history in the country well before the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. From the 17th century up to the early 19th century inquisitional censorship controlled the Portuguese stage, and although prior censorship was finally abolished in 1834, freedom of expression continued to remain under threat thereafter. In 1910, the First Portuguese Republic was declared, which was shortly overthrown by a military coup d’état in 1926. Censorship was reintroduced as early as 1927 by the new regime. As for theatre, the Decree No. 13564 of 6 May, 1927 allowed official entities to fiscalisar os espectáculos e promover a repressão de quaisquer factos ofensivos da lei, da moral e dos bons costumes [to monitor performances and seek to suppress every possible offence against law, morality and good manners]. It is quite intriguing that besides these vague legal and moral terms, the decree does not specify the grounds on which a performance should be suppressed. Legislation dating from 30 years later already contains more concrete details, but still some of the censorship criteria remained elusive: films, theatrical performances or any other stage productions should not be authorised, if they should pose any offence to órgãos da soberania nacional, das instituições vigentes, dos chefes do Estado ou representantes diplomáticos de países estrangeiros, das crenças religiosas e da moral cristã tradicional, dos bons costumes e das pessoas particulares, ou que incitem ao crime ou sejam, por qualquer outra forma perniciosos à educação do povo [national governing bodies of the prevailing institutions, the heads of states or foreign diplomatic representatives, religious beliefs, and Christian moral values, good moral standards, and private citizens, or should incite crime or be pernicious, in any possible way, to people’s education] (Article 40 of Decree No. 42660 of 20 November, 1957). The absence of tangible and well-defined categories certainly made the theatre practitioners’ work more precarious and uncertain – and occasionally even caused tensions among the censors themselves (cf.: Cabrera 2013) – but it suited the priorities of the repressive organs of the state, as obscurity provided censors with even more power and liberty. Of course it also opened the way to

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arbitrariness and inconsistency. The varying rigor on the part of the censorship bodies, nonetheless, can be put down, for the most part, to historical and political factors such as wars and other domestic conflicts rather than merely to the censors’ arbitrary and capricious attitude. As has been mentioned, the onset of the Spanish Civil War marked a surge towards authoritarianism in Portugal. Press censorship and suppression of the leftwing opposition, especially the Communist Party, became more widespread and stringent. Santos also asserts that cultural repression including theatre censorship became more violent and open after the onset of the civil war (2004: 260). However, she fails to provide quantifiable justification for her claim in her otherwise remarkably informative and insightful monograph, which was mostly due to the unorganised and missing archives at the time of her investigation. Indeed, the number of scholarly publications on theatre censorship in Estado Novo Portugal is very modest, and with the exception of Cabrera’s works (2008, 2013, 2016), no databased studies have been conducted hitherto. Also no archive-based work has been published whatsoever on pre-war and wartime theatre censorship in Portugal. The present chapter attempts to rectify this lacuna by examining theatre translations staged or proposed to be staged during the years of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Examining translations might also give us a clearer picture with respect to the openness of the Portuguese literary system in the turmoil of the wars. Likewise, the study attempts to give an answer to the question whether the Estado Novo’s political stance in the subsequent wars had any possible impact on theatre translations. The survey, therefore, pays particular attention to the source countries as well as to the potentially disparate level of censorship imposed on the belligerent source cultures.

Bibliographical sources and research corpus The database used in the present study draws predominantly on four bibliographical sources: (1) theatre censorship files stored at the National Archives of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon,8 (2) TETRAbase (Carvalho), a research database on theatre translations produced in Portugal until 2009, (3) CETbase (Serôdio), a national online database on theatrical performances staged in Portugal, and (4) Dicionário do Cinema Português by Jorge Leitão Ramos (1989).9 Similarly to the Spanish TRACE project, censorship files constitute the backbone of the present research as well.10 No other traditional bibliographical source has proved to be as comprehensive and detailed as the archival records on theatre censorship in Estado Novo Portugal. Since all theatre performances had to be submitted – under legal obligation – to censorship in Portugal from 1927 until 1974, on the basis of the censorship reports in existence, it seems to be feasible to reconstruct an almost all-inclusive corpus of theatre translations produced in the period. As Merino puts it, “censorship archives represent a privileged ‘balcony’ affording a panoramic view of the history of translated theatre” (Merino 2016: 177). The reason why other bibliographical sources were extensively consulted in this study is the lamentable fact that unlike the Spanish archival records, the

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location of a number of Portuguese censorship reports dated from 1929 until 1974 is still unknown. And, therefore, in the current absence of these files, various forms of information on staged performances were used to fill this vacuum. By using an extensive corpus of theatre translations, it is still possible to trace certain tendencies, recurrent traits – or occasionally quite the contrary – violations of the norm. It becomes abundantly clear what kind of foreign authors or translators were more representative of the period, which source languages or literatures proved to be prevalent in the Portuguese target culture, what type of theatres and theatre companies were privileged at certain points in time, what sort of text types and genres were preferred by the theatre practitioners of the era, and among others, what kind of texts were predominantly banned or authorised. The database used in this investigation is mostly based on contextual information derived from the analysis of the actual censorship reports, and structured according to the following categories: premier year, translated title, original title, original premier or publication year, genre of the play, author’s name, translator’s name, theatre venue, theatre company, decision of the censorship office, possible reason for the ban or suggested textual alterations, author’s nationality, source language and mode of translation. Apart from factual information obtained from the reports, other categories were introduced such as details on indirectness or directness of the translation, the possible language of mediation, observations and the bibliographical sources consulted. The scope of this chapter is confined to the study of theatre translations staged or planned to be staged in the period under scrutiny. Thus translations published only in book form or in periodicals have not been included. The corpus used in this study incorporates professional as well as amateur performances, and besides theatre in prose, it embraces operas, operettas, variety shows, burlesques, school and children’s plays. Moreover, only those theatre translations that were actually staged in Portugal have been taken into account; guest performances have, therefore, been excluded from the analysis.

Findings and analysis To date, 364 theatre translations have been found that were destined to be staged in Portugal between 1936 and 1945, while according to the bibliographical sources available at present, 314 plays for stage were produced between 1929 and 1935. As far as censorship is concerned, a comparison of the two corpuses clearly reveals that censorship imposed on theatre translations became far more severe during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War period. The percentage of prohibited theatre translations rose from 2% (5) to 10% (36), and the number of theatre translations authorised after cuts also significantly increased – from 15 (5%) to 69 (19%) between 1936 and 1945, which, in fact, closely corresponds with Santos’ postulation on the severity of theatre censorship after the onset of the Spanish Civil War in Portugal (see Figure 2.1). Figure 2.2 shows that the censorship rate of theatre translations rocketed to the highest level (45% and 47%) in the first two years of the Spanish Civil War,

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Figure 2.1 Censorship Imposed on Theatre Translations for Stage (1929–1945)

Figure 2.2 Theatre Translations for Stage Censored between 1929 and 1945

while in the last year it decreased to 33%.11 The onset of the Second World War had a relatively modest effect on theatre censorship: censorship rate rose only to 37%, and then gradually dwindled until 1942, when it unexpectedly started to increase again until 1944. In the final year of the war, 1945, the censorship rate plummeted to 5%. This brief relaxation of censorship after the Second World War was part of Salazar’s temporary and feigned liberalisation policy, which also

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involved fake democratisation of the electoral law and the amnesty of a moderate number of political prisoners in Tarrafal and Peniche (Raby 1988: 91). Needless to say that all these liberal reforms turned out to be very short-lived, so did the forlorn illusion nursed by the democratic opposition that “Salazar would fall with Hitler”. It is very important to note that contrary to what one might expect, the increased level of censorship during wartime had little to do with the war itself or the belligerent parties. The vast majority of the stage plays – 26 out of the 36 proscribed theatre translations – were indeed not prohibited on political grounds, but on moral grounds. The most sensitive non-political topics included adultery (9), sexual immorality (8) and suicide (3). No theatre translation was actually banned for containing any potentially pernicious reference to the powers at war. However, two stage plays were suppressed because of their fiercely pacifist message, and both of them were censored in 1937, still in the Spanish Civil War period. The number of bowdlerised translations is double the number of banned performances, which evinces a seemingly lenient attitude on the part of the censoring bodies. Additionally, if one takes into consideration the fact that 60%, or, in all probability, even more than 60% of the stage translations were authorised by the authorities without the slightest objections, one might hastily jump to the conclusion that theatre censorship was merely an indulgent practice in Estado Novo Portugal, which is of course not the case. Due to the commonly untraceable presence of self-censorship, it is impossible to gauge its dramatic effect on the actual theatrical production. As Vandaele asserts with reference to Francoist theatre and film censorship: “And as in film translation, self-censorship – the translational habitus – was so effective in the theatrical realm that the Board did not often have to impose its own ‘external’ censorship” (2010: 107). It is also unfeasible to measure the negative impact on the creative process and the quality of artistic work as well as to determine the exact number of plays that were, in fact, never staged for fear of censorship. For instance, the absence of political theatre on the Portuguese stage is patently clear. The dominance of non-political and non-controversial plays certainly suited the incumbent dictatorial regime’s conformist expectations, but it also contributed to the aesthetic and cultural impoverishment of theatrical life in Portugal. The complete lack of theatre translations referring to the concurrent wars in neighbouring Spain and around the world derived the Portuguese spectators of exchanging ideas and reflecting freely upon contemporary events and politics. The overwhelming majority of the theatre translations staged in the period under scrutiny were, in fact, comedies and farces. Similarly to the post-war “Theatre of Evasion” in Spain, the main objective of the Portuguese theatre was to entertain its audience who were more than willing to escape from the harsh realities of economic recession and food shortages exacerbated by the world war. The most frequently translated authors in the period under study are French (121), Spanish (107), English (30), Italian (23), Hungarian (13), German (8),

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Russian (6), Dutch (1), Greek (1) and Danish (1). Given the centuries-old hegemony of the Spanish and French language and literature in Portugal, the high number of Spanish and French plays might not be unexpected at all. Moreover, the fact that the vast majority of theatre practitioners did not speak languages other than Spanish or French might also have limited the choice of the Portuguese repertoires. The marginal position of Germany and Italy in the target culture, however, clearly reveals that cultural and language-related factors were far more influential in the selection process than any supposed political sympathies with the fascist and Nazi regime. It is noteworthy that none of the playwrights in German was known for their political affiliations with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, Ludwig Fulda (1862–1939), author of the play Das Wundermittel (1920), for instance, was of Jewish origin and committed suicide in Berlin when he did not receive an entry permit to the United States (Lester and Stockton 2005: 73). It is also important to note that almost all playwrights staged between 1936 and 1945 were contemporary authors, who – with the exception of Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) – are now less-known or long-forgotten writers such as Ernst Bock (1880–1961), Franz Arnold (1878–1960) and Ernst Bach (1876–1929). Aside from the play Am Teetisch: Lustspiel (1915) by Karl Sloboda (1875–1929), which contained direct references to suicide and possible adultery, no play in German was prohibited on stage in Portugal in the period under scrutiny. Theatre translations from Italian staged in Portugal were also dominated by non-ideological and non-political plays, but the number of politically involved and patriotic playwrights is far more elevated than that of any other foreign authors staged in Estado Novo Portugal such as Gino Saviotti (1891–1980), Luigi Pirandello, (1867–1936), Luigi Chiarelli (1880–1947) and Bruno Corra (1892–1976). The most frequently staged Italian author in Portugal of the era was Dario Niccodemi (1874–1934), a playwright of comedies of manners and sentimental plays, whose works were also wildly popular in his home country at the time. During the Second World War period, no plays in English were banned or bowdlerised on the Portuguese stage. The only play in English that was, in fact, prohibited was Before Breakfast (1916) by Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953), a monologue-long play with direct allusions to non-matrimonial sex, adultery, and the suicide of the husband at the end. Interestingly, the play was banned in 1936, but authorised in 1943 without further ado. Only three theatre translations from English were actually bowdlerised in Portugal in the period under investigation: The Shanghai Gesture (1926) by John Colton (1887–1946) in 1936, The Trial of Mary Dugan (1927) by Bayard Veiller (1869–1943) in 1938 and Baby Mine (1910) by Margaret Mayo (1882–1951) in 1938. Noteworthily, none of them were censored on political grounds, but on moral grounds. Most theatre translations that were prohibited or authorised after cuts by the censorship authorities because of containing politically contentious references were indeed theatrical imports from France (ten plays) and Spain (14 plays). The vast majority of these plays were found problematic by the censorship

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bodies because of containing disrespectful or potentially offensive references to contemporaneous domestic political issues or entities and not because of potentially breaching neutrality laws in force or referring to the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, only one out of fourteen politically contentious Spanish plays was actually prohibited. The number of French plays banned on political grounds was comparatively higher, that is, four translations from French were proscribed by the authorities. It is important to highlight though that none of the theatre translations under study were prohibited on stage because of posing potential threat to the good relationship between Portugal and the belligerent powers, but again because of their presumably disrespectful allusions to national political affairs. In fact, theatre translations from French and Spanish were censored more often for immoral than for political reasons. It is also of particular interest that 21 out of the 36 drama translations prohibited on Portuguese stage between 1936 and 1945 – that is, 58% of the total number of banned performances in translation – were French plays. Figure 2.3 aptly illustrates the overwhelming proportion of the banned theatre translations from French, compared to other source languages, including Spanish (3), Russian (2), English (1), and German (1), etc. It appears that the Portuguese censors showed a strong preference for just simply banning French plays rather than for deleting the problematic passages in the text. In addition, the vast majority of these plays – 18 out of 21 banned translations from French – were forbidden for allegedly violating public decency and morality, and not for their politically subversive contents. One of the three French plays proscribed on political grounds is L’Aiguilleur (1895) by Claude Roland (1872–1946), a one-act socially militant play which tells the tragic story of a destitute pointsman and his poverty-stricken family.

Figure 2.3 Theatre Translations for Stage Banned in Portugal between 1936 and 1945

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The play ends with the protagonist’s desperate mass slaughter of innocent civilians. L’École des Contribuables (1934) by Louis Verneuil (1893–1952) and Georges Berr (1867–1942) was prohibited in 1936 for its politically topical references to corruption and tax increase, while L’Animateur (1920) by Henry Bataille (1872–1922) was prohibited in 1937 for putting the left-wing protagonist in a favourable light. The number of banned Spanish plays is, in fact, very low (3), especially in comparison with the number of Spanish dramatic texts expurgated (38) by the Portuguese censorship office in the period under scrutiny. It is also significant that no Spanish play was censored for referring to the Spanish Civil War, if one does not count of course the deleted exclamation: “Viva a Espanha democrática!” (Long live Democratic Spain) in the mocking satire Anacleto se divorcia (1932) by Pedro Muñoz Seca (1879–1936) and Pedro Pérez Fernández (1884–1956) (Censorship Report no. 2997, page 49). The former playwright was illegally executed at the beginning of the civil war because of his antiRepublican sympathies, and thus was seen as a martyr by the Francoist regime. The almost complete absence of Republican dramatists on the Portuguese scene such as Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Miguel Hernández (1910– 1942), Rafael Alberti (1902–1999), Max Aub (1903–1972) or Jacinto Grau (1877–1958), to name but a few, might not come as a surprise. Uniquely, the one and only anti-Francoist playwright who was authorised on the Portuguese scene in these wartime years was Alejandro Casona (1903–1965). The most frequently performed Spanish authors in Portugal just like in post–Civil War Spain were comedy and farce writers such as Carlos Arniches (1866–1943), Adolfo Torrado (1904–1958), Joaquín (1873–1944) and Serafín Álvarez Quintero (1871–1938). It seems as if the Portuguese theatre audience and the Spanish alike did not want to take cognisance of the obvious conflicts and wars surrounding them, as if they just wanted to be entertained, laugh, and simply forget about the present and the past.

Conclusion The lack of politically motivated plays promoting either left- or right-wing ideological agendas is probably one of the most conspicuous characteristics of the Portuguese theatre of the period. In comparison with totalitarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany or Soviet Russia, where theatre was essentially regarded as a powerful propaganda tool, and thus theatre translations were likewise exploited, the Estado Novo theatre failed or maybe did not even attempt to use foreign drama translations to convey the government’s official views or political position. The only effective political instrument the regime used to control the import of foreign plays was basically censorship (cf. Gombár 2016). The apparent leniency of the censorship office in regard of staged theatre translations reveals that theatre practitioners had already internalised the written and unwritten rules laid down by the regime, and thus studiously avoided staging politically or morally contentious plays. The chronic shortage of thought-provoking

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and challenging plays, however, was gravely conducive to the intellectual impoverishment of theatre. The total absence of alternative and experimental theatre along with the very low number of classic and serious stage plays as contrasted to the overwhelming presence of lightweight commercial comedies and farces on the Portuguese stage reflects that theatre in Estado Novo Portugal was very much dependent on box-office success, rather than on political effectiveness, let alone critical acclaim. These artistically as well as economically impoverished theatres without constant government support also complied with the regime’s long-term objectives to suffocate and silence dissident voices by not giving them any public platform. Even if national playwrights were more heavily censored than foreign authors (Cabrera 2016: 158), theatre translation production was also strictly controlled and curbed in Salazar’s Portugal, which seriously hindered the appearance of new foreign tendencies and influences in the country. Paradoxically, it seems that wartime Portuguese theatre is more notable for what it chose to ignore and marginalise than for what it actually promoted.

Notes 1 I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Patricia Odber de Baubeta for her scholarly reading and insightful comments, and I am also very grateful to Teresa Seruya for her help as well as for allowing me to read her article prior to publication. The research conducted for this chapter has been undertaken as part of my postdoctoral fellowship (SFRH/ BPD/92486/2013) funded by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT) as well as in the context of the Portuguese research project “Censura e mecanismos de control da informação no teatro e no cinema” coordinated by Ana Cabrera and housed at the Centre for Media and Journalism, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, also funded by FCT between 2011 and 2014 (PTDC/CCI-COM/117978/2010). 2 Legião Viriato (Viriathus Legion) was named after the legendary Lusitanian leader Viriato (Viriathus), who fought against the Roman invaders in the 140s B.C. According to Portuguese historian César Oliveira, no more than 8,000 Portuguese volunteers participated in the Spanish Civil War (for more information, see Oliveira 1988: 244–247; Meneses 2010: 204–206). 3 For an interesting case study, see Pena-Rodríguez (2015). 4 For more information, see Madeira et al. (2007: 229–237). 5 For a detailed overview on literature concerning Portugal’s political position and involvement in the Spanish Civil War, consult Seruya (forthcoming). With reference to Englishlanguage reference works, see also Meneses (2010: 190–222) and Stone (1994: 7–46). 6 Ture Nerma, editor of the anti-fascist newspaper Trots Allt!, for example, was sentenced to three-month imprisonment for an article entitled “Hitler’s Hell Machine” in 1940 (Gilmour 2010: 163). 7 For more information, see Ó Drisceoil (2016) and Ó Drisceoil (1996). 8 The content pages of the theatre censorship files are also available online: http://digitarq. arquivos.pt/details?id=4314363 (accessed 21/01/2016). 9 In addition to national filmography, the volume contains bibliographical information on Portuguese directors, actors, cinematographers scriptwriters, and technicians of the period. Accordingly, the dictionary also includes invaluable data on staged theatrical performances to which they contributed. 10 TRACE (TRAnslations CEnsored) is a joint research project between the University of León and the University of the Basque Country. Its research database includes catalogues

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of book, theatre and cinema translations censored in Franco-regime Spain. For more information, see http://trace.unileon.es, www.ehu.es/trace/ (accessed 21/01/2016). 11 Censorship rate refers to the number of stage plays that were banned or authorised only after cuts as a percentage of the total number of plays submitted to censorship in the period under study.

References Cabrera, A. (2008): “A censura ao teatro no período Marcelista”, Media e Jornalismo 12: 25–58. ——— (2013): “Censura e estratégias censurantes na sociedade contemporânea”, in Censura nunca mais! A censura ao teatro e ao cinema no Estado Novo, Ana Cabrera (ed.). Lisboa: Alêtheia Editores, 15–75. ——— (2016): “Theatre Censorship during the Estado Novo: Policies, Censors, Organisation and Procedures”, in Global Insights on Theatre Censorship, C. O’Leary, D. Santos Sánchez, and M. Thompson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 149–151. Carvalho, M. coord. TETRAbase. TETRA (Teatro e Tradução): Towards a History of Theatre Translation in Portugal, 1800–2009, FCT-funded research project, housed at the Centre for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon, http://tetra.letras.ulisboa.pt/base/ search?advanced=1 (accessed 21 January 2016). Censorship Files stored at the National Archives of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon. Fonds: SNI (Secretariado Nacional de Informação), Subfonds: DGE (Direcção Geral dos Serviços de Espectáculos), Series: Processos de censura a peças de teatro, http://digitarq.arquivos.pt/ details?id=4314363 (accessed 21 January 2016). Decreto nº 13564 de 6 de maio de 1927 [Decree No. 13564 of 6 May, 1927]. Decreto-lei nº 42660 de 20 de novembro de 1959 [Decree No. 42660 of 20 November, 1957]. Domsa, Zs. (2011): “Harc a sötét hatalom ellen. Skandináv színház és színházi emberek a II. Világháború éveiben”, in Színház és diktatúra a 20. Században, G. Lengyel (ed.). Budapest: Corvina, 90–107. Figueiredo, A. de (1976): Portugal: Fifty Years of Dictatorship. New York: Holmer & Meier Publishers. Gallagher, T. (1983): Portugal: A Twentieth-Century Interpretation. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ——— (1990): “Conservatism, Dictatorship and Fascism in Portugal, 1914–45”, in Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe: Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe, M. Blinkhorn (ed.). London: Unwin Hyman, 157–175. Gilmour, J. (2010): Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin: The Swedish Experience in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gombár, Zs. (2016): “Bowdlerised Shakespeare Productions in Hungary and Portugal”, in Global Insights on Theatre Censorship, C. O’Leary, D. Santos Sánchez, and M. Thompson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 137–148. Leitz, C. (2000): Nazi Germany and Neutral Europe during the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lester, D. and R. Stockton (2005): Suicide and the Holocaust. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Levine, P. A. (2002): “Swedish Neutrality during the Second World War: Tactical Success or Moral Compromise?”, in European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the Second World War, N. Wylie (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 304–330.

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Madeira, J., L. Farinha and I. F. Pimentel (2007): Vítimas de Salazar. Estado Novo e violência política. Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros. Meneses, F. R. de (2010): Salazar: A Political Biography. New York: Enigma Books. Merino Álvarez, R. (2016): “Mapping Translated Theatre in Spain through Censorship Archives”, in Global Insights on Theatre Censorship, C. O’Leary, D. Santos Sánchez and M. Thompson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 176–190. Ó Drisceoil, D. (1996): Censorship in Ireland 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society. Cork: Cork University Press. ——— (2016): “Stage Irish Neutrality: Theatre Censorship during the ‘Emergency’, 1939–45”, in Global Insights on Theatre Censorship, C. O’Leary, D. Santos Sánchez and M. Thompson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 211–220. Oliveira, C. (1988): Salazar e a guerra civil de Espanha. Lisbon: O Jornal. Pena-Rodríguez, A. (2015): “Sintonía de combate. La propaganda del Rádio Club Português en la Guerra Civil española (1936–1939)”, Historia Critica 58: 95–115. Raby, D. L. (1988): Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberals, and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974. Manchester: St. Martin’s Press. Ramos, J. L. (1989): Dicionário do Cinema Português. Lisboa: Caminho, https://play.google. com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=mqsagnIDJ8sC&pg=GBS. PP1 (accessed 21 January 2016). Reginbogin, H. R. and D. F. Vagts (2009): Faces of Neutrality: Comparative Analysis of the Neutrality of Switzerland and Other Neutral Nations during WW II. Berlin: Lit Verlag. Rosas, F. (ed.) (1998): Portugal e a Guerra Civil de Espanha: Actas do Colóquio Internacional. Lisbon: Colibri. ——— (2002): “Portuguese Neutrality in the Second World War”, in European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the Second World during the Second World War, N. Wylie (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 268–282. Santos, G. dos (2004): O espectáculo desvirtuado. Lisbon: Caminho. Sapega, E. W. (2008): Consensus and Debate in Salazar’s Portugal:Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933–1948. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Serôdio, M. H. coord. CETbase. Teatro em Portugal. FCT-funded research project, located at the Centre for Theatrical Studies, University of Lisbon, ww3.fl.ul.pt/CETbase/ (accessed 21 January 2016). Seruya, T. (2017): “Spain ‘Filtered’ through Censorship in Portugal (1934–1940)”, Communication & Culture 19: forthcoming. Stone, G. (1994): The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection, 1936–1941. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Torgal, L. R. (2009): Estados Novos. Estado Novo. Vol. 1. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra. Vandaele, J. (2010): “It Was What It Wasn’t: Translation and Francoism”, in Translation under Fascism, C. Rundle and K. Sturge (eds.). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 84–116.

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Censorship on the Brazilian scene The “distribution of the sensible” and art as a political force Maria Cristina Castilho Costa and Walter de Sousa Junior A Semente [The Seed] is a subversive work of art in an explicit and sometimes in a more implicit way. It disobeys the country’s legal principles with the intention of collapsing the Brazilian democratic regime, which presents a solid juridical structure. Letter from the censors Nestório Lips, Dalva Janeiro and Willy de Paula Teixeira regarding the theatrical play A Semente [The Seed], by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, April 19th 19611 70 years past slavery abolition it is only natural that some deep feelings of resentment are still present among the black people. It seems to us that their exposure in broad day light can be healthier, according to modern psychology conceptions, than assuming drastic repression measures to the thought. That is also the opinion of one out of three censors in charge of examinig the play. Letter from the president of the Associação Brasileira de Críticos Teatrais/Brazilian Association of Theatre Critics regarding the censorship of the play Sortilégio [Sortilege], by Abdias do Nascimento, July 1st 19532

The research project Censorship on the Scene, taken on by the Observatory for Communication, Freedom of Expression and Censorship of the University of São Paulo (OBCOM-USP), planned a cycle of dramatic readings starting in July 20153 in order to recover theatre plays that had been prohibited by the Serviço de Censura do Departamento de Diversões Públicas do Estado de São Paulo [Censorship Sector of the State of São Paulo Public Entertainment Department]. Until now we have had the opportunity to address four of the plays: A Semente [The Seed], by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri; Sortilégio [Sortilege], by Abdias do Nascimento; O Fundo do Poço [The Bottom of the Pit], by Helena Silveira and Perdoa-me por Me Traíres [Forgive Me for Betraying Myself], by Nelson Rodrigues. All of the theatre plays belong to the collection of the Miroel Silveira Archive, part of the library of the School of Communication and Arts of the mentioned university. The dramatic readings are still to include another ten vetoed plays.4 The project “Censorship on the Scene” recovers from oblivion the works of art interdicted by actions of power, censorship, surveillance or control. It aims

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to give them back to the political life of the city so the audiences can appreciate them and their transgressive power is renewed. The project is the summit of a research trajectory of more than 15 years spent in the study of censorship. Since the year 2000, groups of researchers with different backgrounds have been studying more than 6,000 processes of previous censorship to the theatre present in the collection of the Miroel Silveira Archive ranging from 1930 to 1970. The name of the archive was given after the professor, director, writer – among other qualifications – responsible for having saved all the mentioned documents from the State Public Entertainment Department. At first, he took them to his own office at the university, in the Department of Performing Arts of the School of Communication and Arts of USP. Following the professor’s death, the documents were taken to the school’s library, where they are kept to this day with the permission of the state archive, to which they officially belong. The research project related to the Miroel Silveira Archive had funding from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp) [São Paulo Research Foundation], from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) [National Council for Scientific and Technological Development] and from the University of São Paulo. The results of the research have provided a broad understanding of censorship mechanisms. We believe to be dealing with a legacy of incommensurable relevance. It reveals that the mere existence of Brazilian art and culture is something close to a miracle if we consider it comes from centuries of resistance against authoritarianism and control tracing back to the colonial period, remaining during our monarchy and republic. Even a brief retrospective reveals that Portuguese colonialism hindered the development of universities, the press, publishing houses and public education in the country until 1808. That marks the Portuguese Imperial Family arrival in Brazil and the establishment, in 1815, of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Brazilian Monarchy was then represented by the same Portuguese family also after the country’s political independence in 1822 and provided no incentive to critical thinking in the arts or the press. The Brazilian Republic was finally proclaimed in 1889, an act with little popular participation. Furthermore, the legislation it imposed regarding the control of the means of communication was equally rigid and authoritarian. The documents present in the Miroel Silveira Archive show that the fight against censorship and authoritarianism went on during the 20th century. By studying such a rich set of documents, we are able to understand the persistence and efficiency of the censorship tradition in the country. It has threatened the artistic production with prohibitions, cuts and mutilations performed by the censors’ scissors. Renato Ortiz states that censorship has contributed to a precarious and not very sustainable scenario of national cultural and artistic production (Ortiz 1990). Our study of censorship was based on the use of an interdisciplinary, plural methodology combining different theoretical perspectives and different methods of investigation. We have recurred to bibliographical and documental research, content analysis, reception research, questionnaires, interviews and

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video interviews, besides making use of media, from video resources to the Internet, for the release of research results. The Miroel Silveira Archive has made possible the establishment of a forum for the debate on censorship and freedom of expression. We have also invested in the organisation of events, national and international seminars, and academic agreements with foreign organisations such as the Mario Soares Foundation (Portugal) and the Research Group Silenced Scriptures of the University of Alcalá (Spain). The Internet and digital media in general have been widely used to make the documents on censorship as well as the results of our research available to the public. The academic development of the project itself started with an individual project in the name of professor Maria Cristina Castilho Costa and later evolved to what we call a thematic project, gathering other researchers to the establishment of a Research Center at the university, under the title of Observatory for Communication, Freedom of Expression and Censorship (OBCOM), directly responding to the Provost for Research. Besides that, the social and political scenario around us helped reinforce the relevance of such a striking research subject. With the 1988 Brazilian Constitution approval, the official agencies for censorship were extinguished. There seemed to be then full assurance of the freedom of expression and censorship seemed finally defeated. Nevertheless, the development in social communications with the digital media, the communication via computer networks and the expansion in artistic production have given rise to new forms of censorship. The so conquered freedom is now in danger. In that sense, the debates promoted by the OBCOM are focused on matters such as the regulation of artistic production; the message exchange amongst established governments, official agencies and private enterprises; national security and the action of spying on national levels; the defence of private brands rivaling the public interests; the defence of copyright in face of the right to information; official agencies and media excesses and the control over social networks. As the people refuse censorship more unanimously, the mechanisms of control become more complex over what is publicly said, written, exhibited and spread. The present stage of the research addresses those matters considering the establishment of a digital newspaper archive that gathers related contemporary news reports – the Digital Hemeroteca.5 The observation of the recollected news reports has resulted in uncommon perspectives on censorship. That is especially true considering the idea that censorship is no longer a state action, but a private one with new mechanisms of restriction to the freedom of expression.6 Aside of the research work, we have developed the project “Censorship on the Scene” with the support of the Social Service of the Commerce (SESC-SP) and, more recently, of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

The contribution of Jacques Rancière In The Distribution of the Sensible, Jacques Rancière proposes that the political character of artistic manifestations comes from what he understands as the regime of the arts (our emphasis). It is “a mode of articulation between ways of doing and

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making, their corresponding forms of visibility, and possible ways of thinking about their relationships” (Rancière 2004: 10). Such regime of the arts requires participation and sharing of what is common: time, space and common activities in the sense that they are public and collective. That is the true distribution of the sensible enabling a public and political character to the symbolic production. Such production, on its turn, is known for words, positions, images and movements of the body (Rancière 2009: 26). The regime of the arts, according to the philosopher, includes the ethical, the poetic and the aesthetical regimes. The ethical regime is the one to define the reason of the images for being, what makes them compatible with citizenship. It is their motive, their political statement (theme subject, intentionality, objective). The poetic regime is the field of representations, which allows art to be recognised in reference to the human world. It is the imitation that subsumes expression to a specific form and a way of doing (language, genre, style). Such regime guides the appreciation and the contemplation. The aesthetical regime is the one related to the sensible mode of the art to be consumed and appreciated by the audiences as a singular work of art and as artistic rupture. Such regime presupposes history, the past, in relation to which there is rupture and new sensibilisation. In that sense, what characterises the distribution of the sensible and the regime of the arts is the possibility of sharing words, images, positions and movements of the body, understanding that they can also establish the political character of the art. If art is politics in the sense it exists in a public and shared time and space, the same is true in relation to censorship as it interferes in what is shared in such time-space. Censorship takes place during the publicity or the politicisation of the regime of the arts as they incorporate the collective or common time-space. From the beginning, the regime of the arts also had control over the movement of the bodies (dance and other different manifestations of the theatrical performance), the sound and the images. As they are distribution of the sensible, any of these interdictions are equally disastrous for the development of society’s aesthetic and symbolic production. The emphasis given to censorship over words is explained by the relevance the written word has had in Western culture. It is also due to the fact that means of communication, since Guttenberg, have been proprietarily focused on the diffusion of written texts, foreshadowing what the press would come to be. The hegemony of the written word during modern times and the establishment of a symbolic industrial production have given it prevalence over other forms of language. Those, according to Rancière, build the regime of the arts. Vilma Figueiredo is a sociologist, author of the book Autoritarismo e Eros (Authoritarianism and Eros), in which she argues that societies have grown over the mentioned opposition: (1) Regulation and institutionalisation of life – which assure the permanence of systematisation; (2) Innovative strength – which allows transformation and change.

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The tendency for regulation brings the routinisation of everyday life, based on the directive and managerial rationality and the bureaucratisation of life. In the opposite direction, there is Eros and the deregulamentation, the free act, the force of reproduction and innovation, the drive, the pleasure, the release of vital energy and instincts. Figueiredo also points out to the existence of the aesthetical dimension as the place to balance sensuality and moral behaviour. Those are the two poles of human existence. According to Rancière, the dynamics among the ethical, poetic and aesthetical regimes enables art and the distribution of the sensible. Figueiredo concludes: Todos os sistemas de regulação das sociedades que, em nome de quaisquer verdades ou sonhos, produziram instituições e modelos totalitários, negando a diversidade, destacaram as forças criativas de Eros, restringindo-lhe a ação, no máximo, ao âmbito puramente sexual e limitando sua força como elemento constitutivo da sociedade. (Figueiredo 1992: 30–31) [All systems of regulation created by societies in the name of any truth or dream founding institutions and totalitarian regimes, denying diversity, reinforce the creative forces of Eros. Its actions were limited to the strictly sexual environment, restricting its strength as a constitutive element of society.] A democracia deve ser pensada como a possibilidade de combinação ótima entre repressão e liberdade, conservação e mudança, tradição e criação, ou seja, entre Eros e Tânatos. (Figueiredo 1992: 35) [Democracy should be understood as the possibility of a great combination between repression and freedom, preservation and change, tradition and innovation, i.e. between Eros and Thanatos.] The notions brought by those two authors show the inner character of the arts as a political force. That can be verified in the distribution of the sensible, as understood by Rancière, and in the upheaval of the sensible, as proposed by Figueiredo. The political is in the form of art itself, in the sensible transgression, in the interruption of the oppressive routine perpetrated by leaders and governments. As Marcuse would say, art is freeing in itself.

Four freeing examples The 20th century in Brazil includes two dictatorial periods: the first of them took place in the first half of the century when a nationalist, military and populist administration model was established in Brazil, the so-called New State (1937–1945). It was interrupted together with the end of World War II, but not without having established all the state censorship apparatus, including censors,

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rituals and procedures of control over the artistic and journalistic productions. After over a decade of relative democracy, repeatedly threatened by political instability, Brazil underwent a new coup d’état and the establishment of a military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. It benefited from and improved the previously existing state censorship apparatus. Such a long period in the country’s history was of great repression, but also coincided with a cultural and artistic movement started with the 1922 Modern Art Week and peaking with the influence of the European theatre avant-garde. The big names in the national theatre were exiled artists coming from foreign countries escaping political persecution performed during the war. The dictatorship and the modern and nationalist artistic movement clashed and made reinforce censorship mechanisms. In this way, the theatre was censored and restrained in this long period, even in the years of democracy (1946–1963), so that the authors who did the national theatre during the period had their artistic production hard pursued and restricted by the censors. The justification for this persecution is that censorship, after the Estado Novo of Vargas, began to be made by a state bureaucratic apparatus constituted and dedicated to the surveillance of theatrical artistic production. This mechanism was not dismantled in the following decades. On the contrary, both the democratic and military governments that took power in 1964 used it. If in the periods of exception, the major focus of the censors was against the political orientation of the pieces, in less difficult times the most censored themes were of moral, religious and social background. Four of the authors emerging in the Brazilian political theatre of the 1950s and 1960s have written tragic theatre plays. They would address sensible political and social issues and sensibly transgress, thus being targeted by censorship. We are referring to Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, working with the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia [Brazilian Theatre of Comedy] and with the Teatro de Arena [Arena Theatre], where his most renowned work was staged, Eles não usam Black-tie [They Do Not Wear Black-Tie], 1958. We are also referring to Abdias do Nascimento, founder of the Teatro Experimental do Negro [Black Experimental Theatre] (1944–1961); to Helena Silveira, Brazilian journalist who decided to take a São Paulo great repercussion journalistic event and adapt it into theatrical drama in O Fundo do Poço [The Bottom of the Pit], 1948. We are also referring to the dramatist Nelson Rodrigues, an icon of Brazilian theatre, understood by the critics to be the one to put Brazil in theatre modernity with the play Vestido de Noiva [The Bride’s Dress], 1943. It was performed by the theatre company The Comedians and directed by Zbigniew Ziembinski. In 1957, Perdoa-me por Me Traíres [Forgive Me for Betraying Myself], one of Rodrigues’ tragedies, was vetoed for presentations in São Paulo. The dramatic reading of the plays does not follow the chronologic order of the censorship documents, rather it considers the diversity of the issues they raise and that leads to their prohibition. For example, Guarnieri’s play brings the worker’s movement and its political engagement; Nascimento’s play brings the issue of racism and the prevailing presence of the Black population in Brazil; Silveira approaches facts presented by the press transforming into “fiction”; Rodrigues deals with the fake morality of the Brazilian elite.

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A Semente [The Seed], by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, is one of the censorship processes in the Miroel Silveira Archive collection with the greater number of documents. It keeps many official correspondences, petitions started by religious groups and letters from censors trying to explain the decisions or indecisions that resulted in the prohibition and restricted staging of the play. After a challenging process, the play debuted in 1961 counting on the direction of Flávio Rangel and having Leonardo Villar and Cleide Yáconis in the leading roles (Agileu and Rosa). The opening night was set for April 28th, but the Public Entertainment Department’s delay in the decision forced the director to travel to the city of Brasília in order and get the support from the very president of the republic, Jânio Quadros.7 When Quadros was the governor of the state of São Paulo he had given the prize Prêmio Governador do Estado [The Governor of the State Prize], 1958 edition, for Best Dramatist to Gianfrancesco Guarnieri. The president assured that he would intervene with the government of the state of São Paulo for the release of the play. Nevertheless, two days prior to the debut, on April 26th, the Diário Oficial [Official Diary of the Union] published the decision of the censor in forbidding the play. The documents we keep to this day are the telegrams of students and directors of many schools and other cities’ entities supporting the prohibition: São José, Rosário, Santo Américo, Santo Agostinho, Santo Alberto, São Luís, Boni Consilii, Assunção e Sacre-Couer Marie, Federação Mariana Feminina and Associação Cavaleiros São Paulo. The director and the author tried to talk to the Secretary of Public Security arguing for the annulment of the decision, given by a substitute censor. The solution to the case was to arrange a new analysis of the play by a commission composed of seven intellectuals that were to attend the performance of the play and express a new verdict. And so, the play was finally released, five votes against two, but it was only to be held at the Brazilian Comedy Theatre (TBC). The narrative of the play deepens the issues brought by the author on previous works set in a factory’s environment Eles não usam Black-tie [They Do Not Wear Black-Tie] and Gimba, o presidente dos valentes [Gimba, the President of the Brave]. The character Agileu is an old member of the Communist Party and a workingclass leader having a hard time dividing the attention between his family life and his political acting. The poor Rosa, Agileu’s wife, constantly complains about her husband’s absence and the daily fear of suffering with police repression against the strike movement. At the same time, another couple lives the same dilemma: the young factory worker João, interpreted by Guarnieri himself, and his pregnant girlfriend Alice (Amélia Bittencourt). João is harassed by his fellow coworkers to adhere to the movement, but he has more immediate objectives to accomplish: to rent a room where to live, to welcome his son, to build a family, to improve in life. The narrative tension rises with the addition of parallel events: Rosa goes to prison, she signs a blank document that is later used by the chief of police to incriminate her husband Agileu, an underage worker dies from a work accident, the worker’s father suddenly loses reason and the workers try to use the death case to endorse a strike. By the end of the play, Alice joins the strike and loses her son while facing the forces of the repression. Agileu is accused by his

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party fellows of being a traitor. He had been once more a victim of the chief of police. What we see in the play is the contemporary tragedy of the workingclass movement. João, mourning the loss of his wife and son, is beaten up by other coworkers who believe he is a traitor. Agileu abandons Rosa and goes to a garbage dump area where he used to go hide from the police. There he is able to find room to plant a new seed for his political fight, being a place with enough misery and need for dignity. Apart from being an audience success, the play received intense religious censorship, besides governmental one. The Cardinal-Priest of São Paulo sent an official message to all parishes prohibiting Christians from attending the play. The distribution of the sensible in Guarnieri’s play reveals the wrong doings of the police repression, of the owners of the means of production, but also of the working-class leaders. It is a clash of forces in which social relationships are caught in political and economic imperatives. Sortilégio [Sortilege] is the first play written by Abdias do Nascimento and it was organised by his Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN). The release of the play by the Public Entertainment Department occurred in May 1951,8 a decade before Guarnieri’s one. The Teatro Experimental do Negro was founded in 1944 and had the objective of recovering the values of the African-American culture buried by a hegemonic culture of European roots. The author himself writes that the project was “politely refused by the intellectual mulatto Mario de Andrade” but at the same time supported by others: the lawyer Oliveira Camargo, the painter Wilson Tibérios, Teodorico dos Santos and José Herbel. They started gathering workers, housekeepers, jobless favela inhabitants offering alphabetisation and theatre education. The first production of the group was The Emperor Jones [O imperador Jones], authorised by Eugène O’Neill himself. The play debuted on May 8th, 1945, at the Municipal Theatre of Rio de Janeiro, a stage never before taken by a black actor. Abdias explains “o TEN propunha-se a combater o racismo, que em nenhum outro aspecto da vida brasileira revela tão ostensivamente sua impostura como no teatro, na televisão e no sistema educativo, verdadeiros bastiões da discriminação racial à moda brasileira” (Nascimento 2004). [the TEN had the objective of fighting racism so broadly revealed in the theatre, in television and in the educational system as in no other aspect of the Brazilian life. Those are true representatives of Brazilian like racial discrimination.] Sortilégio [Sortilege] was not released in 1951 and Abdias went on trying to get approval from the censorship, which happened in 1957. The play finally debuted at the Municipal Theatre directed by Léo Jusi and it was praised by many intellectuals such as Sábato Magaldi, Roger Bastide, Nelson Rodrigues and Aldo Calvet, president of the Serviço Nacional de Teatro [National Service of Theatre]. The play was then vetoed by the censor Antonio Pedroso de Carvalho under the argument that it “explorar preconceitos de raça (. . .) usando uma linguagem que não poderá ser ouvida por nenhuma plateia”.9 [made use of race prejudices (. . .) recurring to a type of language that should not be heard by any audiences.]

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The narrative, according to the definition of the author himself, “seu nervo vital nas relações raciais brasileiras e no choque entre a cultura e a identidade de origem africana e aquela da sociedade dominante eurocentrista” (Nascimento 2004). [has its lifeline in Brazilian racial relationships and in the conflict between the African origin culture and identity and the hegemonic euro-centered society.] He tells the story of the personal and social crisis of the black lawyer Emanuel, ironically hidden in a yard (terreiro). The terreiros were historically in the sight of the police, accused of promoting fetishism, magic and witchcraft – practices that were forbidden by the 1890 Brazilian Penal Code. They were also accused of beating up communists, most of them black workers, as it had happened during the Brazilian New State period. Emanuel unveils two social idiosyncrasies, political and racial, and it is able to transpose to the scene what the theatre itself unites: a place for a “public activity and for the exhibition of ‘ghosts’” (Rancière 2004: 17). The central dilemma of the play is given between two women: Josefine, the black prostitute, and Margarida, the blond wife. Emanuel performs what we could consider to be almost a monologue mediated by three holy sons that embody Iemanjá and two orixas, including Exu. In this scenario, Emanuel’s weaknesses show up. Despite being a lawyer he is discriminated against by society. He loves Josefina, but abandons her for the white woman, leaving her to be a prostitute. In an act of insanity, Emanuel kills his wife believing she was unfaithful and, influenced by Exu, commits suicide. Roger Bastide, recovered by Abdias, points out: Do ponto de vista das ideias, é o drama do negro, marginal entre duas culturas, a latina e a africana (como entre as duas mulheres, infelizmente igualmente prostitutas); pode-se discutir a solução, a volta à África. . . . A salvação é na mecânica ligada a uma mística africana, e o Brasil pode trazer esta mensagem de fraternidade cultural ao mundo. Mas do ponto de vista teatral, esta volta à África é muito patética; através da bebida de Exu e da loucura, todo um mundo volta das sombras da alma. (Nascimento 2004) [Considering the realm of the ideas, it is the drama of the black, displaced between two cultures, the Latin and the African one (like between two women that unfortunately are both prostitutes); it is possible to question the solution, the return to Africa. . . . The salvation comes in the connection to the African mystique and Brazil can bring that message of cultural fraternity to the world. But in the theatrical perspective, such return to Africa is very pathetic; through the drink of Exu and through craziness, a whole world is back from the shadows of the soul.] The play was reviewed by the author in 1970, when he visited the sacred city of Ile-Ife in Nigeria (1976–1977). He then included new characters and scenarios as well as expanded the historical context to incorporate the journey of Zumbi dos Palmares.

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Because the author touched one of the most unhealed wounds in Brazilian history, slavery and its social heritage, and for choosing to use a visceral language that would better translate the discriminatory reality, censorship understood the play in the opposite direction. They believed it induced racial prejudices, detaching it from its distribution of the sensible.

Journalism and fiction The example of Helena Silveira is an interesting way of showing that a fictional representation of reality can be interpreted by a given censor as a factor of social instability. The case known as the “crime of the pit” took place at the Santo Antônio Street neighborhood of Bela Vista, city of São Paulo, and it appeared in the press in 1948. Paulo Ferreira de Camargo, a chemistry teacher and PhD candidate shot his two sisters and his mother, throwing their bodies into the pit found on the backyard of the house. He was only unmasked when neighbors reported the absence of the family. After being interrogated and while the police went for the pit, Camargo killed himself in the bathroom. The dramatic play Helena Silveira did on the case explored the psychological conflicts of the main character using as source of inspiration a series of articles signed by the modernist writer Oswald de Andrade and published by the Brazilian newspaper Folha da Manhã. The resulting drama opened normally on March 30th, 1950, performed by the Maria Della Costa Theatre Company. Thirteen days into presentations the family of those involved in the crime filed a lawsuit to prohibit the play. It echoed a letter from the Public Entertainment Department informing that the cuts ordered by the censor were not being followed. That legally fell into recurrent disrespect of the law, to which penalty was “immediate impugnation of the performances”.10 Although the prohibition has ruined the interest in the play for future generations, the crime itself has become an urban popular legend and the address of the house, at the Santo Antonio Street, landmark of an event that shocked society. Decades later the house was demolished to give place to a building named Joelma, which was then the place for another tragedy. A fire took the building in the 1970s revealing the lack of security in the city’s constructions. Many remembered that the place seemed to be “damned”, recovering the story of the crime of the pit. The censors would certainly be “surprised by the fact that the public opinion and the people imaginary, as well as the vetoed play, are also based in reality” (Costa 2011). Helena Silveira was not innovating when she used facts of life to base fiction. Before her, Nelson Rodrigues recurred to chronicles to build, for example, the plot of his Vestido de Noiva [The Bride’s Dress], a landmark of the Brazilian modern theatre. The author’s professional trajectory was itself strongly impacted by a crime, the one of his brother Roberto Rodrigues. Roberto was killed inside the newsroom of the newspaper A Manhã, which was a property of the father, Mário Rodrigues. The murderer was the wife of a renowned Rio de Janeiro doctor, a character used in a report on legal marital separation, published in the newspaper along with a sarcastic drawing made by Roberto. The murder shook the family and the father died in sadness less the three months later.

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Nelson Rodrigues became a popular writer known especially for his chronicles on the Rio de Janeiro elite moral, for his feuilletons and also for his carrier as a dramatic author. He was also worshiped in the political environment, which made him sort of armored against censorship. Perdoa-me por Me Traíres [Forgive Me for Betraying Myself] was the play he chose to start acting. The plot was sordid and based on a police chronicle. The main character loves his unfaithful woman each time more. Their daughter, raised by an aunt and uncle, is a prostitute. She ends up being a victim of sexual abuse, aborts and convinces the uncle to kill himself by drinking poison. By the end of the play, she is considered innocent, the same thing that happened to the murderer of Roberto, the author’s brother. The play opened in 1957 Rio de Janeiro under the protests made by a city council member accusing the author of attempting against moral and good manners. The play was vetoed after a wide campaign conducted by the same politician, part of the most conservative political party of the time. In the city of São Paulo the censorship process went on for six months. The censorship process file DDP 4469 includes the letters of three different censors that reinforce arguments in defence of moral and good manners. Besides that, there is a letter written by the president of the Theatre National Committee arguing for the age rating of 21 as a way to avoid the prohibition. The artistic sector, on its turn, was organised and public requested the release of the play through a letter to the mayor of the state of São Paulo, Jânio Quadros. The mayor demanded adjustments to the text according the recommendation of the censorship sector and the installing of a Special Commission that ends up deciding for the prohibition of the play anyway. As the censorship process went on, the censorship sector received a petition counting 108 pages of signatures for the prohibition of the play Perdoa-me por Me Traíres [Forgive Me for Betraying Myself]. As there was no more room for legal recourse, the mayor vetoed the performances. The dramatic reading reinforced the discursive expression of the text, once it was free from scene direction, scenography and figurine. The focus was on the authorial strength of the text and its artistic multiplicity, characteristics that make a work of art, evidencing art as a political force. We, then, have to disagree with the censor’s most common arguments, that the play was planned art, meaning that it had the intention of informing public opinion and spreading ideas that shake the structure of the system putting it to risk, reason enough to be cut or vetoed. “The distribution of the sensible reveals who can have a share in what is common to the community”, as Rancière points out, is established a relationship between aesthetics and politics. The arts only ever lend to projects of domination or emancipation what they are able to lend to them, that is to say, quite simply, what they have in common with them: bodily positions and movements, functions of speech, the parceling out of the visible and the invisible. Furthermore, the autonomy they can enjoy or the subversion they can claim credit for rest on the same foundation. (Rancière 2004: 26)

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Final considerations The research based on the Miroel Silveira Archive documents represents what we call a “classical form” of censorship, meaning the daily, enduring and previous state censorship of the works to be presented publically. It shows that censorship interferes with the distribution of the sensible, as understood by Rancière. It tries to act over the flow of symbolic production, interdicting works that are contestatory, intriguing, denouncing, mobilising, approaching relevant social issues that find no response from organisations. Censorship is, then, one of the aspects of the distribution of the sensible, leading to obscurantism, silence and oblivion of those works. The experience of the OBCOM organising dramatic readings followed by debate has shown that the issues raised by the plays endure in time. Silencing, isolating, prohibiting does not solve problems, does not contribute to the debate, does not clarify doubts or lead to new alternatives or solutions. Silencing only informs on what a society is not able to face, clarify, solve, see or listen. The social issues presented in the censored plays still remain unsolved and they are still able to stir emotions, touch, and move audiences. The people get perplexed with the fact that such works of art were kept hidden, vetoed, unknown. The debates that follow the performances of the censored plays give evidence that censorship does not harmonise, does not solve the problem, and does not transform the audience sensitivity. To the issues raised by the dramatic texts is added a level of surprise for the interdiction itself and another level of frustration for such a delay in getting to know the work. That is the way by which censorship slows and silences but does not significantly interfere with the repercussion of works of art in society. Even if they are presented displaced in time, they find sensitivities ready to recover, understand and react to their callings. The division of the sensible censorship performs is only an obstacle and never a solution.

Notes 1 Part of the censorship process DDP 5157 of the collection of the Miroel Silveira Archive. 2 Part of the censorship process DDP 3976 of the collection of the Miroel Silveira Archive. 3 The dramatic readings were performed at the Centro de Pesquisa e Formação do Serviço Social do Comércio (Research and Training Center of the Social Service of the Commerce) (CPF/SESC-SP), São Paulo, Brazil. Such institution co-sponsored the events that took place on August 26th and November 14th under the general coordination of professor Cristina Costa and the direction of Renata Pallottini and Roberto Ascar. Each dramatic reading was followed by a related debate with the presence of relevant personalities: on the first event we had Flávio Guarnieri, son of the author Gianfrancesco Guarnieri; on the second event, professor Elisa Larkin Nascimento, widow of the author Abdias do Nascimento, and professor Dilma de Melo e Silva, representing the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo. 4 They are Quarto de Empregada [The Maid’s Room], by Roberto Freire; Reportagem de Um Tempo Mau [Bad Time Report], by Plínio Marcos; Filha Moça [Young Daughter], by Augusto Boal; Relatório Kinsey [The Kinsey Report], by Alberto D’Aversa; Os sinceros [The Sincere], by Cezar Vieira; A mulher proibida [The Forbidden Woman], by Cassandra Rios; Enquanto se vai morrer [While Dying], by Renata Pallottini; O berço do herói [The Hero’s Crib], by Dias Gomes; Andaime [Scaffolding], by Paulo Torres and Os caminhos de Deus [God’s Paths], by Eudinyr Fraga.

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5 Our methodology involves the recollection of news reports using search engines as Google and Yahoo or directly from credible webportals, sites and journalistic blogs. The searches are performed according to a selection of keywords: freedom of expression, censorship, interdiction, prohibition. Between July 2014 and June 2015 undergraduate student Lina Silva, counting on a research scholarship, selected 166 news reports based on the following criteria: (1) explicit narration of the facts; (2) answer to where, when and to whom the act of interdiction is related; (3) which sector of society is responsible for the action; and (4) what is the explanation given. We have noted the recurrence of the following subjects: age rating (3), biographies (4), self censorship (7), TV and the movies (8), politically correct (8), language (9), humour (10), journalism (11), art and fiction (13), sexuality and pornography (15), digital media and social media networks (15), religion (17), legal processes (17) and assorted (29), in a total of 166 analysed news reports. Many important events, as last year’s attacks to Paris, were not recollected through such methodology for they did not have the specific keywords in the title: freedom of expression, censorship. 6 A number of 54 analysed news reports presented state censorship coming from many origins: Russia (3), United States (4), Asia and the Middle East (9), Europe (10), China (13) and Latin America (15). Searching for the presence of Brazil, we have recollected 20 news reports on state censorship. One of them at the level of the city, 12 at the level of the states and 7 at the national level. 7 The mentioned documents, including the presidential order, are part of the censorship file DDP 5157 present in the Miroel Silveira Archive. The standard censorship file includes an original copy of the play, a censorship procedure requirement, the certificate of censorship noting the cuts made in the text. Many of the files also include official letters exchanged between departments of the administration, public petitions supporting the prohibition of the plays, telegrams and letters. 8 Censorship process file DDP 3976 present in the Miroel Silveira Archive. 9 Letter present in the censorship process file DDP 3976 in the Miroel Silveira Archive. 10 Opinion in file DDP 2946 of the Miroel Silveira Archive.

References Costa, M. C. C. (2011). “O fundo do poço e as motivações da censura” [“The Bottom of the Pit and the Motivations of Censorship”], Comunicação & Educação 16.1: 33–43. São Paulo. Figueiredo, V. (1992). Autoritarismo e Eros [Authoritarianism and Eros]. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Guarnieri, G. A Semente [The Seed]. Miroel Silveira Archive, DDP 5157. Nascimento, A. Sortilégio [Sortilege]. Miroel Silveira Archive, DDP 3976. ——— (2004). “Teatro Experimental do Negro: trajetória e reflexões” [Teatro Experimental do Negro: Trajectory and reflections], Revista Estudos Avançados V18.50, January– April, www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-40142004000100019&script=sci_arttext. São Paulo. Ortiz, R. (1990). A moderna tradição brasileira [The Modern Brazilian Tradition]. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ——— (2009). A partilha do sensível [The Sharing of the Sensitive: Estética e política]. São Paulo: EXO experimental/Editora 34. Rodrigues, N. Perdoa-me por Me Traíres [Forgive Me for Betraying Myself]. Miroel Silveira Archive, DDP 4469. Silveira, H. O crime do poço [The Bottom of the Pit]. Miroel Silveira Archive, DDP 2946.

4

José Tamayo Foreign policy and cultural opportunism Carey Kasten

José Tamayo (1920–2003), whose career spanned from the early Franco regime into democracy, is considered one of the most successful Spanish theatre directors of the 20th century. Remembered mostly for his large-scale productions and expansive range, he directed folkloric Spanish musical reviews as well as plays by international heavyweights such as Bertolt Brecht and Tennessee Williams. He is also known for groundbreaking productions that challenged the Francoist cultural status quo. He was the first to direct Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s controversial play Divinas palabras during the dictatorship in 1961. The play, which had not been staged since its premiere during the Second Republic, features nudity and grotesque characters and portrays a definitive underbelly of Spanish society. On the opening night of Tamayo’s production, the female protagonist briefly revealed a naked breast, just as the script demands (Umbral 1996). While this nudity did not happen again in the play’s run, the fact that it happened at all in conservative, censored Spain is striking. The following year Tamayo directed Federico García Lorca’s Bodas de sangre, which was the first time this play, as well, was produced under Franco. Tamayo’s daring productions challenged the limits of the Franco regime, which controlled Spanish culture through governmental scrutiny of all cultural production. Far from being vilified in Franco’s Spain, however, Tamayo was a key cultural player in the regime. Most notably, he directed the state-run Teatro Español from 1954–1962. Tamayo’s directorship of this theatre, which together with the María Guerrero were the only Spanish national theatres at the time, represents an explicit endorsement from the regime. Furthermore the special terms Tamayo negotiated – he agreed to privately fund items that exceeded the government budget in exchange for half of the theatre’s profits – indicate the power he wielded in the Spanish culture industry. To date, however, scant scholarly attention has been paid to the contradictory relationship Tamayo maintained with the Francoist state.1 If on the one hand he served as a representative of the regime, on the other hand, his stagings undermined its conservative culture. The present chapter interrogates this relationship by examining the early part of Tamayo’s career to understand his strategic, intentional self-positioning in the autarkic Franco regime of national Catholicism. Specifically, I will focus on the 1949–1951 tour of Latin America that Tamayo undertook with his Lope

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de Vega Company. In two previous articles, I detail the financial workings and performance schedules of the tour (Kasten 2016) and discuss the use of Golden Age theatre in the company’s Latin American repertoire (Kasten 2014). Here, I focus on how Tamayo manipulated power and information during the Latin American tour in order to secure a privileged position in the Francoist culture industry. Throughout the tour, he ingratiated himself to the Spanish state, dispatching frequent, carefully constructed communiqués to Spanish newspapers and government ministries that highlight his company’s Latin American conquests. At the same time, while abroad he pursued contact with exiled Spanish Republicans and U.S. art anathema to the regime’s conservative identity. Exploiting his geographical distance to create a double discourse, Tamayo managed this bifurcated identity in order to gain the trust of government officials and capture Spanish audiences upon his return from Latin America. Tamayo’s career provides a powerful lens through which to examine the production and dissemination of culture under Franco. As Edward Said reminds us in Culture and Imperialism, culture and nation are often “aggressively” (Said 1994: xiii) connected. Therefore, it is not surprising that Tamayo played to the “nationalist fundamentalism” (Said 1994: xiii) of the Franco regime. What is surprising, however, is how effective he was at adopting and manipulating the “paternalistic arrogance of imperialism” (Said 1994: xviii) as he claimed to spread universal Spanish culture in the former empire in order to advance his own personal agenda of artistic renovation to gain fame and commercial success. At the same time, this study questions current theatre criticism, which maintains that Tamayo’s most defining characteristic as a director is his spectacularity: “La marca principal de Tamayo fue la espectacularidad de los amplios elencos, de la música, de los coros, de los focos y las luces, de los figurines y las escenografías” [Tamayo’s principal distinguishing mark was spectacle, in casting, music, choruses, lighting, design and sets] (García Ruiz 2006: 97).2 Instead, I argue that Tamayo is best understood as a political figure who was invested in and reliant upon the Francoist political machine, which he manipulated expertly. In demonstrating how Tamayo craftily constructed his own personal, selfinterested narrative through the management and manipulation of information this study is grounded in what the historian Jo Burr Margadant designates “the new biography.” Noting a resurgence in biographical studies in the field of history, Margadant identifies a new way to analyse how individuals actively construct both their own history and the ways they are perceived by others. She notes that one person’s story can be contradictory, projecting different identities to varied audiences and/or at diverse moments in time: The subject of biography is no longer the coherent self but rather a self that is performed to create an impression of coherence or an individual with multiple selves whose different manifestations reflect the passage of time, the demands and options of different settings, or the varieties of ways that others seek to represent that person. (Margadant 2000: 7)

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Margadant focuses on women in 19th-century France in order to understand that society from the point of view of subjects ignored in more traditional histories. Tamayo, on the other hand, participated in a dominant political ideology. Thus, the present study raises questions about how Tamayo used Falangist ideology to his advantage, maneuvering his image – his biography – to suit different circumstances. By measuring how this manipulation worked and to what degrees of success, we gain a greater understanding of the intersection of culture and politics under Franco. In 1949 the Lope de Vega Company, which Tamayo founded in 1942 as a university group and professionalised in 1946, was just coming into its own in Spain. It had won national theatre prizes for the two previous seasons (1946– 1947 and 1947–1948) and was known for its extensive tours within Spain featuring classical European and Spanish theatre.3 With the Latin America tour, which spanned 20 months and seven countries, Tamayo greatly enhanced his reputation, shifting from a director of a modest travelling theatre company to an internationally known, government-endorsed powerhouse destined to shape the future of Spanish theatre. From the beginning stages of planning the tour, Tamayo understood the importance of demonstrating to the Spanish government that his company’s Latin American tour adopted a clear political mission. Francoist National Catholic ideology emphasised the intrinsic, natural and indivisible correlation between church and state. This association between Spanish nationalism and Spanish Catholicism revived the imperial designs of Golden Age Spain. As William Viestenz points out, even the National Catholic slogan – por el imperio hacia Dios – “pushes Spain toward its dreams of empire and gives the country its reason for being. [. . .] The imposition of God’s grace, or favour, allows for the reengaging of Spain’s march toward empire” (Viestenz 2014: 22). The “voluntad de imperio” [will to empire] invoked in the Falange’s 1934 political manifesto 27 puntos calls for a consolidation of power in Latin America.4 As the third point explains specifically in relation to Latin America: “tendemos a la unificación de cultura, de intereses económicos y de poder” [we tend toward the unification of culture, economic interests and power] (Tavera 1940: n.p.). For the Falange, therefore, Latin America once again became a site of conquest. Yet, with political invasion economically and militarily unfeasible, cultural occupation and persuasion became a natural stand-in. Tamayo followed the regime’s prescription for a unified Spanish-Latin American culture, underscoring the Compañía Lope de Vega’s role in promoting the regime’s imperial designs in a post-imperial age. Before and during the tour, Tamayo corresponded with the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (MAE), both in hopes of securing financial support and to promote his company’s activities abroad. These exchanges reveal his overt attempts to insert himself into the regime’s larger official cultural mission as he emphasised the tour’s alignment with Francoist doctrines. Promoting his company as “una representación genuinamente española” [a genuinely Spanish representation] (Tamayo: Letter, 21 April 1949), Tamayo enumerated goals for the tour that endorse a unified Spanish identity. His proposal to disseminate

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classical and modern Spanish theatre abroad projected Spanishness completely and un-problematically onto Latin America.5 In this way, Tamayo portrayed his tour as following the first of the 27 tenets the Falange laid out: “Fortalecer [la suprema realidad de España], elevarla, engrandecerla es la apremiante tarea colectiva de todos los españoles” [Fortifying the supreme reality of Spain, elevating it, aggrandising it, is the pressing collective work of all Spaniards] (Tavera 1940: n.p.). In a letter to Carlos Cañal, Director General of Cultural Relations at the MAE, Tamayo made manifest the tour’s objective to reinstate Spanish culture in Latin America: “Sepa, Sr. Cañal, que de todos modos, aspiramos a realizar esta labor de América dejando el nombre de España y el de la cultura nuestra en el alto lugar que le corresponde” [Please know, Mr. Cañal, that we aspire to carry out this American labour by all means, elevating Spain’s name and that of our culture to its corresponding high place] (Tamayo, Letter to Carlos Cañal). In his rhetoric to the Spanish state, Tamayo went beyond simply promoting Spanish identity abroad. He went so far as to erase local traditions and customs, brazenly asserting to Spanish officials that Latin American countries “no tienen otro teatro que el nuestro” [have no theatre but ours] (Tamayo: Letter to MAE). In fact, Tamayo repeated this same quote verbatim in requests for funding for the tour to the MAE and the Sindicato de Espectáculo. By treating Spanish identity as a natural, innate and fundamental culture for Latin America, Tamayo appears to accommodate Spanish imperial nostalgia and restore an ostensibly “natural” colonial relationship. Tamayo’s self-conscious publicising of the Lope de Vega’s Francoist mission is best demonstrated by his Noticiario, a circular dispatched throughout the tour to keep the media and government at home abreast of the Lope de Vega’s accomplishments. Each edition of the Noticiario featured a summary, written by Tamayo and usually several pages long, of the company’s recent achievements. This was followed by quotes selected from local Latin American newspaper reviews.6 In the most practical sense, the Noticiario served as a press release directed at the Spanish government and media where Tamayo employed his own voice and those of like-minded journalists from the foreign press to advertise his tour’s accomplishments. The same language highlighted from the Noticiarios is reflected in Spanish newspapers, which depended on the Noticiarios for much of its reporting on Tamayo’s tour. In this way, the Noticiarios became a powerful means for Tamayo to control not only what was and was not known in Spain about his company’s Latin American activities, but also to influence the coverage the Spanish press gave to the Lope de Vega’s tour. For example, in the eighth edition of the Noticiario dispatched from Colombia in September of 1950, Tamayo announced: Después de diez meses de continua actuación, la Compañía ‘Lope de Vega’ sigue realizando brillantemente su temporada en América. [. . .] La Compañía ‘Lope de Vega’ está consiguiendo con ello, renovar una tradición gloriosa, ganando nuevamente para la escena española los teatros de cientos de ciudades, donde, desde hace quince años aproximadamente existía una ignorancia total de la situación del teatro español.

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[Following ten months of continuous performances, the Compañía Lope de Vega continues brilliantly fulfilling its American mission. . . . With this, the Compañía Lope de Vega renews a glorious tradition, retaking for Spanish theatre hundreds of cities where, for approximately fifteen years there has been complete ignorance of Spanish theatre.] (Tamayo, Noticiario 8: 1) This 15-year lapse that Tamayo refers to is by no means coincidental, obliquely referencing the period since the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. By referring to a re-conquest of Latin American theatres – “ganando nuevamente” [retaking] – Tamayo directs the focus away from the divisiveness of the civil war and towards Francoist Spains’s “voluntad de imperio” [will to empire]. The reference to a “tradición gloriosa” [glorious tradition] evokes the Catholic identity of the regime, which was so intimately intertwined with its imperial character as the ultimate justification of empire in the first place. In a similar vein, the tenth Noticiario written in June 1951 in Costa Rica proclaimed: “Después de veintidós meses de continua actuación, en diferentes países hispanoamericanos, la Compañía Lope de Vega, que dirige José Tamayo, sigue triunfante en su gira de divulgación del teatro español” [Following 22 months of continuous performance in different Spanish American countries, the Compañía Lope de Vega, directed by José Tamayo, remains triumphant in its tour to disseminate Spanish theatre] (Tamayo, Noticario 10: 1). Again Tamayo’s choice of words with “triunfante” and “divulgación” point to a propagandising mission, a one-way transaction to promote “Spanishness”. The quotes from the second part of the Noticiario, carefully curated by Tamayo himself, celebrate the Lope de Vega’s service to the Francoist state in promulgating Spanish art and ideals in Latin America. For example, in the second Noticiario Tamayo features a review by a Cuban critic to underscore his tour’s reliance on the ideology of hispanidad, a philosophy adopted by the Franco regime that stressed the Spanish colonial roots of Latin America’s religious, linguistic and cultural make-up: “España en Cuba. Lo que me importa subrayar ahora, lo que creo importa señalar y destacar en bien y loor de Cuba, es algo que atañe a la efectividad y vigencia de la cultura, cuyas raíces, bajo la tierra de la historia, unen y hermanan, en una eternidad gloriosa de lo hispánico, a Cuba y España” [Spain in Cuba. What I want to underscore now, what I believe bears noting in honor of Cuba, concerns the efficacy and validity of a culture whose roots, beneath the terrain of history, unite and relate Cuba and Spain in a glorious Hispanic eternity] (qtd. in Tamayo, Noticiario 2: 5).7 A quote from Puerto Rico portrays the tour as a celebration of Spanish national identity abroad: “El público cortó estas palabras con una estruendosa ovación, oyéndose por todos los lugares del teatro gritos de ‘Viva España!’” [The audience interrupted these words with a thunderous applause above which could be heard shouts of “Long live Spain” throughout the entire theatre] (qtd. in Tamayo, Noticiario 4: 1). By directly featuring Latin American commentators, Tamayo demonstrates first-hand the effectiveness of the Francoist cultural mission buttressing the tour. In the ninth

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Noticiario, written from Cartagena, Colombia in January 1951, Tamayo included the following quote to prove Spain’s indelible influence on the Latin American spirit: “[el moderno teatro español] no es, ni podrá ser jamás para nosotros ‘teatro extranjero’, como despectivamente se le ha pretendido calificar de vez en vez. Negar a nosotros lo español, cuando lo español se refleja en el alma, en la emoción, sería negar la propia sangre” [(modern Spanish theatre) is not nor will it ever be for us “foreign theatre”, as it has sometimes been scornfully classified. To deny the Spanishness in us, when Spanishness is reflected in our soul, in our emotions, would be to deny our own blood] (qtd. in Tamayo, Noticiario 9: 6). In a general sense, Tamayo’s Noticiario grants Spanish culture a superior and universalising role in Latin America. The fact that Tamayo has foreign voices speak for him performs for a Spanish audience how convinced locals are of Spain’s importance and even its victorious cultural superiority. Of course, the editorial power Tamayo wielded in constructing the Noticiarios was absolute. As Tamayo carefully molded his image in Spain from abroad through the Noticiarios, he suppressed critical voices and made little mention of the more audacious, less traditionally Spanish elements of the tour. Negative reviews, which while uncommon, did exist, were unsurprisingly never mentioned.8 The plays Tamayo referenced most in the Noticiarios – Benavente’s Los intereses creados, El anticuario based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and adapted by Enrique Suárez de Deza, Plaza de Oriente by Calvo Sotelo and El genio alegre by the Alvarez Quintero brothers – reflects the contemporaneous popular theatre sanctioned by the Francoist government. On the other hand, plays the Lope de Vega staged by artists representing new trends in contemporary theatre, like En la ardiente oscuridad by Antonio Buero Vallejo or Otra vez el diablo by the exiled Alejandro Casona, were barely mentioned.9 In addition, Tamayo frequently omitted details of non-Spanish plays. His second Noticiario lists six plays debuted in Havana by November 15: “‘El anticuario’ de Suarez de Deza, ‘Plaza de Oriente’ de Calvo Sotelo, ‘Los intereses creados’ de Benavente, ‘Tierra baja’ de Guimerá, ‘El Tenorio’ de Zorrilla y ‘La Vida es Sueño’ de Calderón” (Tamayo, Noticiario 2: 1). Tamayo makes no allusion to performances of Othello, King Lear and El coronel Bridau, all written by non-Spanish authors and performed in Havana prior to November 15. By intentionally suppressing and emphasising certain elements of the tour, Tamayo actively constructed his identity in Spain, performing for the Spanish state a version of himself that is loyal, dedicated to advancing the Francoist political mission through his art. Spanish newspapers and magazines reporting on the tour reflect Tamayo’s Noticiario as they incorporate religious, colonising language in their discourse.10 One article describes the Lope de Vega as “una fiel [italics mine] portadora de los valores espirituales de España” [a faithful messenger of the spiritual values of Spain] (“Teatro español en América,” 2 May 1950). Another frames the tour as a victorious cultural conquest: “Esta actuación, la de más duración llevada a cabo en la historia de Puerto Rico, ha constituido un gran triunfo [italics mine] para el teatro español y, en general, para la cultura española.” [This tour, the longest ever in the history of Puerto Rico, constitutes a great triumph (italics mine) for Spanish

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theatre and, in general, for Spanish culture] (“Teatro español en América,” 20 June 1950). A third article refers to the tour as a mission, again underscoring the tour’s objective of religious and cultural dissemination: Viendo actuar anteanoche a los actores de la compañía Lope de Vega se comprende sin titubeos cuán fielmente [italics mine] se mantienen atados a su compromiso de cumplir una misión artística [italics mine] en tierras de América, como ya lo hicieron en su propia tierra, y no de realizar una obra de carácter acusadamente mercantilista. [Watching the actors from the Lope de Vega Company perform last night, you understand without hesitation how faithful (italics mine) they remain to their commitment to carry out an artistic mission (italics mine) on American soil, just as they already did on their own shore, and not to fulfill a job that is merely commercial.] (“La Compañía Lope de Vega actuará en Costa Rica”) Together, these articles, published in Spain for a Spanish audience, prove Tamayo’s service to the Francoist state in propagating Spanish culture abroad. While Tamayo promoted himself in Spain as a defender of imperial Hispanic values, the image he projects in Latin America is quite different. Articles from the Latin American press show that Tamayo often demonstrated an interest in local cultures and traditions and did not perform the same blatant disregard for the distinctive and varied cultures of Latin America. Playing to his audience, Tamayo dutifully acted out to the Spanish state his role as disseminator of a hegemonic Spanish culture that put Spain at the centre of an imperial discourse that erased Latin American traditions at the same time that in Latin America he claimed to exhibit a pronounced personal and professional interest in local theatre that celebrated Latin American cultures. Particularly illuminating are the goals Tamayo laid out in Latin America for his company’s tour. In an interview with the Puerto Rican El Mundo, Tamayo explained, “nuestro interés fundamental es conocer la producción teatral en la América Latina, establecer relaciones con todos los elementos del arte especialmente con autores y actores” [our fundamental interest is in familiarising ourselves with Latin American theatre, establishing relations with all artistic elements, especially with authors and actors] (“La Cía. Lope de Vega incluirá artistas boricuas en repartos”). In the Colombian press, Tamayo also discussed the company’s desire to “llevar un mensaje artístico de América a España” [carry an artistic message from the Americas to Spain] (JZ). Needless to say, these goals were never articulated to Spanish authorities or the Spanish press and they were put into practice in an uneven manner throughout the tour. Tamayo did take various steps to reach out to Latin American artists and incorporate their work into his company. Two Puerto Rican actors joined the company early on in the tour and stayed, under contract, through the remainder of its stay abroad (Kasten 2016: 14). Tamayo made clear that this “Gesto de Confraternidad” [Gesture of Mutual Fraternity] was entirely focused on recognising

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Puerto Rican talent: “el hecho de utilizar el talento Boricua no significa que la compañía esté incompleta a su llegada a la Isla, sino que es más bien un reconocimiento al arte teatral insular” [the fact that we are using boricua talent does not mean that the company was incomplete upon arriving to the island, rather it is recognition of the island’s theatre tradition] (“La Cía. Lope de Vega incluirá artistas boricuas en repartos”). Tamayo also collaborated with local set designers for new productions the company premiered abroad. In Cuba he worked with the esteemed Luis Márquez Escribá who created sets for Otra vez el diablo and, in Colombia, with a young Fernando Botero. Tamayo was particularly impressed by Botero, who designed scenery for the Lope de Vega’s Colombian premieres of El redentor del mundo and En la ardiente oscuridad. This successful collaboration with Botero led Tamayo to reconsider his original plan to work with Salvador Dalí in designing sets for Calderonian autos sacramentales to be staged in Spain: “Yo había pensado encomendársela a Salvador Dalí, pero en vista de que su estilo de decoración es ya conocido en España por el montaje que hizo anteriormente de el Tenorio [sic], quiero a mi llegada a España mostrar cómo sienten en América los autos sacramentales de Calderón” [I was planning on handing it over to Salvador Dalí, but given that his design style is known in Spain from his previous work on Don Juan, when I return to Spain I want to show how Calderón’s autos sacramentales are seen in the Americas] (JZ). This plan, however, appears not to have panned out as we have no further indication that Tamayo worked with Botero upon his return to Spain. Tamayo also staged several Latin American plays while abroad. In Puerto Rico the company performed Este desamparo by Puerto Rican author Manuel Méndez Ballester in February 1950 for the company’s San Juan finale. In Colombia it staged Arturo Laguado’s El gran guiñol in December 1950. Both stagings were accompanied by enthusiastic press articles extolling local theatre traditions. Famous Puerto Rican musicians, comedians and actors joined the Lope de Vega onstage the evening of the performance of Este desamparo to pay tribute to the company and its run in Puerto Rico. In Colombia, Tamayo originally announced a plan to produce two local plays: one in a costumbrista style, and another to showcase contemporary trends: “La Compañía incluirá esas dos obras en su repertorio para continuar su representación en el curso de sus próximas jiras [sic]” [The Company will include these two plays in its repertoire to be staged for the remainder of its upcoming tours] (“Dos obras colombianas”). In the end, only Laguado’s play was staged, representing the contemporary style. The press published special reports updating the public on the state of rehearsals, company members’ opinions on the piece and on Laguado himself, in addition to overwhelmingly positive reviews.11 Despite the fanfare, the runs for both plays were very short – a single staging for Este desamparo and three for El gran guiñol (Kasten 2016). In neither case were the plays incorporated into the Lope de Vega’s repertoire as planned – they ran neither during the remainder of the Latin America tour nor were these plays staged upon the company’s return to Spain, despite Tamayo’s assurances to the contrary.12 It seems Tamayo’s use of local authors in the company repertoire was a mere publicity stunt, lip service

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to attract local attention and win over audiences in the short term. With this, Tamayo emerges as an opportunist seeking simultaneous approval in Spain and Latin America and resorting to a multi-pronged marketing and programming approach to appeal to diverse political and cultural landscapes. While Tamayo’s approach to Latin American art is arguably mercenary, on the other hand, it grants agency to local voices and traditions. Speaking respectfully to the Latin American press, Tamayo accords the power of opinion to his audience from whom he solicits approval: España, Europa, el mundo entero mira hoy hacia América. Todo nuevo afán no cobra marcha y rumbo decisivo mientras no ha sido sellado con el ímpetu arrollador de las Américas. Hoy, en busca de vuestra aprobación y caminando hacia su perfeccionamiento, la compañía ‘Lope de Vega’ viene acá para que le deis vuestro juicio decisivo. [Spain, Europe, the entire world looks toward America today. No new endeavor finds its stride without the American stamp of resounding momentum. Today, in search of your approval and our greater perfection, the Lope de Vega Company has come so you can grant your decisive opinion.] (Nuri 1951) In direct contrast to the preceding quotes in which Tamayo demonstrates for Spanish authorities his contribution to an imperial colonising mission, here Tamayo appeals directly to Latin American audiences. Through the divergent ideological positions we have seen Tamayo adopt throughout the tour, a unifying element comes into focus: Tamayo’s convincing ability to variously self-fashion to appeal to his interlocutor. While Tamayo’s approach is arguably opportunistic, it is also political. His attempts to modernise Spanish theatre, both during the Latin America tour and upon his return to Spain, challenge established national aesthetic norms. In this sense, the Latin America tour marks a turning point in Tamayo’s career as he transforms the Lope de Vega repertoire to include contemporary works unfamiliar to Spanish audiences. In seeking out and incorporating these new plays into his company repertoire, Tamayo often joined forces with artists opposed to the Franco regime. For example, less than a month into the tour the company premiered Alejandro Casona’s Otra vez el diablo, the first new play incorporated into the Latin American repertoire. During the Second Republic, Casona had served as director of the Teatro del Pueblo, a wing of the Republic’s rural education campaign, Misiones Pedagógicas. When the civil war broke out, Casona fled Spain, first to France and then to Argentina, where he remained until 1963. Tamayo first wrote to Casona in March 1949 from Mexico during his initial planning visit for the Company’s tour. He expressed interest in staging one of Casona’s plays during the Lope de Vega’s tour (qtd. in Tévar Angulo 2012b: 699–701). Demonstrating how sensitive he was to the Spanish political situation, Tamayo assured Casona: “no tiene nuestra Compañia el menor matiz partidista y goza

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de absoluta independencia” [our Company does not have the slightest partisan hint and enjoys absolute independence] (Tévar Angulo 2012b: 701). By April 1949, Tamayo received Casona’s consent to stage any one of his plays. Otra vez el diablo, the only one of Casona’s plays that had not already premiered in Latin America, debuted on November 18, 1949 in Havana. The play was performed recurrently throughout the tour, often to enthusiastic audiences.13 Correspondence between Casona and Tamayo continued throughout the Americas trip. While their communication appears benign, Tévar Angulo reminds us how audacious it was for Tamayo to reach out to the exiled writer: “Imposible olvidar lo que en 1949 supone tener correspondencia con un exiliado, máxime cuando se pretendía hacer una campaña de teatro apoyada por personalidades del Gobierno de España” [Impossible to ignore what correspondence with an exile meant in 1949, especially when you were hoping to carry out a theatre campaign supported by personalities from the Spanish government] (Tévar Angulo 2012b: 441). In a letter to Casona dated 12 January 1950, Tamayo mentioned that in Puerto Rico he had been in contact with Cipriano Rivas Cherif, who had directed Casona’s play in 1935 (Tévar Angulo 2012b: 711).14 The reference to the Republican theatre director, who had exiled to Mexico in 1947 and moved to Puerto Rico in 1949 to teach at the University of Puerto Rico, apparently assuaged Casona’s fears about the Lope de Vega’s political persuasion: Confieso que me habían alarmado ciertas noticias llegadas a mí ultimamente [sic], en el sentido de que su campaña artística envolvía propósitos de propagandas ajenas a su función esencial, y que usted tuvo el buen tacto de eliminar claramente en nuestro primer cambio de impresiones. Tengo fé [sic] en su palabra. [I confess that certain information I recently received alarmed me, in the sense that your artistic campaign involved propagandistic proposals alien to the tour’s essential function, notions that you so tactfully and clearly disabused me of in our first exchange. I have faith in your word.] (qtd. in Tévar Angulo 2012b: 714)15 In April 1950, Casona again wrote to Tamayo: “me alegra poder confirmar que a tan noble empresa no se ha mezclado ningún partidismo político que pudiera herir a los españoles de esta orilla” [I am happy to confirm that your noble enterprise has not been tainted with any partisan politics that could hurt Spaniards on this shore] (qtd. in Tévar Angulo 2012b: 717). Tamayo’s double discourse, whether to Casona, the Latin American press, the Spanish government or the Spanish press, indicates how intentionally he manipulated language and information to convey allegiances that suited him in a given situation at a given time. Of course, at the same time Tamayo claimed to be nonpartisan to Casona, to the government he trumpeted his devotion to the Falangist mission.16 Throughout the tour, Tamayo also cultivated a relationship with Alfredo Matilla Jimeno, an exiled republican who taught at the Universidad de Río

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Piedras in Puerto Rico and wrote theatre reviews for the local El Mundo. Tévar Angulo notes Matilla’s deep connections with other left-wing exiles connected to Spanish theatre, such as Casona, Rivas Cherif and Francisco García Lorca (2012a: 197). Not only did Matilla Jimeno serve as advisor and confidant in Puerto Rico, but he played a key role in Tamayo’s future by travelling to New York on the director’s behalf to secure the rights to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the novel North American play that helped seal Tamayo’s success upon his return to Spain.17 Tamayo premiered Miller’s play in January 1952 at Madrid’s Teatro de la Comedia, less than six months after the Lope de Vega’s homecoming. Having seen the play in Bogotá, Tamayo recognised its originality in both content and staging. Most importantly, he wanted to bring the realism of Miller’s play to Spanish audiences, who for so long had access only to classical Spanish theatre or light comedies (incidentally, the same kinds of plays that made up the Lope de Vega’s repertoire at the outset of the Americas tour). Tamayo was so convinced of the potential of Death of a Salesman that he hinged his future success on it: “conseguir tal asunto para mi regreso seria [sic] el primer paso para esa consolidacion [sic] de prestigio que quiero conseguir allí” [to obtain such a matter for my return would be the first step in the consolidation of prestige that I would like to earn there] (qtd. in Tévar Angulo 2012b: 775). Unlike classical theatre and light comedies, Miller’s play, which premiered in New York in 1949, could make no claim at serving the Spanish state. A grim excoriation of the American dream, Death of a Salesman critiques the capitalist system, a system that Willy Loman escapes at the play’s end by taking his own life. In the Spanish political climate of 1952 amidst shifting political and ideological allegiances, Miller’s critique would have been deemed highly objectionable. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Spanish foreign policy shifted its dichotomous world view from Fascism versus democracy to anti-communism versus communism and the United States transformed from foe to ally. This seismic shift in Spanish foreign relations began taking shape during Tamayo’s Americas tour: “ese mismo año [1949] los Estados Unidos comienzan una serie de gestos de buena voluntad hacia el régimen español” [that same year (1949) the United States begins a series of good will gestures toward the Spanish regime] (Espadas Burgos 1987: 190). The November 1950 United Nations’ revocation of its 1946 resolution recommending the cessation of diplomatic relations with Spain aided the process of aperture to the United States. Occurring while the Lope de Vega was performing in Bogotá and at the behest of three Latin American countries (Dominican Republic, Peru and El Salvador), the U.N. vote sanctioned these new US-Spanish collaborations. While the Pact of Madrid was not signed until 1953, the ensuing years bore witness to further negotiations, accompanied by increased interest and exposure in Spain to American influence: The gradual acceptance of Spain by the international community was matched by an opening-up of the formerly closed Spanish economy to foreign investment. This enabled the United States to develop a policy of both

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public and private capitalist financial investment, accompanied by efforts to influence Spain’s educational, cultural, and technological structures. (Pollack and Hunter 1987: 30) Artistic agendas and cultural production followed suite. Famously, when José Luis Sáenz de la Heredia’s 1942 film Raza was re-released in 1950, the original negative references to the United States were removed in an effort to cast communism as the common enemy to Western capitalist nations. In this political climate, therefore, it would seem obvious that the Franco regime oppose a production of Death of a Salesman. Surprisingly, no Spanish officials took note of the anti-capitalist tone of Miller’s masterpiece. The Francoist censors voiced just one objection to the play three days before the premiere when they tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Tamayo to eliminate the suicide of Willy Loman (Espejo Romero 2002: 91). Theirs was a social, not a political objection. Tamayo’s Madrid premiere of Miller’s play was an immediate sensation. More importantly, it signaled the successful culmination of Tamayo’s opportunistic political balancing act. Having proven his service to the Spanish state through his Latin America tour, Tamayo had won the government’s trust. This opened the door to the artistic innovation Tamayo brought to Spanish theatre and, in turn, laid the foundation for his future political and commercial success in Spain.

Notes 1 The book Veinticinco años de teatro en España provides a largely photographic retrospective of Tamayo’s career with the Lope de Vega Company from 1946–1971. The three pages of text on Tamayo’s early career explain the difficulty of producing contemporary theatre in Spain in the 1940s and Tamayo’s unrelenting dedication to that endeavour: “de cortinas adentro y del escenario hacia afuera – en el espacio interno y respecto a la comunicación con el público – José Tamayo practicó una revolución. Puede ser que la revolución fuera una revolución de palacio, pero difícilmente podría explicitarse ese período sin contemplar el recorrido nacional e internacional de esa compañía y la evolución, orígenes y fundamentaciones – en orden etiológico riguroso – del propio José Tamayo” [on stage and beyond – internally and in communicating with audiences – José Tamayo engaged in a revolution. Perhaps it was only a palace coup, but this period cannot be understood without taking into account the national and international tours of that company and José Tamayo’s own evolution, origins and foundations, in rigorous etiological order] (Ruiz García and Gyenes 1971: 9). Yet no attention is paid to how Tamayo positions himself politically in these years, nor is the Latin American tour examined in any depth. Juan Miguel Tévar Angulo’s impressive doctoral dissertation is the most relevant recent contribution on Tamayo in Spanish theatre studies. Relying on the director’s personal archive, Tévar Angulo reconstructs a large part of Tamayo’s career – including the 1949–1951 tour – with a focus on the financial, personal and political logistics of each production. While this innovative work provides a highly contextualised reading of Tamayo’s interactions with Francoism, it is incomplete as Tévar Angulo relies almost entirely on Tamayo’s own papers and does not consider either documents from other sources or newspaper articles from both Spain and Latin America not maintained by Tamayo himself in his archive. Furthermore, because Tévar Angulo’s approach is largely documentary further engagement with the larger academic canon on Francoism and its cultural policies is necessary to fully situate Tamayo’s early career.

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2 See also García Ruiz (1999): “Quizá lo más definitorio de Tamayo es, junto a la búsqueda del éxito de público, la espectacularidad a gran escala, el movimiento de masas de actores y coros, en detrimento de la dirección de actores individuales. Dentro de esas coordenadas, era muy sensible a la coherencia de lenguajes entre música, escenografía, indumentaria e iluminación, que dirigía él personalmente y que tendía a marcados contrastes de luz y sombra” [Perhaps what defines Tamayo the most, together with seeking public success, is large scale spectacle, the movement of masses of actors and choruses, to the detriment of individual actors. Within these coordinates, he was sensitive to the coherence of music, scenery, costumes and lighting that he directed and tended toward sharp contrasts between light and shadow] (142–143). 3 See Kasten (2014: 698–701) for a more detailed discussion of the company’s repertoire and commercial strategy. 4 Of the 27 points the Falange outlined, the Francoist government decreed the first 26 points the foundation of the new state in 1937, during the civil war. The last of the original points, which granted the Falange supremacy over other political groups, was abandoned under Franco. 5 For a complete discussion of the goals Tamayo laid out for the tour to the MAE, see Kasten (2014: 703–704). For information on Tamayo’s espousal of the doctrines of hispanidad as manifested in the Latin American tour, see Kasten (2014: 702–703, 709–710). 6 I have listed corresponding dates for each of the Noticiarios reviewed for this article in the works cited. Unfortunately the collection at the MAE archives is incomplete and I was unable to review the third, sixth and seventh Noticiarios. 7 For a complete discussion on hispanidad in the Franco regime and Tamayo’s appeal to it, see Kasten (2014: 701–703). 8 For examples of negative reviews, see Kasten (2016: 15–16, 22). 9 Tamayo first mentions Casona’s play, debuted by the company in Cuba in November 1949, in the ninth Noticiario, written in January 1951 from Cartagena, Colombia. A review of Buero’s play is included in the tenth Noticiario, the first dispatched following the March 1951 debut of En la ardiente oscuridad. The header Tamayo employed for this review – “EL TEATRO MODERNO ESPAÑOL, SOBRÍO Y VIGOROSO” [MODERN SPANISH THEATRE, SOBER AND VIGOROUS] (3) – is unusual in that it does not name explicitly either Buero or the title of his play. 10 It appears that in many instances the Noticiario was the only source of news on Tamayo’s tour available to the Spanish press. Some articles even quote the Noticiario verbatim. For example, a 25 November 1949 article in Informaciones merely copies the quotes Tamayo had selected in his first Noticiario (Moncaya 1949). A two-page article in Triunfo from 25 July 1951 demonstrates that this practice continued throughout the tour. Here the article cites Tamayo’s 11th Noticiario almost in its entirety, including spelling errors and quotes from the Costa Rican press (“Triunfo de España en los escenarios de Hispanoamérica”). By the same token, Tamayo neglected to mention more controversial plays, such as Casona’s Otra vez el diablo, which did not appear in official correspondence until the ninth Noticiario, more than a year after the Company premiered the play. 11 Tamayo reported that Laguado’s play “se sale de las normas del teatro académico” [breaks the mould of academic theatre] (“Se iniciaron ya los ensayos de ‘El Gran Guiñol’”). The company’s lead actor Carlos Lemos called it “una comedia original que puede expresar las modernas tendencias del teatro americano de vanguardia” [an original play that expresses the modern tendencies of vanguard American theatre] (“Se iniciaron ya los ensayos de ‘El Gran Guiñol’”). El Liberal in Bogotá published the third act of Laguado’s play in its arts supplement on 9 December 1950. Carlos Puyo Delgado’s review praises not just Laguado and the company, but Tamayo himself: “No sería completo este ligero análisis si prescindiéramos de dejar una constancia que es una obligación. Nos referimos al trabajo, tan justamente admirado por los que entienden de teatro – pues el público quizá no lo sepa apreciar bien – del que será recordado como famoso director artístico de la Lope de Vega, don José Tamayo Rivas. A él se debió la escogencia de la obra, la acertada repartición de los papeles, las exactas

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13 14 15 16

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Carey Kasten decoraciones, la creación de escenas como la del segundo acto en que hay un teatro dentro de otro teatro y la noble sobriedad en la muerte de Melusa” [This light analysis would not be complete if we failed to acknowledge our obligation. We are referring to the work, so fairly admired by theatre cognoscenti – since audiences don’t always know how to value it – of the famous artistic director of the Lope de Vega, Mr. José Tamayo Rivas. To him we owe the choice of play, the spot-on casting, the precise sets, the creation of scenes like the one in the second act in which there is a play within a play and the noble sobriety of Melusa’s death]. See also Paco Alba’s profile on Laguado for El Liberal. “También el dinámico José Tamayo en su afán por demostrar al público de todo el continente el extraordinario valor de la obra de Laguado, se propone presentarla en todos los países que visite la compañía en su ‘tournee’ por América, antes de regresar a España, donde ‘El Gran Guiñol’ seguramente recibirá su definitiva consagración” [The dynamic José Tamayo in his effort to show audiences all over the continent the extraordinary worth of Laguado’s play plans to stage it in all the countries his company visits on its Americas tour, before returning to Spain where ‘El Gran Guiñol’ will surely receive its definitive recognition] (“Clamoroso triunfo de ‘El Gran Guiñol’”). For information on the reception of Otra vez el diablo, see Kasten (2016: 16, 21–22). For more on Rivas Cherif ’s production of Otra vez, see Gil Fombellida. Tévar Angulo claims that Rivas Cherif attended all of the Lope de Vega’s premieres in San Juan (2012b: 467). In fact, not just in correspondence with Casona, but also in interviews with the Latin American press, Tamayo emphasises the independence from the Spanish government that his company enjoys, despite the fact that he was actively seeking funding from the Spanish government. For more information, see Kasten (2016: 6–7). Tévar Angulo provides details on Matilla’s trip and the negotiations with Miller (2012a: 198–201).

References Alba, P. (1950): “Quién es y cómo vive el autor de ‘El gran guiñol,’”, El Liberal 17 December: 6, 10. “Clamoroso triunfo de ‘El Gran Guiñol’”, El Tiempo 14 December 1950: 23. “Dos obras colombianas va a montar la Lope de Vega”, El Tiempo 12 November 1950: 11. Espadas Burgos, M. (1987): Franquismo y política exterior. Madrid: Rialp. Espejo Romero, R. (2002): “Death of a Salesman, de Arthur Miller, en España durante los años 50,” Atlantis 24.2: 85–107. García Ruiz, V. (1999): Continuidad y ruptura en el teatro español de la posguerra. Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra. ——— (2006): “El teatro español entre 1950 y 1955,”, in Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra, V. García Ruiz and G. Torres Nebrera (eds.). Madrid: Fundamentos, 11–172. Gil Fombellida, M. (2003): Rivas Cherif, Margarita Xirgu y el teatro de la segunda república. Madrid: Fundamentos. J. Z. (1951): “Tamayo y el teatro español”, El Colombiano, Suplemento 11 March: 1, 4. Kasten, C. (2014): “Staging the Golden Age in Latin America: José Tamayo’s Strategic Ascent in the Francoist Theatre Industry”, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 91.5: 697–714. ——— (2016): “José Tamayo in Spanish America (1949–1951)”, Teatro: Revista de Estudios Culturales 30.30, Spring: 1–43. “La Cía. Lope de Vega incluirá artistas boricuas en repartos,” El Mundo 21 December 1949: 27. “La Compañía Lope de Vega actuará en Costa Rica,” Dígame 11 July 1950: 9. Margadant, J. B. (ed.) (2000): The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Moncaya, A. (1949): “Un triunfo resonante de la Compañía Lope de Vega”, Informaciones 25 November: 4. Noticiario 1, La Habana, Cuba, Oct. 1949. Noticiario 2, La Habana, Cuba, 15 Nov. 1949. Noticiario 4, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jan. 1950. Noticiario 5, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Feb. 1950. Noticiario 8, Bogotá, Colombia, Sept. 1950. Noticiario 9, Cartagena, Colombia, Jan. 1951. Noticario 10, San José, Costa Rica, June 1951. Nuri (1951): “La temporada de la Compañía ‘Lope de Vega’ en Medellín”, El Colombiano 5 February. Pollack, B. and G. Hunter (1987): The Paradox of Spanish Foreign Policy: Spain’s International Relations from Franco to Democracy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Puyo Delgado, C. (1950): “Notas de teatro: El gran guinol”, El Liberal 15 December: 2. Ruiz García, E. and J. Gyenes (1971): Veinticinco años de teatro en España. Barcelona: Planeta. Said, E. (1994): Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage. “Se iniciaron ya los ensayos de ‘El Gran Guiñol’”, El Tiempo 3 December 1950: 14. Tamayo, J. (1949a): Letter to Carlos Cañal, 9 Oct. 1949. Archive MAE, Madrid (sig. R-3677, exp. 9). ———. (1949b): Letter to MAE, 21 Apr. 1949. Archive MAE, Madrid (sig. R-3677, exp. 9). ———. (1949c): Letter to Sindicato de Espectáculo, 27 Aug. 1949. Archive MAE, Madrid (sig. R-3677, exp. 9). ———. (1949–1951): Noticiarios. Archive MAE, Madrid (sig. R-3677, exp. 9). Tavera, P. (1940): XXVI puntos del Nuevo Estado Español. Madrid: Gráficas Reunidas. “Teatro español en América”, Dígame 2 May 1950: 8. “Teatro español en América”, Dígame 20 June 1950: 8. Tévar Angulo, J. M. (2012a): “José Tamayo: La búsqueda desde el exterior de una estética innovadora para la escena español de posguerra (1949–1951)”, EPOS 28: 195–213. ——— (2012b): La aportación de José Tamayo al teatro español de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Diss. UNED. “Triunfo de España en los escenarios de Hispanoamérica”, Triunfo 284, 25 July 1951. Umbral, F. (1996): “El teatro o José Tamayo”, La Revista de El Mundo 56, 10 November, www. elmundo.es/larevista/num56/textos/tamayo1.html Viestenz, W. (2014): By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

5

Galician independent theatre A breach in Franco’s dictatorship Cilha Lourenço Módia

Preface The expression “independent theatre” directly refers to an anti-establishment movement, which by taking advantage of some legal grey areas in the Franco and Salazar dictatorships, spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula during the 1960s and 70s.1 The movement aimed to restore the social role of drama, which was mostly absent from mainstream theatre, and also to modernise both text and stage by making use of experimental language. This movement arrived in Galicia thanks to groups such as Grupo Teatral O Facho (1965), and Teatro Circo2 in particular (1967). The independent theatre was at the helm at a crucial point in the history of our drama and its achievements played a decisive role in the configuration of the current Galician stage. The Galician independent experience, which is indebted to the existence in Spain of groups such as Los Goliardos, and to the continuous work of the Madrilian magazine Primer Acto, claimed theatre as a right. By so doing, this movement demarginalised theatre and brought recovery, consolidation and modernisation to the stage, demonstrating the possibility of reconstructing Galicia’s original independent theatre after many years of forced silence. From the beginning of the post-war period up to the establishment of the independent theatre in Galicia, there were some isolated attempts to restore Galician theatre, especially in the literary field. However, it was the very active and operative work of the independent groups that eventually led to a theatrical revolution, since they not only normalised the use of the Galician language from the mid-1970s, at a time when Galician was not officially acknowledged, but they also made Galician theatre synonymous with theatre in Galician.3 To clearly define what this independent project implied, we need to reveal its roots and elucidate its genesis, which was brought about by both the slow revival of galicianism in the post–Spanish Civil War period and the social crisis in the second half of the 20th century.

First steps It is well known that the establishment of Fascism after the 1936 coup led to the systematic repression of Irmandades da Fala’s and Grupo Nós’ incipient nationalism, which had begun to foster local drama but was not allowed to flourish.

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According to Laura Tato: a dictadura do xeneral Francisco Franco paralizou tódalas actividades culturais e políticas tanto galeguistas como nacionalistas, mais isto tivo como excepción a determinados coros populares. Neste aspecto, o réxime franquista seguiu o modelo da dictadura de Primo de Rivera ó permiti-la continuidade daquelas manifestacións que non resultasen politicamente perigosas [. . .]. Así, os coros seguiron levando a escena, nos seus festivais, pezas de carácter costumista, é dicir, obras breves de ambientación rural, con tipos populares e de temática festiva. [General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship halted all cultural and political activities – both galicianist and nationalist – although certain popular choirs were the exception. In this regard, the Franco regime followed Primo de Rivera’s model by allowing the continuation of those manifestations unlikely to be dangerous [. . .]. Thus, in their festivals, choirs continued to perform costumbrist pieces, i.e. short plays in rural settings, with popular caricatures and festive subjects.] (Tato 2000: 445–446) As Tato also points out, popular choirs lost interest in staging costumbrist plays and zarzuelas (Spanish operas) from around 1945, a factor which led to the first non-rural plays of the period being staged in the late 1950s.4 Thus, Franco’s antigalicianist policies gradually softened from 1950 onwards. Castelao’s death in 1950 had the effect of revitalising Galician national sentiment, and that year a group of intellectuals decided to foster a culture-based galicianism, dissociated from any political intention. The publishing house Galaxia was founded in this spirit and became the means of channelling various initiatives, such as the recovery of classical Galician drama and the diffusion of original contemporary plays and translations. It acted as a bridge between the pre- and post-war generations of Galician playwrights. The revival of narrative and theatre written and performed in Galician took place after years of poetry being the dominant genre. At a time when Galician drama seemed utopian, Galaxia made a good number of original and translated plays available in the collection “Illa Nova” (New Island), and in the magazine Grial. These works ranged from Castelao, Cunqueiro, Jenaro Marinhas and the Galaxian literary group (Xosé Luís Franco Grande, Manuel María, Xohana Torres, Arcadio López-Casanova, Bernardino Graña) right across the board to Classical and Eastern European texts, as well as works by European avant-garde authors. A new generation of playwrights sprang up around Galaxia. It consisted of new poets – most of them university students – who used parables (classical myths as well as historical fables and dramas) to present a world whose inhabitants were overwhelmed by their lack of prospects, and to evade an uninformed audience or the censor’s opposition. Through artistic dramatic forms, this group created several productions that attempted to link their circumstances with the main European schools of thought of the time. However, the elitist nature of

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the texts, the diglossia (predominant in the society of the time) and the obstacles they encountered in attempting to perform works in Galician (especially when the authors had no direct relationship with the theatre) reduced the scope of this production, which has been referred to – sometimes derisively – as theatre to be read. This literary playwriting was theatrically ineffective since it lacked tradition and was disconnected from the stage. This, in turn, was a direct consequence of the non-existence of a non-rural Galician theatre, since theatrical tradition in Galicia meant rural theatre for the most part. Nonetheless, the process of social regalicianisation that had begun in the 1950s eventually started to bear fruit. While immovable Francoist structures became suffocating (uniformity was imposed in all areas, most literature was forced into clandestinity and travelling was infrequent), anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist philosophies brought to Spain from other countries introduced some fresh thought. Within this new context, the Franco regime needed to re-legitimate its outdated dictatorial system that was becoming the focus of increased widespread criticism. To this effect, a series of socio-economic measures were adopted with the intention of raising the standard of living and relaxating regulations somewhat. This generated a higher level of self-confidence among the antiestablishment sectors. As a consequence, opposition5 to the dictatorship grew significantly during the 1960s and manifested in many different areas. For the youth, who were the true protagonists of this opposition, the non-political cultural intervention led by Galaxia was deemed too slow. So they started to organise themselves into clandestine political groups (socialism- and nationalism-oriented), which despite their different strategies, agreed on one common feature: the idea of culture as an element of social transformation essential to turning the new ideals into a new reality. So as Lourenzo and Pillado have pointed out (1979), we now recognise that by the mid-1960s, the first albeit tentative signs were there that something was about to be forged. As far as writing is concerned, the desire for restoration and dramatic renovation are implicit in the fact that the “I Certame Literario do Miño” (First River Miño Literary Festival) was held in Lugo in 1960. Authors such as Cunqueiro, Cortezón, Franco Grande, Manuel María and LópezCasanova took part in the event. Three years later, the “Concurso Castelao de Teatro Galego” (Castelao Competion of Galician Theatre) was called on to support Galician theatre. As regards staging, the prospects were less encouraging. Galician theatre was virtually nonexistent in the early 1960s, and there was not so much as a single Galician commercial production in the Spanish language. The socio-cultural subordination of the Galician language meant that performances in Galician were not called for as necessary, a factor which impeded the establishment of new long-lasting theatrical initiatives. Meanwhile, the highest objective of Galician intellectuals was a democratisation of the arts that could reach the popular classes, traditionally excluded from the intellectual life of Galicia. This allowed for the elitist conception of culture to be gradually rejected, so that when the people took their concerns about the

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country to the streets, their issues found a place on Galicia’s stages too. It comes as no surprise, then, that the 1964 “Lei de Asociacións”6 (Associations Act) was used to create an extensive network of cultural groups throughout the region. These entities first appeared in the cities and regalicianised the middle classes – they worked together to promote the normalisation of Galician culture and language through all manner of artistic activity, but primarily through theatre and song.7 As Manuel Caamaño (1974) points out, Galicianist awareness was revived thanks to these associations in such diverse and significant fields as essay, pedagogy, church and journalism, thereby enhancing the capacity for initiative and action within the Galician cultural sphere. Furthermore, many recreational groups were of real assistance in concealing the clandestine political parties: Mediante unha actividade cultural en aparencia folclorista e politicamente inocua (cursos de galego, de gaita ou de danza, constitucións de grupos e escolas de teatro, nalgúns casos emisións radiofónicas en galego, etc.), as novas asociacións serviron ao mesmo tempo de centros de adoutrinamento e de debate político sobre problemas políticos, sociais e económicos, e marcaban os novos rumos que estaba a tomar o galeguismo nos anos 60. [Through a cultural activity that was apparently folklorist and politically innocuous (courses in Galician, bagpipes or dance; theatre groups and schools; some radio broadcasts in Galician, etc.), the new associations were used both for indoctrination, and for debate on political, social and economical issues, and marked the new direction of galicianism in the 1960s.] (Beramendi and Núñez Seixas 1995: 216) These cultural groups, along with illegal trade unions, neighbourhood associations and some individual left-wingers, became exceptional allies of the independent theatre and the main intermediaries between new drama and its audiences. They aimed to respond to the folkloric reductionism of the institutions. Training, information and intervention in both the linguistic-literary and the artistic fields (music, painting, literature and theatre) were more sought after than ever. These circles encouraged the emergence of theatrical groups by offering them a legal framework and a loyal audience. They also helped disseminate works by significant authors by staging their plays and arranging colloquia and round tables. Most importantly, they contributed to granting the independent theatre its characteristic ubiquity, and assembling a real theatre circuit.

Searching for an identity In those same years, Franco’s administration launched “Festivales de España” (Festivals of Spain, which consisted of theatre, zarzuela and ballet performances) and “Campañas Nacionales de Teatro” (National Theatre Campaigns). In some cities, audiences could attend several performances on huge stages at modest prices and sometimes even for free. This theatre served a

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bourgeoisie that was culturally anchored in the past, recreated a number of anachronistic aesthetic patterns, and was generally “retrasado con respecto a las realizaciones de la escena internacional y estéticamente pobre con relación a una concepción objetiva del hecho dramático como arte” behind the times regarding what was happening on the international stage and aesthetically poor in relation to an objective understanding of the dramatic act as art] (Sanchis Sinisterra 1965: 63). The arrival of foreign groups – agents of the supposed decentralising aims of the Franco regime – and the lack of a Galician scene to balance them, meant that the theatrical structure that prevailed in Madrid was recreated in the so-called regions of recognised personality (i.e. Galicia, the Basque Country and Catalonia) with a particular purpose: Tanto los Festivales como las Campañas de Teatro no son remiendos, sino algo más serio: la sujeción del artista a la maquinaria del estado, del hombre de teatro a las directrices del político, para el que, en esta hora, un Sartre significa, al margen de cómo se haga, un título de prestigio cara a las alianzas del mercado, cuando no la mordaza a cualquier radicalismo cuyo grito de batalla haya sido la reclamación de un Sartre, por ejemplo. [The festivals and theatre campaigns are not stopgaps, but something much more serious: the subjection of the artist to the state machinery, of the theatre man to the politician’s guidelines. A politician for whom a work by Sartre – no matter how well or badly performed – signifies a prestigious title to alliances in the market, if not the gag to any radicalism whose battle cry has been the claim for a Sartre, for example.] (Lourenzo 1974: 74) In parallel to the institutional theatre, but at a clear disadvantage due to its lesser social impact, there was an experimental chamber theatre. It consisted of few, and what could hardly be termed representative groups, that directly depended on the City Councils, the “Organización Juvenil Española” (OJE) (Spanish Youth Organisation) and other cultural entities. The appearance of this experimental chamber theatre in 1955 theoretically implied a breakthrough in the extremely poor cultural outlook of Francoist Spain, since it opened up some room for experimentation. However, since during this period the control of any social strain became a political necessity, its true function was to offer an official cultural alternative. Thus chamber groups became elitist and dominant, and somehow collaborative with the state, being granted some small space to express themselves theatrically: El espacio estético abierto por los teatros de cámara, y la constante atención política (decretos, leyes, reformas, subvenciones, etc.) que recibieron, no fue sino un modo de conseguir construir sociedad negociando una simbólica del consenso, de mantener a la pequeña burguesía dentro del Régimen (tal y como sucedió en la Italia fascista y la Alemania nazi con algunos futuristas y expresionistas).

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[The aesthetic space open by the chamber theatres and the constant political attention they received (decrees, laws, reforms, subsidies, etc.) were simply a way to build a society under a presumed consensus, and to keep the lower middle class under the thumb of the Regime (exactly as happened in fascist Italy and nazi Germany with some futurists and expressionists).] (Vicente Hernando 2001: 39) The experimental chamber theatre had a minority nature, as the legal regulation of this kind of theatre group limited not only the number of performances, but also the audience – a maximum of four hundred people – who had to be somehow related, usually through membership, to the chamber theatre venues proper. Beyond these constraints and the relative complexity of the plays performed, the experimental chamber theatre visited mainly unfrequented venues catering to a restricted public. This meant that this theatre was an expensive product with minimum social impact: al teatro no-profesional se le conceden, en efecto, cosas muy importantes, como son una cierta libertad en la selección de las obras, autonomía de montaje, posibilidad de realizar éste sin tener en cuenta para nada los gustos anacrónicos del público medio habitual de los teatros comerciales, etc., etc. Todo esto que, efectivamente, es muy serio se concede a los teatros de cámara . . . pero al mismo tiempo que se les niega lo fundamental, el acceso material al público [. . .]. Y la regla sigue siendo que la inmensa mayoría del amateurismo teatral español hace teatro “en” una sociedad, pero no “para” una sociedad. [. . .] los grupos de cámara, necesariamente constreñidos a hacer teatro sabiendo de antemano que ningún público real va a acudir a sus representaciones, acaban volviendo la espalda a la realidad del país y terminan por construir una especie de castillo en el aire, un teatro ajeno a la vida, un teatro enrarecido, que se consume en sí mismo sin objeto ni destino, un teatro que es pura estética. [non-professional theatre enjoys, indeed, very important concessions, such as certain freedom in the choice of plays, autonomy in the staging, the possibility of disregarding the anachronistic taste of the average audience of commercial theatres, etc. All this – which is very important – is granted to the chamber theatre, but they are deprived of the essential thing: material access to the audience [. . .]. As a general rule, the vast majority of Spanish amateur groups perform theatre “in” a society, but not “for” a society. [. . .] the chamber groups – necessarily compelled to perform theatre knowing beforehand that no real public is going to attend their performances – ends up turning its back on the country’s reality and building a sort of castle in the sky; oblivious to life, it is a rarefied theatre, which consumes itself through lack of purpose and use; a theatre which is solely aesthetics.] (Fernández-Santos 1966: 7–9) Experimental chamber theatre was conditioned not only by the limited number of performances, but also by the non-existence of proper companies – actors

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were hired for each staging, which had a negative impact on the working process – the high prices of tickets, the negligible subsidies, the limited availability of venues and the schedule of performances, among other aspects. Consequently, research and experimentation – both inalienable features of the chamber theatre – were non-existent in the Galician chamber groups. What could be found instead was an imitation of models proposed by the official theatre, which used to go on tour around the provinces with sumptuous titles and elaborate scenery. In the words of Manuel Lourenzo: el teatro de cámara se dio en Galicia con unas características propias, de semioficialidad, a medio camino entre el festejo público municipal y la exploración del futuro a través de una enorme – y siempre desordenada – puesta a prueba de textos y tendencias, e incluso la incursión, en ocasiones señaladas, a las más prestigiosas muestras del teatro en gallego. Recordemos, por ejemplo, las multitudinarias representaciones de “Os vellos non deben de namorarse”, en Santiago – grupo “Cantigas e Agarimos”; director, Rodolfo López Veiga – ; “Don Hamlet”, de Álvaro Cunqueiro, en costosísima puesta en escena del Teatro de Cámara de la A.C.I. coruñés, dirigido por Antón Naveyra, y algunas representaciones del grupo compostelano “Ditea”. Llevado de la mano por Agustín Magán, tal vez el más ecléctico y activo de los grupos de posguerra. [the Galician chamber theatre had its own features: semi-official, halfway between the municipal public celebration and the exploration of the future through a huge – and always messy – testing of texts and trends, and even the foray – on relevant occasions – of the most prestigious samples of theatre in Galician. Let us recall, for example, the large-scale performances of “Os vellos non deben de namorarse” in Santiago (group “Cantigas e Agarimos” directed by Rodolfo López Veiga), “Don Hamlet” by Álvaro Cunqueiro, in an extremely expensive staging by the Chamber Theatre of the A.C.I. of A Coruña, directed by Antón Naveyra, and some other performances of the group “Ditea” from Compostela, which – conducted by Agustín Magán – was probably the most eclectic and active of the post-war groups.] (Lourenzo 1974: 74) Furthermore, companies working as chamber groups or as amateur groups (Teatro de Cámara Ditea, Teatro Keyzán, the Asociación Teatral Valle-Inclán from Ourense and Teatro de Cámara da Asociación Cultural Iberoamericana) were allowed to perform a given production three times only, and they rarely used the Galician language8 (Lourenzo and Pillado 1987). It was only after 1970, following the example of Teatro de Cámara Ditea, that these companies started to use Galician more frequently, albeit only occasionally. However, the poverty of dramatic activity in Galicia was not only due to the distance between the audiences and the mostly urban theatres, or to the constraints imposed upon theatre by the legal apparatus of the Franco regime, which reduced it to the limited activity of chamber groups and subjected it to

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strict censorship. Two further factors played a significan role in the difficult revival of Galician theatre carried out by the independent groups. Firstly, the young practitioners of the time were unaware of the existence of a previous Galician dramatic tradition, which led to repertoires being based on translations of Spanish-language plays – mostly regarded as reactionary and obsolete – and stagings of a very limited array of Galician plays. Secondly, the contradiction between the practice of the experimental chamber theatre – performing in cities and in Spanish, and being a mere branch of the official state culture – and the socio-cultural situation in Galicia – mostly rural and Galician-speaking, and unassertive with regard to its own identity and language. As a result of the Galicia’s deeply disturbing political history, the imbalance between the potential Galician-speaking audiences and the state-run theatre became evident during that period.

The alternative of the independent project Tired of conformism and urgently needing to find new direction, the Galician youth rediscovered – thanks to the independent groups – that theatre could serve both as a powerful tool for the ideological-linguistic raising of awareness and as a reflection on our identity. It became necessary to break the silence, (re)invent Galician theatre and bring it to the people through the prism of the new movement. The culture-politics dichotomy provoked highly productive tensions, which put the new theatrical developments in opposition to the state-run theatre. Beyond its omnipresence, the features of the independent theatre were its battle against bourgeois theatre and a formal rupture from what went before. However, these principles would not be easy to assimilate into the renascent Galician theatre, which would have to face some impending challenges: how to get sidestep the limitations imposed by an archaic legislation and the need to incorporate new forms that might abandon the traditional one-act farce so deeply rooted in Galicia. To confront the legislation on experimental chamber theatre, to which these groups were also subject, the first step they took was the systematic violation of the restriction on the number of performances. The independent groups tried not only to take the spectator to the theatre, but also the theatre to the spectator – they sought unexpected venues so as to hinder repression as much as possible. Removing the barriers that kept people away from the stage destabilised the basis of the old theatre and waged war against institutionalised theatre, regarded as bourgeois. However, this disregard for current legislation did not imply a complete rejection of all the features of the experimental chamber theatre. Vicente Hernando notes that some aspects were still valid: El teatro de cámara y ensayo se caracterizaría por una oposición a las grandes manifestaciones teatrales, piezas de gran envergadura escénica y obras operísticas. Por ir contra el gran teatro burgués del XIX, el teatro que ha comercializado las relaciones sociales y la sentimentalidad.

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[The experimental chamber theatre would be characterised by its opposition to huge performances, large-scale staging and operatic plays. It was against the bourgeois theatre of the nineteenth century, the theatre that commercialised the social relationships and the emotions.] (Vicente Hernando 2001: 39–40) As in the rest of Spain, the divergence between chamber and independent groups was essentially ideological, whilst their aesthetics were not radically different. Independent groups aimed at a ceremonial theatre no longer detached from the collective life. Thus, their organisational proposal focused on issues such as selfmanagement, economy of resources, travelling to perform, and in certain cases community life. In this way they intended to form groups that could perform on a constant basis, benefitting the evolution of both artistic language and solidarity, which were non-existent in the experimental chamber theatre. Formally, the independent theatre overcame the one-act farce and the still prevailing worn-out bourgeois formulas (realism and naturalism), and incorporated new philosophical-aesthetic trends, largely forged by the impact of authoritarianism upon society. Consequently, a number of authors such as Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett came to the fore thanks to the historical and ontological absurdity of their writing, driven as they were to convey an existentialist pessimism. The adoption of Marxist postulates also led to a review of the Brechtian plays (testimonies to the class struggle), and to anti-dogmatism reflected in diverse experimental solutions, such as Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, both in content and expression. The longing for social and political freedom also conditioned the internal organisation of the independent theatre groups. As the prevailing Marxism showed, possessing the means of production granted greater independence, so having access to transport and the technical elements of theatre became almost indispensable for the new groups to guarantee rapid assembly of the stages and thus make theatre possible anywhere. The independent theatre became the master of its cultural sphere. The key to its impact was the experimental chamber theatre’s inability to compete with the new theatrical formula, namely against its strongly rebellious nature. During these years, theatre had to be committed. The visible heads of the independent theatre were fairly committed, and even in those cases in which there was no direct political involvement, the atmosphere itself made the performances political, which resulted in crowded venues. The culture-politics dichotomy led to a hugely productive internal tension. Some of these clandestine groups conceived theatre as a phenomenon inserted into a process of rebellion against the ideological state apparatus, oriented towards national liberation and the subsequent path towards socialism. Meanwhile, other groups chose moderation, making a pact with the non-galicianist opposition, waiting for self-determination to arrive by itself. Two understandings of Galician socialism9 – the first one definitely galicianist, the second, Spanish-centralist – were reflected here and their confrontation gave the Galician

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stage a different dimension. This new theatre allowed also for colloquia – scenery for the most important diatribes – which became virtually mandatory after every performance. What would be the features of Galician independent theatre? Despite the strong aesthetic coherence among the new groups, regardless of affiliation, in the whole Iberian Peninsula, there were many differences determined by the particular socio-cultural situation of each region. There had never been a commercial theatre through Galician since a broad sector of the audience had always rejected performances in that language, which in turn meant that impresarios never treated Galician theatre as they treated that from outside Galicia. At that time there were also no theatre venues in Galicia10 that offered a stable schedule for independent theatre, as Capsa Theatre did for instance in Barcelona. Unlike Galicia, Catalonia experienced a theatre revolution by the hands of university students. The Catalan society was an industrialised one and had organised students, a solid network of theatres, trade associations and societies that sponsored Catalan drama: O que singulariza o teatro independente galego fronte ó español é que aquel non naceu nos ambientes universitarios, de forma que, ó non estar vinculado ás elites, non caería nas profundas contradiccións ás que chegaron moitos deses grupos no resto do Estado. Por último, os grupos independentes serviron de acicate para que todo o teatro que se facía en Galicia acabase sendo galego. [What differentiates the Galician and the Spanish independent theatre is the fact that the first was not born in the universities, and as it was disassociated from the elites, it would not encounter the deep contradictions that many of these groups did in other parts of the state. Finally, the independent groups contributed to the achievement of all the theatre created in Galicia ended up being Galician.] (Tato 2000: 448) Despite the limited facilities offered by the state for the rollout of an independent project, the decentralisation of theatre – one of the biggest concerns of its time – would occur more radically in Galicia than in the rest of Spain due to the particularities of a mainly rural public. The three aspects here reviewed (ubiquity, rebellious nature and the turn to the Galician language) were the keys to the significance of the independent theatre. The experimental chamber theatre could not compete with this new theatrical formula, which offered “un teatro máis vivo, máis barato e máis ubicuo” [a livelier, cheaper and more ubiquitous theatre] (Lourenzo 1999: 37).

Conclusion After some unfocused initiatives to restore the Galician theatre (mainly in the literary field) during the post–civil war period, the recovery of the theatre in Galician began in the mid-1960s thanks to a series of cultural associations and

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clandestine anti-Francoist political organisations. At a period when theatre – both commercial and experimental – was mainly performed in Spanish, and the ignorance regarding Galicia’s dramatic tradition limited the development of a Galician theatre at both the literary and performance levels, the breach opened by the Galician independent theatre was crucial to the revival and modernisation of a theatre written and performed in our language. Thus, although Galician independent theatre consisted of a limited number of groups (with unequal presence and results), the avant-garde nature of this movement – primarily represented by Teatro Circo and Teatro Antroido (Carnival Theatre) – managed to give an identity to our theatrical expression through the conscious galicianisation of its whole activity. Independent groups promoted Galician dramatic literature by (re)creating texts – both already existing dramatic and poetic texts as well as new plays. They showcased Galician drama inside and outside Galicia, not only through performances, but also in journals and specialised magazines (Primer Acto, Yorick, Pipirijaina, etc.), and by attending and arranging lectures, round tables and seminars. Furthermore, they insisted on the necessity of a theoretical and practical training that would guide and facilitate the stage work, and defended acting as a profession.11 Moreover, this new movement adopted a resolute attitude against the ideological and dramatic stagnation of commercial and institutional theatre companies. Independent groups stood outside the system and, from that position, questioned both the legislation and the theatrical concept of the commercial and chamber productions, and fought to make theatre essential to society. From that moment onwards, the dissatisfaction and rebelliousness of youth would be expressed on stage, sometimes with daring and unconventional proposals. As a consequence of the decisive action of the independent groups, most of Galicia’s experimental and chamber groups would gradually disappear. Others, such as Teatro de Cámara Ditea, would progressively galicianise their repertoire, and even participated in the “Mostra de Teatro Galego” (Galician Theatre Exhibition) in Ribadavia, as López Silva and Vilavedra point out (2002). Finally, Galician independent theatre was crucial to creating and consolidating the so-called Movemento do Teatro Galego (Galician Theatre Movement), which consists of an important number of diverse dramatic groups within the independent scene and beyond.

Notes 1 Even though the independent theatre became popular in the Iberian panorama during these years, further research into its background will show that this movement took root in Europe during the late 19th century. As pointed out by Alba Peinado, “la génesis del Teatro Independiente en España se remonta a los propios orígenes del movimiento en Europa. El Independent Theatre Movement aparece en París con el Théâtre Libre de André Antoine (1887), en Berlín con el Freie Bühne de Otto Brahm (1889), y en Londres con el Independent Theatre de Jacob Thomas Grein (1891). Sin embargo, será un grupo tardío y el más oriental de todos, el Teatro de Arte de Moscú (1898), dirigido por K. S. Stanislavsky,

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el que llegaría a traspasar los límites europeos y se introduciría con gran fortuna en la escena americana.” (Alba Peinado 2005: 17) [the genesis of independent theatre in Spain dates back to the origins of the movement in Europe. The independent theatre movement appeared in Paris with André Antoine’s Théâtre Libre (1887), in Berlin with Otto Brahm’s Freie Bühne (1889), and in London with Jacob Thomas Grein’s independent theatre (1891). However, it would be the late movement hailing from the East, the Theatre of Art of Moscow (1898) directed by K. S. Stanislavsky, that would cross the European borders and enjoy great success on the American stage] (Alba Peinado 2005: 17). For further information on the contribution of this group, see O Teatro Circo na configuración do Teatro Independente Galego (1967–1978) (Lourenço Módia 2013). Galician-language monolingualism in our theatre was a rule until it was poignantly broken in 1998, when the Centro Dramático Galego (Galician Drama Centre) performed texts by Valle Inclán in Spanish (Lourenço and Vizcaíno 2000). In 1958, Cantigas e Agarimos (Songs and Affections), a choir from Compostela led by Rodolfo López Veiga, presented Anouilh’s Antígone in a Galician version by Xosé Manuel Beiras, Xosé Luís Franco Grande and Ramón Silver. The following year, A Coruña’s Chamber Theatre of the Asociación Cultural Iberoamericana (ACI) staged Cunqueiro’s O incerto señor Don Hamlet, príncipe de Dinamarca under the direction of Antonio Naveyra Goday. Farmers, fishermen, workers and students had gradually been increasing the intensity of their protests since the early 1960s. For example, the protests against the land concentration (Mazaricos, 1962); the mobilisation of university students against the authoritarian nature of the institution (Compostela, 1968); the reaction against violent police intervention at a mass for Rosalia de Castro (1969); the social condemnation of the dismissal of the communist leaders Aneiros and Pillado (1970); the fight against the Agricultural Social Security fee (1971); the general strike in Bazán (Ferrol), which resulted in two workers being killed by police gunfire and nearly 50 people being injured in a mass demonstration (1972); the protests in Citröen (Vigo, 1972); and the protests against the installation of a nuclear power plant (Xove, 1974) among others. The “Ley Reguladora de Asociaciones” (Associations Regulatory Act) was published in the “Boletín Oficial del Estado Gaceta de Madrid” (Official State Gazette of Madrid) in 1964. For an approach to the beginnings of the Nova Canción Galega (New Galician Song), see Araguas (1991) and Fraga (2008). During the 1960s, chamber theatre groups that introduced plays in Galician to their repertoire were Teatro de Cámara As Burgas from Ourense (Os vellos non deben de namorarse, by Castelao, in 1969); Teatro Popular Galego from Vigo (A raposa e as uvas, by Figueiredo, translated by Xosé Luís Méndez Ferrín and María Xosé Queizán, and A p . . . respetuosa, by Sartre, translated by Francisco Fernández del Riego, premiered in 1966 and 1968 respectively); and the Aula de Teatro do Liceu de Betanzos “Candilejas” (O que di sí, o que di non, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Xesús Alonso Montero, in 1968). By the end of the 1960s, there was already an outline of those which would become the most important political trends of the following decade: the Asamblea Nacional Popular Galega (Galician Popular National Assembly), founded in 1975, which would work from its inception as a socially hyperactive socialist supra-party; and the galicianist trend, led by the Consello de Forzas Políticas Galegas (Galician Political Forces Board), established in 1976. The first independent theatres in Galicia date back to the 1980s: Sala Luis Seoane (A Coruña, 1980), managed by the homonymous theatre group; and Sala Caritel (1982), transferred by the Ministry of Culture to Teatro Caritel in Ourense (Compañía Luís Seoane 1999). “Independent theatre” was the de facto name that many groups used to claim a de iure professionalism. The first professional groups (Teatro Antroido, Escola Dramática Galega, Artello, Troula, A Farándula, etc.) were independent groups seeking to dignify drama in the Galician stages, and to raise the Galician theatre to the level of the best independent theatre in the Iberian Peninsula.

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References Alba Peinado, C. (2005): Ángel Facio y Los Goliardos. Teatro Independiente en España (1964– 1974). Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá. Araguas, V. (1991): Voces Ceibes. Vigo: Edicións Xerais de Galicia. Beramendi, J. G. and X. M. Núñez Seixas (1995): O nacionalismo Galego. Vigo: A Nosa Terra. Caamaño Suárez, M. (1974): “Novas xeneracións e grupos culturáis”, in Galaxia Almanaque 1950–1975. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia, 137–140. Compañía Luís Seoane (1999): “Compañía de teatro Luís Seoane”, Revista Casahamlet 2: 42–43. Fernández-Santos, Á. (1966): “Situación del teatro no-profesional en España”, Primer Acto 80: 4–14. Fraga, X. (2008): Miro Casabella e a Nova Canción Galega. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia. López Silva, I. and D. Vilavedra (2002): Un abrente teatral. As Mostras e o Concurso de Teatro de Ribadavia. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia. Lourenço Módia, C. (2013): O Teatro Circo na configuración do Teatro Independente Galego (1967–1978). Santiago de Compostela: Edicións Laiovento. Lourenço Módia, C. and C. C. Vizcaíno Fernández (2000): Talía na Crónica de Nós. Dez anos de teatro galego (1990–1999). Ourense: Editorial Abano. Lourenzo, M. (1974): “Ribadavia, piedra de toque”, Primer Acto 175: 74–77. ——— (1999): “Teatro Circo: a consolidación do Teatro Independente galego”, Revista Casahamlet 2: 34–37. Lourenzo, M. and F. Pillado Mayor (1979): O teatro Galego. Sada-A Coruña: Edicións do Castro. ——— (1987): Dicionário do teatro galego (1671–1985). Barcelona: Sotelo Blanco Edicións. Sanchis Sinisterra, J. (1965): “Carta a los grupos no profesionales españoles”, Primer Acto 60: 63–64. Tato Fontaíña, L. (2000): “O teatro desde 1936”, in Galicia. Literatura.Vol. XXXIII. A literatura desde 1936 ata hoxe, D. Villanueva Prieto and F. Rodríguez Iglesias (eds.). A Coruña: Hércules Ediciones, 445–446. Vicente Hernando, C. (2001): “Los teatros de cámara y ensayo: un espacio de negociación estética para la posguerra”, Revista de la Asociación de Directores de Escena 84: 38–45.

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The aftermath of dictatorship in contemporary Basque theatre Arantzazu Fernández Iglesias

Introduction The Basque community, or the community of Basque speakers, is divided between the administrations of France and Spain (the Community of Navarre and the Basque Autonomous Community or Euskadi in Spain and three more provinces in France). We must also take into account the health of the cultural system conditions in which this minority (and minoritised) language exists, since these two concepts go hand in hand. Currently, there are said to be about 800,000 Basque speakers, or euskaldunes, and it follows that stage productions in the Basque language in the era of globalisation must compete with Spanish and French language productions, as they are the prevalent languages of the territory (Olaziregi 2012: 7–12, 159–162). Even if we accept identity as being based on linguistic specificity, we agree with A. Martin’s consideration that: “Basqueness” might be theorized not as a thing (an ontology) but rather as an “estrangement,” that is, as the outcome of a process (an epistemology) leading to profounder understanding of the complexities of our world. (Martín 2009: 172) Setting aside the fact that theatre expressed in a minoritised language could be studied as a means of forging identity, our concept of theatre understands this art form as a systemic act developed within a structure that encompasses production, mediation and reception in conjunction with significant factors such as institutions and the market (Even-Zohar 1999: 31–51). The titles referred to throughout this chapter are works that have been performed, that is to say, we will not consider dramatic literature that has yet to be staged. Furthermore, this chapter will only focus on plays performed in Basque, at least in one of their versions. We must bear in mind that the Basque language is not the main language of the Basque territory. According to the latest data issued in 2008 by Sarea, the official theatre network in the Spanish Basque region, 67% of theatre productions in Euskadi were in Spanish. On the other hand, most of the productions for children were in Basque (67%). As a result, Basque productions for adults make up a smaller proportion of region’s dramatic arts

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Note on Basque theatre prior to the transition to democracy Basque art, including burgeoning theatre, flourished during the Second Republic (1931–1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) due to the autonomy achieved within the federal-like state that Spain was at that time. The most important theatre groups at that time were Eusko Iztundea – the Basque Academy of Declamation (1915–1936 in San Sebastian), Oldargi (1930 in Bilbao), and the theatre section of Emakume Abertzale Batza – Assembly of Nationalist Women (founded in 1930). Their plays were political, pedagogical works based on the nationalist ideology of the conservative nationalist party EAJ-PNV, whose motto was Jaingoikoak eta Lege zaharrak (God and old Laws). It should not be forgotten that theatre is a communicative art form, and one whose message has no intermediaries, as Santos Sánchez has pointed out: This peculiarity allows a wider politicization of the audience than other genres; and being aware of this, both dictatorships and their opponents have traditionally used theatre to impose obedience or encourage disobedience. (Santos Sánchez 2014: 1) Thus, Sabino Arana (1865–1903), the main founder of EAJ-PNV, wrote both De fuera vendrá [He/She Will Come from Outside], and Libe, one of the best-known popular historic dramas of the Second Republic. It must be pointed out that the former of the previously mentioned works represents a summarised overview of the period of initial industrialisation of Bilbao, from which the immigrant workers’ socialist unions and Republican-liberal bourgeoisie are absent (Corcuera in Granja 1982: 17). Arana´s plays reduce reality to a nationalist vision in order to serve as effective political propaganda for the encouragin of audience againts centralism and socialism. However, Franco’s victory in the civil war, the subsequent exile of Basque intellectuals, the abolition of the 1936 Statute of Autonomy and the enduring Spanish dictatorship plunged the Basque language into a state of fragility that threatened its survival. Basque theatrical culture suffered a tremendous blow and would not show significant signs of recovery until well beyond the transition to democracy. During the Franco regime, the pastorales (popular theatre performances staged in the French Basque Country) became a mass phenomenon that is still today one of the most visible elements of Basque theatre. This kind of theatre, which implies the involvement of the community that organises the performance each year and enjoys a massive attendance, is now identified with Basque theatrical expression par excellence. In other words, the pastorales are associated with a sort of Basque national theatre that functions as an element of social cohesion, thanks to the language functioning as a source of identity among Basque speakers (Fernandez Iglesias 2013: 34–36), and also because it is a manifestation of anti-centralist politics, among other reasons. In addition, since the 1950s, the French Basque

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Country has also been the region that has regained credibility for Basque theatre (Luku in Sudupe 2011: 152), thanks to Fr. Pierre Larzabal’s (1915–1988) works and the large number of amateur groups. In the Spanish Basque Country, Basque-language theatre began to recover thanks to the previously mentioned Euzko Iztundea under the direction of Maria Dolores Agirre in San Sebastian during the period of 1953–1973. The Basque-language works performed during these years were conservative and made no significant aesthetic contribution to the history of performing arts. Their value lies in the very fact of their having existed given the context in which the weakness of the Basque language (which was forbidden in public institutions and on the streets after the Spanish War), the existence of censorship, and the lack of theatrical infrastructure combined to suffocate cultural output. Thus, during the 1960s, poet and playwright Gabriel Aresti (Bilbao, 1933–1975) described the contemporary Basque theatrical production as moralist and characteristic of the previous century. To address its stagnated development, he proposed adopting themes and forms that were characteristic of modern culture (Aresti 1986: 21). In the 1964 article “Euskal teatro berri baten beharra: euskal komedia” (The Need for a New Basque Theatre: Basque Comedy), he identified three problems within theatre production: the lack of a standardised form of language, which impeded the twenty existing Basque theatre groups from going beyond their locale; the lack of skilled dramatists; and the scarcity of works of dramatic depth in translation. At the same time he argued for the creation of Euzko Antzerti Zaindia, an institution similar to the Comédie Française, to enable the emergence of a new Basque theatre (Aresti 1986: 65). A few years later, in the preface of the 1973 edition of Lau teatro Arestiar (Four Theatre Works) by Aresti, Ramon Saizarbitoria (San Sebastian 1944) summarised Aresti’s proposal as a way in which contemporary concerns, both popular and avant-garde, came together in an aesthetic which – as was happening in the pastorals – included recognisable elements of Basque folklore (Saizarbitoria 1973: 9–10). During the 1960s, there was a great resurgence of Basque culture that had some impact on theatre. As was the case elsewhere in the Western world, large sectors of young people in the Basque Country appeared to be against capitalism, Catholic morals, sexual repression and, consequently, the Franco regime. Those utopian times and the struggle for political change spread far beyond the Spanish transition to democracy (1975–1982) (Aldekoa 2015: 9–11). The social movement promoting the Basque language, its standardisation and immediate acceptance, the rebirth of the network of euskaltegis (adult literacy schools) and ikastolas (schools in which pupils are taught through the Basque language), and the existence of collectives of artists such as Ez dok amairu (There is not thirteen) or Gaur (Today), are all factors that show a commitment by creators, intellectuals and citizens to implement Basque culture and in turn display opposition to the Franco regime. In addition to this, during those years the Basque clergy lent their support to local associations for dance, theatre, hiking and so forth, all of which shared a common defence of the Basque language along with other cultural and historical features of Basque society (Olaziregi 2012: 154–155).

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Amongst amateur Basque theatre we must highlight the Jarrai group, founded in 1959. Its members wanted to perform works opposing the ideological principles of Mrs. Dolores Agirre, whose beliefs were aligned with traditional, right-wing nationalism. Thus Jarrai had the aim of performing staged readings in support of the Basque language. They reached the stage the following year with great excitement, and the 1960s became the decade during which Basque culture flourished, both through avant-garde and popular languages, which both expressed political opposition to Franco´s dictatorship. Up until 1966, in addition to local authors such as G. Aresti and Xalbador Garmendia (1932), Jarrai performed texts by E. Ionesco, A. Miller, and A. Camus, among others, circumventing censorship thanks to the protection of the municipal Theatre Club in San Sebastian (Sarasola 2010). However, their offerings did not fit well with mainstream audiences who were not necessarily accustomed to contemporary theatre. The taste of the young, theatrically educated minority members of the company (R. Saizarbitoria, I. Beobide, X. Tolaretxipi) did not fit with the taste of the majority of the audience (Saizarbitoria 1973: 11). The theatre of opposition to Franco, which during the 1970s enjoyed large audiences, was that of independent groups performing in Spanish (Akelarre, Cómicos de la legua-Kilikilariak and El lebrel blanco, among others), while works in Basque were mainly performed by amateurs outside of the academic world. The Bilbao-based Akelarre Company, directed by Luis Iturri, was at the vanguard of opposition to the regime. In our opinion, the understanding of Basque culture as a culture of resistance, and the use of the Basque language as a way of voicing that resistance, are seeds that germinated in Akelarre´s bilingual works – Irrintzi (1977) and Gerra ez (1979, Stop war) – that is, productions in a single version using both Basque and Spanish. Hence, in 1974, five years before the Basque Statute of Autonomy (the postFranco law granting the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country political existence within Spain), Bernardo Atxaga (1951) published the article “Theatro Berria(ren bila)” (In Search of a New Basque Theatre), which stated that the new Basque theatre was to be national, popular, and revolutionary in order to overcome its delayed development and to gain the audience’s favour, among other reasons (Atxaga 1974a). His approaches were based on those of G. Aresti, as both sought a formula for rejuvenating modern Basque theatre. To do so, they proposed that various forms of Basque culture, such as elements from carnival dances, traditional music, and popular versification, be included in this new theatre. Atxaga’s first theatre work was Borobila eta Puntua (The Circle and the Point, 1972); three years later he published Antzerki minimoa (Minimum Theatre) and, in 1976, Bilintx Omenaldia (Homage to Bilintx), included in the volume Ziutateaz (About the city). Critics have described the first as a symbolist work, the second as being in line with A. Jarry’s theatre of the absurd, and the third as a work influenced by A. Artaud’s theatre of cruelty (Antza 1982). His work as a playwright extended into the next decade with titles such as Prakaman – an adult version of Pinocchio staged in 1980 – and a series of texts performed by Maskarada: Jimmy Pottolo eta Zapataria (Fat Jimmy and the Shoemaker, 1980),

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Logalea zeukan trapezistaren kasua (The Case of the Sleepy Trapeze Artist, 1992) and Evatxo Peron (No llores por mi Euskal Herria) (Little Eva Peron, [Don’t Cry for Me Basque Country]). Atxaga also contributed to Euskadifrenia (1986), staged by Karraka under the direction of R. Barea, and Marc Legasse´s Gastibeltzaren Karabinak (Gastibeltza’s Carbins, 1985 and 1991), performed by Maskarada (Olaziregi 2003: 416).

Democracy and the institutionalisation of the Basque theatre system The transition from dictatorship to democracy entailed the reconstruction of the cultural infrastructures that had been destroyed during the Franco regime, which had pursued the homogenisation of Iberian diversity into one single culture expressed through Spanish. The slogans “España, Una, Grande, Libre” (One Big and Free Spain), “Un Estado, una Patria, un Líder” (One State, One Nation, One Leader), “España, un destino en lo Universal” (Spain, One Destiny in the Universal) and the popular expression “Hable en cristiano” (Speak in Christian – implying that languages other than Spanish were barbaric) reflect the opposition of the Franco regime to the relative degree of self-governance achieved by the three Basque provinces (Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Araba) thanks to the Statute of 1936, and its hostile attitude towards everything different, and therefore deemed dangerous, in a mono-cultural Spain. Since dictatorship had meant the ironic universality of being One, the transition to democracy in Spain and the decentralisation implemented at that time brought about the introduction of a system of autonomy for the Basque Country (1979) and Navarre (1982), which in turn allowed for the development of Basque policies and the subsequent readjustment of Basque culture and theatre. The particular theatrical infrastructure of the previous period had been characterised by the existence of Italian bourgeois-style theatres in the main cities (the Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian, the Gayarre in Pamplona, the Principal in Vitoria, and the Arriaga and Campos Eliseos in Bilbao)1, which had not hosted Basque-speaking productions, and by an almost total absence of cultural infrastructure in towns and villages. In the Basque Autonomous Community, the Euskadiko Antzerti Zerbitzua (Basque Government Theatre Service) was regularised by a decree in 1983. Its tasks included the publication of the monthly magazine Antzerti (1982–1986), the quarterly Antzerti Berezia, and the management of the official school of drama, whose subsequent closure in 1993 left the Basque territory without a public education centre for performing arts until the opening of Dantzerti in 2015. In the same year of the foundation of Antzerti, 1982, the theatre festival in Azpeitia was held for the first time. Its programming was exclusively devoted to amateur productions in Basque, but over time it has also become a performance space for professionals. It is in this professional arena where the most active linguistic protection policies are developed with respect to the Basque language. Thus, the Act of Normalisation of

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the Basque Language (Law 10/1982) included measures that had an impact on Basque theatrical practices. As groups in the Spanish Basque Country became professional companies and abandoned their collective character in favour of business, dual versions of works in Basque and Spanish became widespread. Unlike Antzerti’s and Orain, Tanttaka, Bederen 1, Agerre, and Ados groups’ bilingual performances, Maskarada was the only group from the transition period that decided to continue offering their works exclusively in Basque, until they premiered Ernesto izatearen garrantzia (1994)/La importancia de llamarse Ernesto (1995) (The Importance of Being Earnest), initiating their bilingual itinerary for economic reasons. The fact that shows in the Basque language were subsidised was supposedly a positive development. However, the statements contained in the print media between 1989 and 2010 and the documentary directed by Ramon Barea in 1997, Nos sentamos a hablar (Let´s Sit Down and Talk), reveal that the professional assessment regarding this matter is rather negative. His remarks, in summary, report that during the 1990s, Basque-language productions were mostly focused on obtaining subsidies and often turned out to be low quality. For this reason audiences showed their preference for attending shows in Spanish, believing that they would see better theatre. Some authors also lament the fact that theatre lost its connection to the audiences during the turmoil of the transition to democracy (Bernués 1997: 40–42; Garate 2002; Barea 2007: 01:04’). The belated creation of the previously mentioned network, Sarea, in 1993, involved the creation of a public exhibition circuit managed by public institutions and brought Basque theatre out of the squares and Jai Alais (pelota courts). Programming moved to the hands of public institutions, which became the main client of the groups. Therefore, the organisation of theatrical infrastructure entered a phase of institutionalisation and widespread dependence, which contributed to the weakening of Euskal Antzerkiaren Biltzarra (the Association of Basque Theatre Groups, EATB), founded in 1977. This network included groups whose performances were exclusively given in the Basque language and who aimed to create a circuit on both sides of the Spanish-French border where they could perform their works, maintain a theatre festival, and organise training courses. Most of its members were amateurs, but professional groups joined as well over the following years. The new policies implemented in the 1990s lessened the impact such initiatives had previously had. The cultural policy of the Spanish Basque region has established a model of which the Guggenheim Museum, opened in 1997, has become the most powerful symbol. It focuses on costly infrastructures in which the exhibition is the most important feature and all aspects related to training and local artists are neglected. The museum became the symbol of a new era – its shining surface would make us forget the memory of Bilbao’s industrial past and would substitute the association between ETA and the Basque Country with an appealing image of Bilbao as a gentrified modern tourist destination born from the ruins along the river side of the city (Zulaika 2007: 158–163).

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The Basque Plan for Culture recognises the existence of a distinguishing element in the Basque culture, but also states that it is necessary to create it: It is almost miraculous that, even without a powerful institutionalisation, part of the Basque historic culture has survived and there is an identifiable Basque cultural space. If this space is to be permanent, priority must be given to the structures that support it. The most decisive are: The educational system, some type of self management political order, a communicative context and an organised cultural framework. Using these co-ordinates, to consider Basque cultural space as a fact and also to build it are not contradictory approaches but rather two prisms of a single reality. The building process, when based on a cultural system, project and action result in the production, development and transformation of the initial space. (2005: 18) This is a plan to be developed in an area called Euskal Hiria, which literally means Basque City – a concept that tries to pull together a divided community, made up entirely of Basque territories and ruled by different administrations, yet of a small size. However, the Plan does not enhance either the local language or the local performing arts. Theatre, which the autonomous government conceives as a cultural industry, remains in a no man’s land, forsaken by the institutions and awaiting a Theatre Law. Regarding more contemporary dramatic productions in Euskadi, the plays written in Basque are usually comedies such as Ama begira ezazu (1990), Hau Komeria (1997), Hau Paraderoa (2002) and Kutsidazu Bidea (2003), whose greatest ambition is merely to entertain the audience. The inclusion of dramatic literature has reached the lowest levels ever known. In this regard it should be noted that up to now there has been a divide between writers who publish, and those who write for theatre groups: playwrights publish works which are rarely performed, and productions in Basque mostly come from unpublished texts. In the French Basque region, where theatrical practice has traditionally been more cultivated, we must highlight the work of amateur groups such as Bordaxuri, Txirristi Mirristi, and Hiru Punttu, which perform exclusively in Basque. In addition, some French-speaking professional companies have also begun to perform in Basque. This is the case with Chimères, who in 2005 premiered Kaukasiar kreazko Borobila (The Caucasian Chalk Circle), and Le Petit Théâtre de Pain, with their 2008 Aulki hutsak, Juglaera, Puta eta Eroa, Tartean (The Empty Chairs, the Bitch and the Fool). Hiru Punttu amateur group, led by A. Luku, has, through its tetralogy Lur (Land), Beltzeria, Euscalduna (The Basque) and Fauxto (Faust) (2008), revisited the need to use popular forms such as the toberak (charivaris) through which a theatre of protest is realized. The director provided interesting theory by way of trial, which questions the meaning of Basque culture when describing the prism and channels of mainstream culture. For example, Luku

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calls into question the importance of the division between professional and amateur in minority cultures such as Basque (Luku 2009: 101). Nowadays, although most of the Sarea network’s productions are still in Spanish, and those in Basque are a minority and mostly aimed at children, an alternative route for Basque theatre has emerged, setting itself apart from institutionalised and commercial theatre and producing previously weakened and silenced theatre in Basque. Heirs of the theatre company Agerre Teatroa, founded in 1985 and directed by Maite Agirre (1955) and directly related to the experience of the Antzerkiola Imaginarioa-Fábrica de Teatro Imaginario (1998), numerous alternative companies have decided to present their performances only in Basque within as well as outside the institutional network, and to combine the efforts of artists from all over the Basque territory. Since its foundation, Agerre Teatroa has maintained its emphasis on participatory and anthropologicalstyle theatre, which seeks out the public in the squares. Antzerkiola Imaginarioa has chosen an alternative avant-garde theatre settled in Bilbao´s Espacio Mina, a collective and multidisciplinary space created as a response to Guggenheim. A reflection on the trajectory of the group carried out by Ander Lupus, one of its main members, lays the foundation for the latest era of Basque theatre – the Biscayan creator rejected Bilbao as the Basque theatrical hub, established his theatre on the periphery of the city, and founded Artedrama Plataforma in a successful attempt to bring theatre in Basque to the Basque-speaking areas (Valverde 2013: 10–25), away from the bewitching sirens of institutionalisation. The asymmetric dichotomy between the state of the theatre in the French and the Spanish territories is clearly altered by the show Errautsak (2010), a collaboration between Dejabu, Artedrama-Huts Teatroa and Le Petit Theatre de Pain. This production established a theatrical movement in which younger companies composed of members born in the 1970s advocate for an art that manages to bring young people back to theatres. Shows by groups like these and others such as Metrokoadroka, Rouge Elea, Gilkitxaro, Atx, Lauka Teatro and Ainhoa Alberdi, as well as Iraia Elias´s plays have brought into question the quality of institutionalised theatre and have revitalised the Basque scene in such a way that we can now speak of a theatrical flourishing (Matxain 2015: 25–27). These groups are rated as profamateurs (Guillan 2010: 23–25) because, despite devoting their lives to theatre, they are unable to live solely on performance. They are performers who have chosen to serve their community and not the market (Astiz 2009: 27–29).

Final consideration Hispanic Studies have not taken Basque theatre into consideration, although Basque companies performing both in Basque and Spanish make up an interesting corpus by which to analyse the cultural diversity of the Iberian Peninsula. Examining the path followed by companies founded in the 1980s, such as Geroa (1979), Karraka (1980), Maskarada (1980), Tanttaka (1983), Markeliñe (1985), Agerre Teatroa (1985), Teatro Paraíso (1986), Legaleon Teatro (1986), Gaitzerdi/ Kabia (1988, 2006) and Hika (1989), would shed light on the cultural fragility of

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Basque theatre during the Transition. It would also make up for the astigmatism of Spanish academia towards the theatrical diversity of this singular nation where differences are regarded as antagonistic (Delgado 2014: 74). These companies have been performing in Spain and abroad without receiving much in the way of theatre criticism. Thus, for example, it was only in 2013 that Spain’s Centro Dramático Nacional (National Drama Center) performed a play originally written in Basque at the Valle-Inclán Theatre in Madrid – Tanttaka´s Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordionista (The Son of the Accordeonist), an adaptation of the homonymous novel by B. Atxaga.2 The will to homogenise Spanish culture during the Franco regime has cast too long a shadow. Besides this, the fact that the Basque theatre system is still being developed – it lacks an archive, the theatre arts school was only opened in 2015, academic research is scarce, there is no national company, there are no public theatres to be used as creative centres for resident theatre companies – is due both to the policies implemented since the transition to democracy as well as to the heritage of the cultural regime of Franco’s dictatorship.

Notes 1 Campos Eliseos was the only one owned by a private investor. The others were municipal theatres. 2 The play was shown between 22nd March and 7th April 2013. The shows on 30th and 31st March were in Basque with Spanish subtitles.

References Aldekoa, I. (2015): 68ko Belaunaldia. Donostia: Utriusque Vasconiae. Antza, M. (1982): “Bernardo Atxagaren (orainarteko) antzerkigintza: inkurtsio berritzaileak”, Susa 5, http://andima.armiarma.eus/susa/susa0506.htm Aresti, G. (1986): “Euskal teatro berri baten beharra: euskal komedia”, in Artikuluak. Hitzaldiak. Gutunak, G. Aresti (ed.). Bilbao: Susa, 53–66. Astiz, I. (2009): “Garaia da Kolonizazioari eza emateko”, Argia 2189: 27–29. Atxaga, B. (1972) “Borobila eta Puntua”, in Euskal Literatura 72, B. Atxaga et al. DonostiaSan Sebastián: Lur, 225–251 ——— (1974a): “Euskal Theatro Berriaren Bila 1”, Anaitasuna 268, www.euskaltzaindia.eus/ dok/iker_jagon_tegiak/anaitasuna/html/268.html#3190 ——— (1974b): “Euskal Theatro Berriaren Bila 2”, Anaitasuna 269, www.euskaltzaindia. eus/dok/iker_jagon_tegiak/anaitasuna/html/269.html#3208 Bernués, F. (1997): “La producción escénica en la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca”, Primer acto 268: 40–42. Delgado, L. E. (2014): La nación singular. Fantasias de la normalidad democrática española (1996– 2011). Madrid: Siglo XXI. Even-Zohar, I. (1999): “Planificación de la cultura de mercado”, in Teoría de los polisistemas, M. Iglesias Santos (ed.). Madrid: Arco/Libros, 71–95. Fernandez Iglesias, M. A. (2013): “Las pastorales modernas: fenómeno multitudinario en el País Vasco. La pastoral Xahakoa”, Signa 22: 33–58. Garate, K. (2002): “Frontoitik antzokirako komediak”, Argia 1864, www.argia.eus/argiaastekaria/1864/frontoitik-antzokirako-komeriak

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Granja, J. L. (1982): “Prólogo”, in De fuera vendrá. Comedia en tres actos (1898). Teatro Nacionalista Vasco, J. L. Granja (ed.). San Sebastián: Haranburu editor, 15–19. Guillan, O. (2010): “Profamateurrak agertokira”, Argia 2251: 23–25. Luku, A. (2009): Euskal Kultura. Iruña: Pamiela. Martín, A. (2009): “A Place for Literature in Postnationalist Identity”, in Writers in between Languages: Minority Literatures in the Global Scene, M. J. Olaziregi (ed.). Reno: Centre for Basque Studies University of Nevada, 171–190. Matxain, K. (2015): “Loraldi kolektiboa”, Argia 2467: 25–27. Olaziregi, M. J. (2003): “Euskal antzerki garaikideaz”, Lapurdum 8: 386–426. ——— (ed.) (2012): Basque Literary History. Reno: Center for Basque Studies-University of Nevada, Reno. Saizarbitoria, R. (1973): “Hitzaurrea”, in Lau teatro Arestiar, G. Aresti (ed.). Donostia: Lur, 17–19. Santos Sánchez, D. (2014): “Editorial”, 452ºF, Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature 10: 1–2. Sarasola, A. (2010): “Iñaki Beobide. Jarrai antzerki taldeko zuzendari ohia”, Berria, http://paperekoa.berria.eus/papera_inprimatu.php?htmla=BERRIA&urtea=y2010&hilabet ea=m11&eguna=d20101127&orria=p00030005 Sudupe, P. (2011): 50eko Hamarkadako Euskal Literatura: III Antzerkia eta Hamarkadaren Ikuspegi Orokorra. Donostia-San Sebastián: Utriusque Vasconiae. Valverde, J. (2013): Ander Lipusen antzerkigintza: errituala, kultura eta ikuskizuna. VitoriaGasteiz: Diputación Foral de Álava. Zulaika, J. (2007): “Bilbao deseada: ‘El malestar de la Krensifikación’ del museo”, in Aprendiendo del Guggenheim Bilbao, A. M. Guasch and J. Zulaika (eds.). Madrid: Akal, 153–176.

Documentary Barea, R. (2007): Nos sentamos a hablar, https://vimeo.com/8307481

Others Basque Government-Culture Department (2005): The Basque Plan for Culture. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Eusko Jaurlaritzaren Argitalpen Zerbitzu Nagusia/Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno vasco, 18, www.kultura.ejgv.euskadi.eus/r465773/es/contenidos/informacion/ plan_vasco_cultura/es_6571/adjuntos/BASQUEPLANFORCULTURE.PDF

Part II

Performance

7

Are all tyrannies the same? Rebellion against Spanish oppression as a re-enactment of resistance to totalitarianism in Marcos’ Philippines Rocío Ortuño Casanova

When Bienvenido Lumbera, a playwright who was imprisoned during Marcos’ times, was asked in an interview in 2006 about the never-ending issue of national identity in the Philippines, his answer brought back the topic of colonial resistance:1 In the case of the Philippines, when we talk about national identity, I believe the artist must be aware of the history of his country; specifically the revolutionary history of the Philippines, about what those who fought against Spanish and American colonialism went through. [. . .] What we call the Filipino identity, therefore, is working to assert the freedom of the Filipino people. (Lumbera 2006) On the one hand, being an intellectual close to Marxist criticism, Lumbera’s statement is linked to Historical Materialism as it conceives history – Philippine history in this case – as a succession of struggles of the oppressed trying to overcome the status quo – first Spanish rule, then American rule, then Japanese rule and finally Philippine authoritarian rule – through confrontation, which will provide a framework to study the phenomenon to be exposed in this chapter: the re-enactment of one present oppression – Martial Law – in theatre plays by identifying it to a past oppressor – Spain – in order to legitimise the present struggle and avoid censorship. It will be done by examining firstly two representations of the Philippine Revolution and then two stagings of García Lorca’s plays, all during Marcos’ times. On the other hand, it naturally clashes with postcolonial criticism in its attempt to deconstruct the monolithic imagination of the postcolonial subject, as in this case one oppressor represents all oppressors and one ‘oppressed’ or pretended subaltern represents all of them (Spivak 1987: 197–198). However, as Lisandro Claudio states, it was post-war intellectuals and most especially a generation of Marxist historians who flourished during Marcos’ times, who “combined anti-colonialism with a renewed emphasis on the broader category of ‘the masses’” (Claudio 2013: 48), simplifying the problems of 20th-century

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Philippines into the narrative of one persisting problem: the struggle of the homogenised Philippine people (without class distinction) against likewise homogenised foreign powers. The “struggle discourse” is deeply rooted in a country having such difficulty a national identity as the Philippines, with no territorial continuity (it is composed of over 7,000 islands), and in which among the dozens of languages spoken in the archipelago, the majoritarian – Tagalog – was spoken only by around 25% of the population at the turn of 21st century.2 The fight against the invader has acquired, then, the status of a founding myth and a focus on timelessness in the construction of an uninterrupted tradition to justify an essence, which the Filipino individuals can identify with (Hall 1996: 614). In this case, even if the focus of the narrative is on José Rizal, it could also be traced back to Lapu Lapu defeating Magellan in history books and epics such as De Mactan a Tirad by Flavio Zaragoza Cano (1941) continuing to Padre José Burgos, Andrés Bonifacio, Emilio Aguinaldo and a long etcetera of “heroes” committing acts of revolt against foreign powers, whose lives and deaths are celebrated every last Monday of August (National Heroes Day), November 30 (Bonifacio Day) and December 30 (Rizal Day). Marcos used their mythical shadow to lay the foundation for his “New Society”. Paradoxically, the same heroes were also the inspiration of the resistance against Marcos.

Philippine theatre scene in 20th century and the enactment of oppression Since the end of the Spanish colonisation in 1898, theatre has constituted an important way of raising social awareness in the Philippines. Spanish drama continued for a few years through the staging of costumbrist plays in official venues, but theatre in Tagalog was soon developed and, as Epifanio San Juan stated, “in a language unknown to the Americans, succeeded in launching a series of attacks not only against the occupying power, but also against the capitalists” (San Juan 1974: 5). Therefore, with the use of the autochthonous language and the adoption of ex-colonial genres, as is the case of the zarzuela or sarswela plays, which reached their greatest success in the Philippines through the works of Severino de los Reyes, Filipinos found a space for self-expression and a vehicle for the construction of identity. According to Bienvenido Lumbera, the zarzuelas of de los Reyes succeeded in “keeping with the new self-image of the Filipino resulting from the struggle against the Spaniards and the Americans” (Lumbera and Nograles Lumbera 2011: 88). With Walang Sugat (Not Wounded, 1902), one of de los Reyes’ zarzuelas, begins the homogenisation of the struggles in the Philippine imaginary. The play depicts the period of revolution against Spain favouring the image of the Katipunan. However, it is released four years after Spain had left the Philippines, on the same year that the United States had won the war against the Philippines and taken possession of the country. The play was considered seditious by the American government even if it did not attack the Americans directly. The same happened to the writer and director Aurelio Tolentino, who

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was arrested in 1903 for his play Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), an anti-play stages an allegory of the different foreign powers in the Philippines (Spain, China and America) and how stereotypes of Philippine individuals reacted to them. Theatre in the 20th century started therefore with the shadow of American censorship looming over it between 1902 and 1943. “Seditious” plays (Fernandez 2004) were banned and playwrights prosecuted, which led to division of Philippine stage into official and alternative theatrical venues. It was in the where social and nationalistic concerns would be expressed (Fernandez 2004). In the 1930s, the discussion about political independence moved from the theatrical to the political stage, and seditious theatre no longer became necessary (Chua et al. 1996: 105). However, the air of political upheaval revolving with cultural life in the West in the late 60s also reached the Philippines, bringing back the revolutionary trend of Philippine theatre to stage social protest. According to the Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia, Short militant plays were staged in plazas, churchyards, factories and streets to awaken political awareness. During the First Quarter Storm of 1970, artists involved in the national democratic cultural revolution against the “culture of the status quo” staged such plays as the Kamanyang Players “Pakikibaka (Struggle), [. . .] Gingong Silahis” Barikada (Barricades) and Tanging Paraan (The Only Way). (Chua et al. 1996: 105) The revolutionary theatre was driven mainly by students and young artists forming small amateur groups in schools and barangays (neighbourhoods) and rather than in formal venues, it was performed in public spaces both indoors and outdoors, reaching in this form a wider public of the oppressed.

Marcos’ rule The social turmoil of the 1960s in the Philippines responded to the first stage of Marcos’ rule – the democratic one – in which the president’s government was accused of corruption and blamed for allowing a new form of colonisation by the United States. On September 21, 1972, Ferdinand Marcos, who had been elected president of the Philippines in 1965 and whose re-election in 1969 was surrounded by controversy (Molina 1984: 723–724; McCallus 1989: 129), imposed Martial Law throughout the country and derogated the Constitution of 1935. Martial Law initially achieved certain social approval according to McCallus (129) thanks to the propagandistic spread of cultural myths, which provided his regime with some political legitimacy. First, there was the creation of three new foreign enemies to the country: Muslim secessionism, Communist Imperialism and false Filipinos, rich families who had sympathised with previous foreign rulers. Against these three enemies,

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Marcos would defend what was truly Filipino: traditional values, a strong leader and the heroes, ideas and images of the independence revolution of 1896 (McCallus 1989: 130). But if there was a true historical culprit to blame for all the problems of the Philippine nation in Marcos’ narrative, it was its Spanish colonial past (McCallus 1989: 132–134). This lead us to think that the imposition of Martial Law was a necessary means to create a new society would accomplish the unfulfilled promises of the Philippine revolutionaries of 1896 (Ortuño Casanova 2015: 71). Now, whilst the Marcos regime tried to make use of the Philippine heroes as a backup for their plan, their rebellion would have another reading for those opposed to the dictator. According to Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco in his introduction to Entablado, talking about Ferdinand Marcos, His administration was accused of engaging in a neocolonial relationship with the United States (Shalom 1981, Bonner 1987). James Paterson (1998) explains that political activists referred to him as the American boy or the puppet of the American government. Hence, nationalism and national identity were the favored themes in almost all aspects of sociocultural activities – including theatre. (Pineda Tiatco 2015: 1) Marcos’ propaganda focused on the resistance to colonial power, taking as a paradigm the Spanish colonial rule and structuring his narrative around a repetition of this pattern of resistance against the foreign always referring to Spanish rule. However, his strategy backfired as he made alliances with the United States. Nixon saw in the Philippine president an ally against Communism the Cold War, and a facilitator for the presence of American troops in South East Asia, as the Philippines is conveniently near Vietnam. This is contradictory because the United States was still another foreign coloniser, and albeit seemingly more benevolent than Spain, it had left around 250,000 Philippine people dead in the Philippine-American war (Sison 1971: 32) and small villages were burned to ground “because American officers believed that insurgents in these villages were widespread” (Quibuyen in Pineda Tiatco 2015: 123). As we said, Marcos’ opponents used the same nationalistic narrative that he used in his propaganda, and made an example out of the Philippine heroes who fought against a foreign power – Spain. In this case, however, the “foreign power” was incarnated in Marcos himself: a dictator allied with the United States. According to Claudio, Marcos’ New Society proposed an ethno-nationalistic discourse, whilst the National Democratic Revolution and most especially the Communist Party of the Philippines offered a nationalist anti-imperialist discourse attacking therefore North American Imperialism (Claudio 2013: 53). The double reading of the lives of these big names in Philippine history also provided a useful tool to outwit censorship during the days of Martial Law (1972–1981) and even after its “nominal lifting”, until the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983 (Chua et al. 1996: 106).

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Theatre and censorship in Marcos’ times John Lent talks of “nine major mechanisms of control” which were used in Marcos regime by the Office of Civil Defense and Relations for censoring information and opinions which might be against the regime’s interest. Among these, three concerned theatre: “the stipulation of taboo subjects that critics dared not broach; the review and censoring by a board of all films and tapes meant for the theatre and televisions” (it would include theatre scripts), and “the busting of media and theatre guilds” (Lent 2015: 851). This put an end to direct protest in media and stages. However, censorship promoted an “evolution of expressions of protest in dramatic form; and the development of playwrights, actors, and stage artists whose commitment and imagination were expressed and often enhanced in the ‘creative poverty’ of protest theatre” (Chua et al. 1996: 106). Whilst between 1972 and 1983 there was hardly any criticism the regime in the media, the proliferation of semiprofessional groups linked to churches, neighbourhoods, schools and universities, and other community collectives “registered their protests in dramatic idiom” (Fernandez 1987: 111). This proliferation of protest amateur groups, which was actually a continuation of the Philippine tradition of staging discontent since the early 20th century, was led by the “re-foundation” of the Philippine Educational Theatre Association, PETA, which from the beginning preferred to tackle social issues such as “agrarian unrest and electoral corruption” in their repertoire (Samson et al. 2008: 71–72) and which in 1977, despite the social commitment of the team, started sourcing institutional funds that led the company to have the most fruitful years of its existence from 1977 until the first half of 1980s (109). The institution would develop what was called the “aesthetics of poverty”, committed to the awareness of performing in a poor country at times of depravation, using certain colours and forms in staging which reflected the reality of a third world country, as well as indigenous inexpensive materials which contributed to identify and envision a national culture (Fajardo 2010: 181–182). It was a well-thought concept of aesthetics with a clear ideological message in a strongly politicised and influential theatre team. At the time, and together with the “aesthetics of poverty”, PETA would also give birth to the People’s Theatre, a movement after the declaration of Martial Law, which would mobilise population in social and political endeavours by staging subversive plays of their own as well as adaptations during and after Martial Law. Other theatre groups which had a relevant role in social protest were the University of the Philippines Repertory Company, also strongly politicised, the Kolambugan Theatre of Lanao, or Tanghalan Silangan, a proletarian group founded in 1981 (Samson et al. 2008: 106).

Rizal as bayani When Doreen Fernandez enumerates the resources that playwrights had to develop for producing works reflecting social concerns without being accused of being subversive, she starts by the use of historical material “letting it speak about

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past events, while suggesting to fertile minds in the audience possible analogies or parallels in the present or even in the future” (Fernandez 1983: 12). Several Filipino revolutionary heroes, often martyrs, were resurrected for those plays. In the case of José Rizal, even when he did not fight directly in the upheaval against Spain, his books criticising the Spanish establishment in the Philippines and his tragic death executed by the Spanish army contributed to his creation as being the most symbolic bayani.3 A considerable amount of literature has been devoted to the construction of José Rizal as an icon of Philippine society, a keystone for its national identity, and the political interests that this construction implies (Valenzuela 2014). Rizal’s unfair assassination and the Filipino collective identification with it might constitute what Dominick Lacapra called “traumatropism”, a “founding trauma as myth of origins”, but also repeated and “transfigured into the sublime or the sacred” in a way that “the traumatized may be seen as martyrs or saints” (Lacapra 2014: xiv). The sublimation of Rizal and his identification with Christ as a martyr sacrificing his life for the good of his countrymen reached the point where a church venerating this victim of Spanish colonial regime was founded.4 The consecration of Rizal’s life is transferred to his work, making any story about him relevant, serving as a lesson for any situation. It may explain the many works reenacting his life and even the idea him with the protagonist of his novels, Crisóstomo Ibarra. Setting aside the plays which remake his life or writings, such as Noli me tangere (adaptation by Rodolfo Medel Jr and Jess R. Aiko and direction by Luisa M. Reyes in 1969 for PETA), El filibusterismo (adapted by Felipe Padilla de Leon into an opera in 1970), or Kanser (another adaptation of Noli me tangere by Jomar Flores staged in 1980), this section is going to focus on two plays which show the National Hero in real and imaginary situations having to once again the possibility of joining a rebellion against the Spanish colonial establishment: Indio, staged by PETA in 1969, and Bayani, a pop/rock opera based on imaginary situations lived by Rizal, written by Bienvenido Lumbera in 1977 and finally staged in 1984.5 Néstor Torre’s Indio (One Swallow Night) focuses on Rizal’s exile in Dapitan (Mindanao) between 1892 and 1896, during the Spanish colonial rule, with Josephine Bracken, the woman who would become his wife the night before his execution. The play identifies the character of José Rizal with Jesus Christ, in a sublimation of both assassinations. The focus is on his private life, and Josephine Bracken, as a new Maria Magdalena, even has to explain to the Dapitan people why she is not married to Rizal: “He is brilliant, much older than I, and the most eligible man in this town, if not in the whole country. While I am a pale, young Irish girl whose hands are chapped from work and wear” (Torre 1969: 25–26). A physical idealisation of the hero is being imposed together with a pinch of racial (and racist) pride, by comparing the Indio to the despised white girl. In this case, she is the “other”. As soon as the subalterns are given the voice become aware of their importance as a force, driving resistance against the traditionally Western elite, but using the local bourgeoisie – in this case Jose Rizal – to be their voice

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in society and lead their fight. This is verbalised by the character of Aseniero, representing the Filipino people and advancing the high destiny of Rizal: “he loves us more than he loves you. You’re nothing but his woman. We’re . . . We’re the future!” (26). That future, which refers to “the masses”, includes all Filipinos – as opposed to Bracken, a foreigner. This idea coming from the play, contributes to the concept of a homogeneous Philippine mass. However, the class to which Aseniero belongs was not the same as Rizal’s; that is why he and his family trusted him to lead their fight. They are the subaltern, the ones who do not have a real voice. In the play, the voice they were looking for to represent them was that of the left-wing intellectuals, who spoke through the character of Rizal, who had himself a Westernised perspective, as he was educated in Europe, wrote in Spanish and had European Romantic ideas of freedom and nationalism. Is this a case of use of the hegemonic language to express or pretend to be the voice of those who do not have one to gain a seat in the power structures, as Gayari Spivak warns? (1987: 197–198). It may well be. Rizal in this play keeps the reasonable attitude of reform, education and intentions of peaceful change that made him a popular choice for the American government under the Taft administration, which chose him among other more revolutionary heroes as National Hero for the people to identify with (Iya 2012: 110). The message criticising the ruling power is there, for that public ready to listen to it. Rizal’s message is so universal that can stand out without its context, becoming an incitement to rebellion against any system which deprives its citizens of freedom: I thought I could play their game by following the rules they’d set down. But now they’ve changed the rules and I’m caught in my own traps. [. . .] Rebels can’t be beggars, because then they’ve got no choice. And what else is being a rebel all about if not a matter of choosing. (Torre 1969: 33) The character is left victimised and with no choice but to break the rules despite what he says. This would provide the character with a moral authority that should be transferred to the rebellious public. However, the call is still for peaceful revolution: Rizal does not join the armed revolt and actually despises it. In his final discourse, after refusing to join Bonifacio’s war, he gets as Messianic and as Biblical as it could get: We must win our freedom by deserving it, loving the just, the good, to the extent of dying for it; when a people reach such heights, God gives them the weapons they need, the idols and the tyrants fall like a house of cards, and the dawn of freedom breaks. (Torre 1969: 51) The religious tone of the discourse connects with a trend of protest theatre which would foreground the liberation message inherent to Christianism:

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liberation from evil and liberation from sin. Being difficult to blame a script with a religious topic of subversion, in 1979 PETA retakes the traditional Christmas subgenre of Panunuluyan (short plays performing the search of Mary and Joseph for an inn in Christmas Eve), relocating it to Manila’s shanty towns, where the protagonist couple end up supporting the oppressed masses of Manila and have their child there (Fernandez 1987: 111). Also the University of the Philippines used the resource of providing a religious play with a social message: they staged in 1977, 1980 and 1984 the play Pagsambang Bayan (The People’s Worship), written by Bonifacio Ilagan, which “Refashioned the Catholic Mass into a people’s rite of liberation” (Fernandez 1987: 111), while depicting Marcos’ abuses with projections and mimes (Chua et al. 1996: 106). Whilst in 1969 a discourse encouraged Filipinos to trust God to free them from undesirable leaders, in 1984, after having suffered almost ten years of Martial Law, and still three more under Marcos’ rule, the discourse behind the reenactment of Rizal’s ideas changed substantially as proposed by Bienvenido Lumbera. According to Lumbera, the initial idea for the Pop opera Bayani came from Jim Paredes, the music composer, in 1976 (Lumbera 2003: 96). Due to different delays and obstacles, the play was performed only in 1984 for four days, Lumbera was teaching in Japan (Rush 1993). As Lumbera himself recalls in conversation, the play received good reviews although it was watched by a very limited amount of public, despite the appearance of popular jazz and pop stars in the show (Fernandez 1987: 108). However, Jim Paredes intended to extend the performance for more days, but the actors refused, as they had not been paid. The staging was provocative and glittery, with a live band with its members dressed up in a punk fashion performing on one side of the stage. Colourful modern costumes and punk-rock music with historical characters: a risky bet to tell how the past was relevant in that present. The play is designed indeed to be provocative at various levels, one of them being the transformation of Rizal’s story, something difficult to touch in the Philippines where it becomes a founding myth for cultural identity, and something near to the status of being sacred. They wanted to create something recognisable for Philippine public, but at the same time not let them get into the comfort of the predictable story of Rizal’s heroism (Lumbera 2003: 96). To achieve this, they created a tension, a debate, between two freedom heroes – Rizal and Bonifacio – a confrontation that had already been suggested in Indio, which in Bayani is taken to its last consequences by placing both characters on stage face to face, one representing peaceful discontent and self-sacrifice for ideals, the other one pushing for armed fight and using the name of Rizal to achieve his objectives. The antagonism leads to the public to question, acquiring major relevance at the time of the play’s release, right after Benigno Aquino Jr.’s assassination: “Ano ba ang bayani at sino ang tunay na bayani?” (What is a hero and who can be a true hero?) (Lumbera 2003: 99). The final words explaining the tension were suggested by the producer, Leo Rialp. He wanted to end the play in a provocative way to awaken the audience, due to the national circumstances

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at the moment of the representation: the deep economic crisis and the rallies demanding justice for the assassination of Benigno Aquino (99). The question is not about Rizal, it is not about how to defeat Spanish rule it is an appeal to the public, to enquire about how to defeat a criminal political leader. The encounter between Bonifacio and Rizal, which never took place in reality, might have surprised the audience as a deliberate departure from official history, but it is set in a context of imaginary situations and metafiction. According to Lumbera, the resource of metafiction, materialised in his play in the presence of the author-compositor as a character to link the story to the time of representation was borrowed from “protest” plays without indicating which ones (Lumbera 2003: 97). However, in another interview he said that the two playwrights who had influenced his plays had been Lorca and Brecht (Guerrero 2013). We can trace, therefore, a line from the author-compositor who is tired of always doing the same and wants to transcend to Lorca’s “director” in El público. Both Awtor-kompositor in Bayani and director in El público establish connections between past and present, between the characters and the public, and break the boundaries of the stage in order to demand a reaction from the audience: in El público the action is to liberate the “theatre under the sand”; in Bayani it is to decipher the present relevance of the play for the Public and encourage action. This is actually said in the first song sung by the Awtor-Kompositor called “Gusto kong balikan ang ating nagdaan” (“I would like to look into the past”): Gusto kong balikan ang ating nagdaan – hindi mga pangyayari, kundi ang kahulugan, Ano’ng sinasabi sa kasalukuyan. Dalawang bayani, dalawang pananaw, magkaibang tugon sa tawag ng bayang ang minimithi paglaya at dangal. [I would like to look our past not just events, but into its meaning. What say nowadays? Two heroes, two different perspectives answer to the call for people freedom and dignity] (Lumbera 2003: 100) Interestingly, years later, metafiction would be profusely used in Spanish new Memoria fiction on the civil war (i.e. Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis), as a way of recognising the past relevant to be the present, foregrounding memory as a present retrieve of the past and its consequences. The projection of the punishment and lack of freedom of the author (see footnote 1) enters in a parallelism with Rizal and performs with him on the same stage. The play becomes then a game of mirrors or rather a matryoshka in which three characters who have challenged the status quo at different moments work together to translate the idea of the necessity of the fight and its cyclical character to the public, evidencing again

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the Marxist-Leninist Nationalistic view that Lumbera would also defend in his critical essays, but this time on stage, in a popular production with pop stars and “plot elements [. . .] drawn from Rizal’s biography, classroom material in the Philippines from elementary school onward and therefore familiar to all Filipinos” (Fernandez 1987: 108). In this way, the interaction with the public breaking the fourth wall becomes more powerful.

Lorca in the Philippines The staging of the Philippine fight against the Spaniards is not the only reference used to provide a precedent to the actual struggle being fought. Censorship did not limit the production of foreign plays which did not criticise the government directly. Assuming that foreign authors would tackle foreign issues, Bertolt Brecht and other Western playwrights became popular in the Philippine stages. Bringing García Lorca to the stage would give the chance to once again adopt a Western voice – as was Rizal’s in the plays that we referred to earlier – to criticise a very familiar oppression in the Philippines: the Spanish one. In this case, the oppression depicted is against the Spanish themselves. Coincidentally, Lorca was himself killed by Spanish soldiers, and his pieces have been interpreted as subversive. La casa de Bernarda Alba is the first representation of Lorca in Tagalog that we have news of,6 and this took place in 1967, during the first term of Marcos’ presidency. It was translated and directed by Rolando Tinio for Barangay Theatre Guild in 1967, with Daisy Hontiveros Avellana (National Artist of the Philippines) performing the role of Bernarda. The politics of the work match perfectly with the interests and turmoil of the theatre scene of the late 1960s in the Philippines, when Ferdinand Marcos was already the President. As Manuel Antonio Arango states: La casa de Bernarda Alba muestra la represión social, económica y psicológica encarnada en este caso en el personaje central de Bernarda Alba, representante de la ideología dominante. Ella es rica a “fuerza de dinero y sinsabores” (Acto III) y desprecia las clases desfavorecidas: “Los pobres son como animales; parece como si estuvieran hechos de otras sustancias” (Arango 1995: 213) [La casa de Bernarda Alba displays social, economical and psychological repression, which are incarnated in this case in Bernarda Alba, the central character, who represents the dominant ideology. She is rich “by dint of pain and money” (Act III) and despises the disadvantaged: “The poor are like animals. It’s as if they’re made of some other substance”.] (Act I) The play shows through Adela’s dissent the legitimacy of the fight against the oppression imposed by Bernarda and consequently, against the status quo. This

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rebellion, which initially has to do with Spanish society and the feminine condition, goes beyond its own boundaries in time and space when the popularity of Lorca and his work makes it a universal chant against any oppression. It is such as it is read in Mario Camus’ 1987 cinematic version, in which Isolina Ballesteros highlights “el tono alegórico de la casa y la figura de la madre como anticipaciones simbólicas de España bajo el régimen autoritario de la dictadura” [The allegoric tone of the house and the figure of the mother as symbolic anticipation of Spain under the dictatorship authoritarian regime] (Ballesteros 2001: 162). Despite the timing – a text by Lorca challenging a Francoist regime that he did not get to experience, having been killed at the beginning of the civil war – the subversive message of Bernarda Alba trespasses space and introduces a revolutionary ideal rooted in European Romanticism to Asia. Paradoxically, it originates in the same sources that fed the Philippine revolution against the Spanish colony.7 According to director and academic Anton Juan, the first representation of Yerma in the Philippines was directed by Behn Cervantes for the Sigma Delta Sorority of The University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman at some point between 1969 and 1971 (Juan 2015). Behn Cervantes himself recalls how theatre became subversive in UP even before the Martial Law, highlighting a World Theatre Festival held in Manila in 1972, when two of the plays he directed were forbidden: Barikada and The Short Short Life of Citizen Juan (Cervantes 2011, 2013). However, unfortunately, the Yerma performance cited by Anton Juan could not be traced, but only that of a representation of Bernarda Alba by Sigma Delta Sorority in the same year mentioned by Cervantes himself in a 2013 article for promotion of the University of the Philippines (2013). In any case, after the implementation of Martial Law, we find no trace of representations of Lorca until its “nominal abolition” in 1981, when, after the caution exhibited by Philippine Theatre in the worst years of the Marcos regime, protest theatre returned to the forefront. Shortly after it, on October 1, 1982, Juan choreographed a version of Yerma performed by Ballet Philippines, one of the resident companies of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a foundation created paradoxically by Imelda Marcos in 1969. On this first version of Yerma by Juan – he would direct another version in 1998 for the centenary of the birth of the author – the performance in Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo of the CCP showcases music composed by Francisco Feliciano. Yerma’s plot about accomplishing one’s desires would easily justify the more subversive message: the continuous orders for remaining locked in the house would provoke, as in Bernarda Alba, a claustrophobia easily related to a demand for freedom which is actually verbalised several times in the text, as it happens in Act III Scene I (“yo pienso que tengo sed y no tengo libertad” [I know I’m thirsty and that I’m not free]). The implicit message of the text is enhanced by the not so implicit provocative aesthetics of the scenery. Juan, as he says, “put many fat breasted creatures on the stage rolling on a Cultural Center that was used to seeing Imelda’s TRUE, GOOD, AND BEAUTIFUL” (Juan 2015). Those creatures would be a reason for disrupting Imelda’s utopia, bringing to the Philippine leaders a metaphor of the grotesqueness and “ugliness” of the country

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they were creating, to be faced in their own ivory tower. When Juan is asked whether he considers the production of Yerma a subversive spectacle in the 80s, he answers yes, for “its lyrical manifestations of the lonely and the oppressed, the marginalized”, which in that context aimed “to speak of being free and to kill the LAW, the FATHER” (Juan 2015). According to him it “was a strong statement to make in a context of fear and agreement with the Law” (Juan 2015). The end of Yerma, surprising and Nietzschean as it is, brings the tragedy and the call for subversion to its climax. It is not only killing the father, but also the assassination of a god who controls and watches Yerma’s life and destiny. Performing Lorca’s dramas during Marcos’ rule would have unavoidably brought the shadow of the poet and his death. By 1982, Lorca constituted a figure full of political significance, symbolizing the struggle of a generation under Francoism, after having been killed at the beginning of the civil war. His plays were re-read under new terms agreeing with the biography and sublimation of the death of their author – and here we can go back to Lacapra’s “traumatropism” as Lorca’s trauma became the symbolic recipient or a nation’s trauma and was as idealised as Rizal’s was. However after 1981, they did not face any major problems with censorship in the country. Anton Juan states that the only problems brought up by censors had to do with moral and not with politics: they cut the moment in which, in Juan’s production, Yerma tears her dress to show her breasts (2015). When asked about the possible reasons for having avoided political censorship, he affirms: “ignoramuses do not understand, military fascists are quite literal really, so for them it’s just another crime of passion” (Juan 2015). In 1983 a new production of Yerma was prepared to be staged on August 20th, on the anniversary of the murder of García Lorca. But destiny wanted to make the date even more meaningful, as the day after the premier in the Rajah Sulayman theatre, Benigno Aquino Jr., the main opponent of the Marcos regime, was killed when disembarking the plane which brought him back from exile. There is no commentary on the play either in the newspapers consulted or in the dossier of the play kept in PETA’s headquarters, only a note the day before the staging, informing of its date and venue.

Conclusion What does this insistence on the cyclical re-enactment of oppression as colonial oppression imply? Lisandro Claudio, in a 2013 article, bravely criticises some influential Philippine historians for transforming “the way Philippine history and the history of the ‘masses’/Filipinos has been written” (48). He explains how during Martial Law, Philippine intellectuals formed a leftist cluster that identified anti-colonial nationalism as a part of proletarian struggle (49). This point of view overviewed differences in the enemy and in the Filipinos themselves, identifying them all as “the oppressed” despite their social class. Duke Bagulaya would insist in this idea, going back to Garcellano’s criticism of Philippine historiography by saying that “most of our historians, contemporary and past, have always been mystifying history” (Bagulaya 2006: 11).

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The phenomenon would not remain limited to historians: Lumbera, Juan, Cervantes, Almario, San Juan . . . they were all well-respected literary critics and creators, who contributed through their plays, which would reach the general public more easily than articles by academic writers, to form this Marxist-Leninist narrative of Philippine history as a continuous struggle between the local masses (oppressed Filipinos) and the colonial oppressors, in a unifying fashion for both sides, and converting the anti-Marcos movement in a Nationalistic anti-imperialist fight, against a foreign force. Theatre is, in this sense, an active agent that appears in a given context of crisis, which determines its content, and attempts to transform this context. To this point, public opinion is crucial, and plays on Rizal would definitely contribute to shape it. What about Lorca? The similitude and identification with Rizal’s topic actually pushes the limits of the struggle (against Spanish oppression) beyond Philippine boundaries, and stresses the fact that the Philippine historical narrative is being constructed upon a Western world view, by using Lorca, Rizal and Brecht: three individuals educated in Europe. If the phenomenon of re-enacting Rizal’s life and death started as a way of avoiding censorship during the US occupation of the Philippines, the repetition of the process during Marcos’ era would have an added political agenda to create a narrative of Philippine history as a continued resistance against outside enemies, justifying “localized acts of oppression” (Claudio 2013: 46) which would exempt Philippine oppressors. EDSA revolution is commemorated every February with hardly any mention to the victims of Marcos’ regime. Imelda Marcos, Marcos’ wife and partner in crime, is nowadays a member of the Philippine House of Representatives: the lack of liability has led to a political tolerance in the archipelago, and even to a widespread narrative of acceptance of Marcos’ rule as a beneficial era for the Philippines.

Notes 1 Lumbera founded the activist writers’ organisation PAKSA in 1971 and went underground to publish an anti-Marcos government magazine of prose and poetry called Ulos during Martial Law. He was finally arrested in 1974 and sent to the Ipil Rehabilitation Center for almost a year, being released in December 1974 (Rush 1993). 2 21,500,000 native speakers in the Philippines according the 2000 census, followed closely by Cebuano with 15,800,000 native speakers (source: ethnologue.com www.ethnologue. com/country/PH/languages). 3 Bayani, a Tagalog word meaning literally “hero”, is a composition of the word Bayan, “hometown”, linking the idea of belonging to a place and hero semantically. 4 For more on Rizal Christification in Philippine popular culture, see Palmo Iya (2012). 5 Among the many other plays reenacting Spanish oppression to depict Marcos’ regime, Doreen Fernandez highlights Bonifacio Ilagan’s Katipunan: Mga Anak ng Bayan (1978) and Langit Ma’y Magdilim (1979); Isagani R. Cruz’s Josephine (1978) telling the story of Josephine Bracken and her trip to Dapitan; Fernando Josef ’s Ang Tao . . . Hayop o Tao (1975), and Lito Tiongson’s Ang Walang Kamatayang Buhay ni Juan de la Cruz Alyas . . . (1976). As Fernandez states, “All suggested parallelism with the present, and invited questions and solutions” (Fernandez 1996, 2015). On the other hand, after Marcos’ rule we find Negros Theatre League’s Tiempos muertos (Dead Season, 1987), which was settled in a Spanish

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encomienda symbolizing “resistance to the co-optative cultural forms that the Marcos New Society had attempted to disseminate through its Tourism Ministry” (Chua and Lucero 2014: 78). 6 The group Community Players performed a production in English of The House of Bernarda Alba in 1949 (Patajo-Legasto 2008: 179). There must have been some other version in the early 1960s by the Sigma Delta Sorority from UP, according to an article by Behn Cervantes (2013). Years later there were other versions: PETA theatre produced it in 1990 and Miguel Castro directed another version using Tinio’s translation for the Gantimpala Theatre Foundation in 2005 [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2479&dat=200 50711&id=VFg1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=kCUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1271,19212658&hl=es]. 7 Some postcolonial theorists such as Franz Fanon and Edward Said in Power and Imperialism have approached similar phenomena and, also from the Philippine Studies perspective, the leftist historian Renato Constantino tries to explain the contradiction between revolting against Western powers and later turning to Western values to forge a national identity (Constantino 1978: 25–26).

References Arango, M. A. (1995): Símbolo y simbología en la obra de Federico García Lorca. Madrid: Fundamentos. Bagulaya, J. D. (2006): Writing Literary History: Mode of Economic Production and Twentieth Century Waray Poetry. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Ballesteros, I. (2001): Cine (ins)urgente: textos fílmicos y contextos culturales de la España posfranquista. Madrid: Fundamentos. Cervantes, B. (2011): “The Best and Worst Times”, Inquirer 10 December, http://entertainment.inquirer.net/23545/the-best-and-worst-of-times (accessed 1 November 2015). ——— (2013): “The UP Tradition of Theatre”, University of the Philippines Website February, www.up.edu.ph/the-up-tradition-of-theatre/ (accessed 1 November 2015). Chua, A., J. Barrios and D. G. Fernandez (1996): “Political Theatre”, CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art 7: 105–109. Chua, J. and R. C. Lucero (2014): A Reader in Philippine Theatre: History and Criticism. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Claudio, L. (2013): “Post-Colonial Fissures and the Contingent Nation: An Anti-Colonialist Critique of Philippine Historiography”, Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 61.1: 45–75. Constantino, R. (1978): Neocolonial Identity and Counterconciousness: Essays on Cultural Decolonisation. London: The Merlin Press. Fajardo, B. V. (2010): “The Aesthetics of Poverty: A Rationale in Designing for Philippine People’s Theatre (1973–1986)”, Kritika Kultura 15: 179–194. Fernandez, D. (1983): “Contemporary Philippine Drama : The Liveliest Voice”, Philippine Studies 31: 5–36. ——— (1987): “Philippine Theatre after Martial Law”, Asian Theatre Journal 4.1: 108–114. ——— (2015[1996]): “Philippine Theatre”, CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art. Digital version, http://digitaleducation.net/epa-web/philippine-theatre/ (accessed 5 February 2016). ——— (2004): “In Focus: Philippine Theatre in English”, National Comission for Culture and the Arts. Office of the President: Republic of the Philippines, http://ncca.gov.ph/aboutculture-and-arts/in-focus/philippine-theatre-in-english/ (accessed 20 January 2016). Guerrero, A. M. (2013): “Bienvenido Lumbera – in Craft as in Life, ‘forever 81’”, Inquirer 30 November,http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/139809/bienvenido-lumbera-in-craft-as-in-lifeforever-81 (accessed 5 December 2015).

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Hall, S. (1996): “The Question of Cultural Identity”, in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (eds.). London: Blackwell, 596–633. Iya, P. (2012): “Jove Rex Al: The Making of Filipino ‘Christ’” in Official Conference Proceedings of the Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion and Philosophy. Osaka: Iafor, http://iafor. org/archives/offprints/acerp2012-offprints/ACERP2012_0171.pdf (accessed 20 January 2016). Juan, A. (2015): “Interview by Rocío Ortuño Casanova”, Available by email to mocasanova@ upd.edu.ph Lacapra, D. (c. 2014): Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkings University Press. Lent, J. (2015): “Philippines”, in Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, D. Jones (ed.). London: Routledge, 1850–1852. Lumbera, B. (2003): Sa Sariling Bayan. Apat na Dulang May Musika. Manila: Dela Salle University Press. ——— (2006): “Bien Lumbera: Activist, National Artist for Literature” Interview by Alexander Martin Remollino. Bulatlat.com. April, 29. Lumbera, B. and C. Nograles Lumbera (eds.) (2011): Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing. McCallus, J. P. (1989): “The Myths of the New Filipino: Philippine Government Propaganda during the Early Years of the Martial Law”, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 17, 129–148. Molina, A. M. (1984): Historia de Filipinas vol. 2. Madrid: Instituto de cooperación iberoamericana. Patajo-Legasto, P. (2008): “Wow, These Americans: Philippine Bourgeois Theatre in English, 1946–1964”, in P. Patajo-Legasto (ed.) Philippine Studies: Have we Gone Beyond St. Louis?. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Pineda Tiatco, S. A. (2015): Entablado: Theatres and Performances in the Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Reyes, S. (1902 [1994]): Walang Sugat. Manila: Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas. Rush, J. (1993): “Lumbera, Bienvenido: Biography”, Awardees. Ramon Magsasay Award Foundation, www.rmaf.org.ph/newrmaf/main/awardees/awardee/biography/150 (accessed 20 January 2016). Samson, L. et al. (2008): A Continuing Narrative on Philippine Theatre: the story of PETA (Philippine Educational Theatre Association). Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theatre Association. San Juan, E. (1974): Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature. London: Ardent Media. Sison, J. M. (aka. A. Guerrero) (1971): Philippine Society and Revolution. Manila: Tulang Tala Publications. Spivak, G. (1987): In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen. Torre, N. (1969): Indio/One Swallow Night. Manuscript of the Play for the PETA performance directed by Felix Padilla. Ramos, Virgilio (Trans.). In PETA Files. New Manila. Unpublished. Valenzuela, M. T. (2014): “Constructing National Heroes: Postcolonial Philippine and Cuban Biographies of José Rizal and José Martí”, Biography 37.3: 745–762. Zaragoza Cano, F. (1941): De Mactan a Tirad (Lapolapo Bañgotbanua y del Pilar): poema épico histórico. Manila: Kanlaon Press.

8

Puppet theatre as response to dictatorship in Catalonia and Chile Cariad Astles

The effects of dictatorship in Spain and Latin America during the mid and later 20th century provoked widespread trauma, disgust and rejection within the theatre community. Theatre makers felt the assault on the body politic as an assault (in many cases, literally and physically, as well as psychologically and culturally) on their own sense of “corpus”: that is, both the cultural corpus – theatre, visual art, poetry, literature, etc., through which they understood and expressed themselves1 – and the collective corpus through which they “performed” their sense of identity and politics in daily life. To live under a government which does not reflect or respond to the wishes, political aspirations or sense of self held by large numbers of its citizens provokes a sense of dislocation and loss.2 Following the dictatorships led by Francisco Franco in Spain and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, theatre in both places sought to make sense of the dictatorship, its effects and aftermath through radical and new theatre languages. One of these such languages was the language of puppet theatre. Puppet theatre is marked by its capacity to provide distance and to reflect upon conceptual and universal narratives, as well as individual.3 The use of puppetry releases the individual from culpability and enables more to be said, opening up discussion to wider understanding. This chapter will therefore examine the relationship of puppet theatre in Catalonia post-Franco, and in Chile post-Pinochet, to the dictatorship during the years immediately following its end in those countries. Puppet theatre in both cases seemed to operate as a kind of conduit to process the trauma of the dictatorship; to discuss through performance the damage done to the nation’s identity as a result of political oppression, and to formulate and negotiate new expressions of identity. The chapter will take the following format: the political context in each country will first be discussed, followed by an analysis of the position of puppet theatre in each different country during the 20th century. I will then go on to consider some groups and performances which arose or were performed during these years, the recurrent themes and responses to dictatorship and finally the way in which the political and the world of performance were entwined in order to process the effects of dictatorship through search, recovery and restoration. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 between the left-wing Republicans and the right-wing Nationalists ended with the victory of the Nationalists

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under General Francisco Franco, leading to a dictatorship for the next 36 years until Franco’s death in 1975. The dictatorship was marked by tight control of media, politics and communications; all legislation, at least until 1966, had to be approved by Franco. The press law of 1938 imposed by Franco closely controlled political and cultural discourse, in particular in relation to religion, sex or politics. The Catholic Church played a prominent role, dominating education and family throughout these years. Politics were conservative, nationalist, anti-communist and anti-liberal.4 There was, nevertheless, a continued presence throughout Spain of (largely) clandestine politics of opposition. In Catalonia this was particularly marked; during the Second Republic, Catalonia had enjoyed a considerable level of autonomy. Opposition was supported by the intelligentsia and at times, left-wing elements within the Catalan clergy itself. Martial law lasted in Spain until 1948 and political executions continued throughout the dictatorship, including the execution of Salvador Puig Antich by garrotte in 1974 which caused political scandal: Puig Antich was executed on the same day as a Polish man accused of murder, the inclusion of the latter leading to accusations of a cover-up for the blatantly political nature of the former.5 Guibernau points to the homogenising policies of the dictatorship leading indirectly to the growth in Catalan cultural resistance. She notes that as the Catalans were cast as a threatened national minority, so the movement towards cultural resistance developed a series of counter-strategies “aimed at rejecting the uniformity dictated by the regime” (Guibernau 2004: 55). She narrates and analyses to great effect practical actions carried out by Catalan individuals and groups designed to question the hegemony of the state throughout the regime, which she classifies as symbolic actions (the displaying of a Catalan flag, or graffiti, for example), or as interference actions (such as speaking Catalan during a public ceremony imposed by the state). Catalan had, of course, been an official language used within the public domain, including for instruction in state schools, during the Second Republic, so its banning was a strong affront to Catalan identity. The symbolic actions described earlier designed to both resist the hegemony and also to strengthen the process towards Catalan autonomy and identity, were also common within artistic circles. Throughout the 1960s and increasingly the seventies, poets, performers and puppeteers wrote or performed in Catalan; initially this was permitted within the auspices of local and private festivals but not in public theatres. Puppeteers in particular responded by using Catalan songs and rhymes in their work – more difficult to censor for an audience supposedly composed of children – or refrained from the use of speech in their performances, as a direct protest. Josep Miquel Sobrer notes that, moreover, the isolation and marginalisation of Catalan language, culture and autonomy during the Franco regime led directly to a politics of Catalan nationalism which was permeated by a sense of injustice; he suggests that high-profile Catalan writers such as Rodoreda, Calders and Espriu6 tended to speak as the “conscience” of a repressed and isolated generation (Sobrer 1992: 146). It is clear that the binary political discourse perpetuated by the state, in which Catholicism, nationalist

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politics and right-wing identity was “good” and all else was “bad”, led to acts of rebellion and resistance. The effects on both Catalan culture and on theatre in general by the dictatorship, were dramatic. Catalan institutions were banned and publishing in Catalan, including newspapers and other popular media, was also prohibited during the early days of the dictatorship. All education was in Spanish and the values taught were those of the Nationalist state. Theatre was subject to censorship; all writing and performance seen to be contrary to Catholicism and in any way oppositional to the Francoist state, was banned. During the last decade of Franco’s rule, these policies eased somewhat. Ciurans notes that the birth of what was called the “independent theatre movement”, which refers to a concrete and specific movement within Catalan theatre in the 1960s, marks a determining moment in Catalan theatre history, one which shaped and affected the contemporary theatre scene since it had a defining impact on the development of so many contemporary directors, writers and performers (Ciurans 2003: 13). The movement was characterised by a search for new forms and sought inspiration from overseas practitioners and directors as well as within Catalonia. It emerged as a force for renewal during the last decade of the Franco dictatorship and showed both a profound rejection of theatre forms and themes that had preceded it and great energy for renewal and change. Following Franco’s death, the country entered a period of transition, leading to the new Spanish Constitution being ratified in 19787 and with the Catalan Statute of Autonomy being resurrected in 1979.8 These are recognised as defining moments for Spain in its steps towards becoming a democratic state. The situation for theatre had begun to change from the mid-1960s: a new press law in 1966 made way for a slightly more relaxed attitude towards both productions and performances in Catalan, and towards subject matter, although censorship continued until after Franco’s death. George and London note that although the independent movement of the sixties in Catalonia showed signs of petering out towards the end of Franco’s regime, partly due to marginalisation of Catalan work by Madrid practitioners and policymakers, this led to new horizons (George and London 1996: 29–34). There was an increase in devised work, made by theatre groups operating as collectives. This work was characterised by visual and physical forms which drew either on Catalan writing or on the revitalisation of Catalan popular forms. Puppet theatre played a significant role in this work. Puppet theatre in Catalonia during the early part of the 20th century already played an important role. During the latter part of the 19th century, puppets had enjoyed singular popularity in and around Barcelona as forms of entertainment and as purveyors of news, political information, religious education and gossip. During the early 20th century, a number of significant families and artists were active in the city of Barcelona and throughout Catalonia; these companies performed a travelling repertoire with the popular Catalan glove puppet; there were various forms of the popular glove puppet throughout Spain during the 19th and early 20th century, immortalised by García Lorca in his play The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal: in Andalucia Don Cristóbal and Tia Norica, in

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Galicia Bululú and in Catalonia En Titella. The Catalan popular puppet figure was, like many others throughout the world, variously a trickster or a naive innocent. Puppet performances during the late 19th and early 20th century in Catalonia included religious scenes, popular folk tales, local and popular narratives; and some adaptations of literature. The puppet at this time was considered as an important element within popular culture. The most prominent puppetry families in and around Barcelona were the Anglès, the Vergés and Julio Pi; in Mallorca, Gelabert Gasper and Sebastià Gasch. A British puppeteer who had settled in Barcelona, Harry Tozer, also contributed greatly to the development of the form through new methods of construction, teaching and dissemination, and Ezequiel Vigués, known as Didó, brought a new vitality to the glove puppet following a period of some years living in France, where the puppet show was also an important element within popular culture. In Barcelona and surrounding areas, puppet shows were regularly performed to both adults and children as part of the Second Republic’s commitment to popular culture as education; the craft of the puppet fitted the ideal of socialism’s elevation of popular art. Indeed, during the 1930s, puppets were often used as educational tools, and during the civil war itself, puppet shows were performed to the Republicans at the front both as entertainment and for the purpose of developing Republican ideals, with Nationalists portrayed as idiotic buffoons.9 The avant-garde artistic elite also saw symbolism and metaphor in the puppet show as a source of invention and renewal. Federico García Lorca, Salvador Espriu, Jacinto Benavente, Jacinto Grau and Rafael Alberti (Rubio Jiménez: 47) all experimented with the puppet, in particular shadow theatre and the metaphor of the puppet within the symbolist movement. With the arrival of the Franco regime, the puppet show went into something of a decline. Puppet shows, previously emblems of freedom of expression and comic repartee, were now subject to the same censorship and regulation as theatre. Performances were required to be on at specific times, themes had to be notably religious or family-orientated and were not permitted to express dissent, political opposition or questionable morals. This led to a rather stagnant and quiescent repertoire which continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s. During the 1960s, however, with the relaxation of censorship, performances began to take place in Catalan and a dedicated revival of puppet theatre led to the development of new groups. This revival was inspired partly by the development of the independent theatre movement and the search for new forms; partly by experimental work into interdisciplinary forms and the relationship between literature, performance and visual art undertaken by painters and poets. New groups were formed specifically to explore Catalan popular puppet theatre and to recreate the vibrant spirit of the early 20th century through the re-examination of Catalan folk tales and traditions. These groups took their impetus vigorously and definitively from manifestations of Catalan popular culture: from parades of giant puppets and bigheads,10 from bonfires and folk dances to the demonic rituals of medieval carnival, emblematic of popular festivals such as La Patum.11

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Following Franco’s death in 1975, puppetry continued to flourish. The performances by Catalan groups during the late 1970s and 1980s drew extensively from the popular festival itself with its carnivalesque and grotesque imagery, its potential for utopian visioning and its opposition to traditional hierarchies, and secondly to international influences to develop the form. Political content was both explicit and implicit within the work. The work of two of the most prominent puppetry and visual theatre companies during this period, Pulxtinel·lis La Claca and Els Comediants, has been documented in previous writing (Astles 2007; Saumell 2006); the influence of these groups on others is enormous but the overall aesthetics of carnival, popularisation of Catalan folk and festival culture, and the reclamation of the streets and public spaces are themes which run throughout the work of most puppet companies of the time. This chapter will therefore note some of the other groups prominent during the end of Franco’s dictatorship and the years following: Marduix, El Taller de Marionetas, and La Fanfarra. One of the dominant features of the work produced by puppet companies during the 1970s and 1980s was its desire to put the past behind them and look towards the future. Led in part by Joan Baixas and his company Puxtinel.lis La Claca (later called just La Claca), puppetry firstly attempted to “take back its own” by researching and performing Catalan work in the form of rhymes, songs and folk tales; secondly to lampoon the excesses of the dictatorship (shown most strongly perhaps in La Claca’s Mori el Merma in which the dictator is presented as a ridiculous and grotesque monster); and thirdly, to create a ludic space looking towards the future. This both reflected and had an effect on national politics. The overwhelming sensation was that of relief and of movement away from the dark days into a more open, enjoyable future. Similarly, the work of Catalan visual performance group Els Comediants used the liberating forces of the carnivalesque in their work, using Catalan popular festival to forge a new national artistic identity and with it changed international perception of Catalan performance, largely due to their performances at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Their outdoor shows used giant puppets, masks and emblems from Catalan festivals to bring the festival back to the heart of performance culture in shows such as Sol, solet and Dimonis which, like La Patum, celebrated the battle between the light and the dark. Perhaps, after Els Comediants and La Claca, the best-known puppet company during the period of transition from Franco’s death until the advent of democracy, was El Taller de Marionetas, led by Pepe Otal. The group was founded in 1975 with the intention of creating street performances. Several other artists joined Otal, including musicians and clowns. The ideology of the group was clear: to occupy, transform and thus repossess the streets as civic culture and identity. The group used both string marionettes (Otal had studied with the aforementioned Tozer) and giant puppets. The giant figures were again linked to the processional forms within Catalan popular culture. Otal was further influenced by the political puppetry group Bread and Puppets, and saw giant puppets as a means to make a clear political statement: giants were used to represent the people, and their right to celebrate, demonstrate and process. The street shows

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were often improvised; his marionette shows were a means for him to debate and discuss what it meant to be human. His early shows, such as Fearless Jack (Juan sin miedo), Marionette Circus and El circo más pequeño del munco (The smallest circus in the world), all celebrated the importance of the ordinary working person through presenting the puppet as representative of a small person without power or wealth; the parallels with the visionary world Otal wished to create were clear. Otal’s workshop itself was one of the early squats in Barcelona during the 1970s, as part of his political commitment to taking back space from the powerful for the powerless. For him, life and art went hand in hand; he dedicated his life not only to making shows, but also to sharing his skills with others. He set up a workshop to train and encourage young puppeteers to make new work and to share his skills. His last show, a version of The Divine Comedy, which he was performing when he died (in 2007), was vehemently anti-religious and comic, pitting philosophical debate against classical literature to question how politics, religion and art were deeply entwined together. Otal’s legacy has been considerable, as much for his political and social commitment as for his shows themselves. By opening up his workshop as a space for debate, training and showing of new work, he participated in the movement to make art public and accessible, to bring art into the streets and share techniques with the young, and to promote the vision of art as a means to discuss politics and culture. The company Marduix was also one of the key movers in the Catalan cultural scene immediately post-dictatorship. Marduix specialised particularly in the creation of new puppet works drawn from Catalan literature and culture. The company was founded in 1976 by Jordi Pujol and Joana Clusellas, musicians and visual artists, to create what they referred to as “grassroots” work. This meant that they engaged in deep research into Catalan culture in order to present work that celebrated and showcased it. The work of the company began, as with so many others, in the recuperation and presentation of oral narratives, drawn from popular culture. Later, from the late 1970s into the early 1980s, the group worked on plays and poems from Catalan authors, such as In the Shadow of the Canigó, based on a poem by Jacint Verdaguer. This strict use of Catalan myths, poems and authors as the basis of their work formed part of the movement towards a recuperation of Catalan culture; as political culture moved towards democracy, and decentralisation, the work of Marduix was a key element in highlighting the value and skill of existing Catalan artists and scholars and served to heighten both the artistic quality of work recognised as Catalan and the debate about privileging Catalan authors and artists over Spanish ones. Key performances included El gegant del Pi (The Giant of the Pine Tree) in 1983, Tirant lo Blanc in 1989 and El garrofer de les tres taronges (The Carob Tree with Three Oranges), a homage to the painter Joan Miró in 1993. El gegant del Pi is a show based on a popular folk song and legend, about a giant who held Barcelona captive, but who is overthrown by the Giant of the Pine; the political motif is strong. Tirant lo Blanc is a classic of Catalan medieval literature, and El garrofer de les tres taronges, again using a folk tale as its basis, takes the audience on a journey around Catalonia.

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The theme of Catalan identity and culture was developed further by the company La Fanfarra, which was formed in 1976. The founders of the group had already been itinerant puppeteers, politically committed and active against the dictatorship. They developed a series of street performances again designed to recuperate public space and offer social dreaming. Basing themselves in Pi Square in Barcelona, they created a new anarchic and freedom-loving Catalan character called Malic, who travelled the world. This character was the central protagonist of much of their work, both before and after they opened a stable theatre space called the Teatre Malic. The relationship between art and politics is clear in the work of these companies. It is also clear that puppetry during the post-dictatorship years in Catalonia wished to move quickly into the future, distancing itself through laughter or through rejection from the values of the dictatorship. Their work was to revision and create the future. Crameri notes that the persecution of Catalan during the Franco regime and the loosening of its grip during the latter days of the dictatorship cast Catalan as the “language of freedom” (Crameri 2008: 49). Catalan became associated with artistry as well as with freedom. Saumell also indicates the importance of the collective and of devised theatre during the post-Franco period (Saumell 2006: 57): this emphasis on original, non-scripted work and on the creativity of the artists was a way of destroying the hegemony of the printed or written word and of elevating the status of artists as auteurs during the post-Franco period. The message expressed through collective devised theatre was that new languages had to be created from the experiences and aesthetics of those in opposition to the state, making a strong break with the past, and that “truth” was to be found in popular culture and the festival. These artists and groups have undeniably contributed extensively to considerations of identity, culture and in turn to political structures through intense consideration of what it meant to be Spanish and in particular Catalan. As Stallybrass and White point out in their fascinating study of transgression, the result of the “top” (as in the top of the hierarchy) trying to eliminate the “bottom” results in “a mobile, conflictual fusion of power, fear and desire in the construction of subjectivity: a psychological dependence on precisely those Others which are being rigorously opposed and excluded at the social level” (Stallybrass and White 1986: 21). It seems clear that the dictatorship of Franco led Catalan theatre makers to question profoundly their sense of identity as a direct result of being prevented from doing this during the Franco years; the reclamation of popular festive culture and the opening up of new performance forms enabled discussion about politics, culture and identity to become commonplace and for theatre-makers to be deeply involved in the reconstruction of society leading up to democracy. To make art meant to consider what it meant to be a person with agency, cultural heritage and political intent. The use of puppetry to lampoon the dictatorship, to occupy civic space and to question Catalan identity in relation to the Spanish state was key to the development of political culture in the period following Franco’s death.

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If the future dominated the work of Catalan puppeteers post-dictatorship, it was the past that dominated the work of Chilean puppetry companies following the end of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. This may be due to the fact that the puppetry tradition in Chile was less developed than that of Catalonia and thus there was less of a popular tradition to draw from. There may have been puppetry activity amongst indigenous cultures prior to European colonisation, but this is little researched and influences on puppet theatre during the 20th century were largely from Europe, and in particular, Spain. The glove puppet was popular as a form of entertainment; popular figures from Spanish puppetry were known through the country, such as Don Cristóbal. During the middle of the 20th century, puppets began to be used widely in education and were primarily aimed at children; the dominant form was the glove puppet. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government also made use of puppetry as a folk and popular form and attempted to revitalise it and support it as a means for popular education. Puppetry companies travelled to shanty towns and rural communities to give shows which were often about educational values, using the glove puppet as an easily portable theatrical form. Puppetry has often been taken up by the political left as both a revitalisation of folk and popular culture, but also due to the practicality and ease of transporting it; its value as a pedagogical tool has also been recognised widely. As in Spain, during the dictatorship itself, much theatrical activity, including puppetry, was censored or repressed and innovation and debate discouraged. Many artists went underground or into exile; many were imprisoned or disappeared. In some cases, puppetry was actually taken up as an art form by prisoners; the making of puppets in prison from simple materials seems to respond to a human need to create and to understand the distorted world which humans inhabit. Pinochet’s violent dictatorship exercised a heavy hand over Chile from 1973 until 1990 after a popular plebiscite voted him out. During these years, there is little evidence of puppetry activity other than a few children’s theatre shows and an attempt by Ana Maria Allendes to stage a marionette version of the García Lorca play Mariana Pineda, a play with clear political overtones.12 Allendes herself was active during the dictatorship; during the turbulent 1980s, with funding from the liberal government in Sweden, she gave classes in puppet theatre in shanty towns near to Santiago; she used the puppets made and the shows created to develop free speech while remaining quietly camouflaged under a children’s activity. Most of the renewed puppetry activity, however, began to emerge during the 1990s. While in Spain Franco remained in power for almost forty years and died still the leader of the nation, in Chile the worst atrocities of the dictatorship remained in more recent memory and Pinochet was voted out as part of political process. This perhaps made it more difficult for the survivors of the dictatorship to laugh at the past and to look forward. Puppetry was used from the 1990s onwards largely as a device to enable reflection on the past, to deal with traumatic memory and to depersonalise the difficult and conflicting feelings

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which were present in many people. Interest grew in puppetry and visual theatre as powerful forces to represent psychological trauma. Rather than a device to understand identity, puppetry was used to analyse this trauma. Something similar has been done in South Africa post-apartheid by the company Handspring, who used puppetry to dramatise the workings of the Commissions for Truth and Reconciliation.13 This use of puppetry reflects on and analyses the deep and lasting effects of dictatorship on a society. The effect of the dictatorship on the Chilean psyche was profound, not only because dictatorship is a brutal and traumatic blow to the sense of political culture in any society, but also because Chile during the earlier 20th century had been reasonably peaceable. The dictatorship divided people across political lines and left families and communities separated. The wish to know the truth about the atrocities, and to understand the ambivalent and conflicting emotions of grief, guilt and loss, dominated much puppet theatre. The puppet used was not the comic figure of popular culture, but a means to understand the fragmentation of the psyche, the puppet representing those fragments. A further use of the puppet in post-1990 Chile was as a means to represent the disappeared. The search for the truth about those people who disappeared during the dictatorship has been a major feature of the process towards peace and reconciliation. The process has been difficult, however; many events, executions and disappearances remain unacknowledged and there are still hundreds of families who do not know the precise details of what happened to their family members. This has caused a sense of absence and of ghosting. Puppets have been used to show this sense of society being haunted by ghosts from the past. Further to this, as is common in situations of extreme atrocity, the survivors are often haunted by a sense of guilt at being left behind; of having survived where others have not.14 Recent political history in relation to themes of trauma and brutality suggests that for a productive process of reconciliation to take place, truth needs to be acknowledged and spoken.15 For many, this process has been too slow and too incomplete for them to fully come to terms with the past. The performances discussed here therefore respond to the need within the society to understand the effects of the disaster of the dictatorship, and also, in a context where the truth often remained hidden, for the trauma to be spoken and acknowledged. Theatre in this context thus provided a space for both statement and therapy; the past could not be changed but it had to be shown in some way. Zegers Nachbauer, writing about the effects of the dictatorship on people’s mentalities and behaviours, notes that for many, the 20th century is divided into before and after the dictatorship (Zegers Nachbauer: 93). In the performances discussed later, puppets, dummies and objects are used to represent the past, memory, ghosts and loss. They are therefore used as a symbolic medium for people to channel and explore trauma. Juan Radrigán is one of the most important 20th-century Chilean playwrights. His plays deal with questions of truth and history and the relationship of the individual to the society they live in. His 1988 play La Contienda Humana (Human Strife) used a puppet/dummy to represent an-Other of the central

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character, Eladio, a writer. Closeted within his own studio, and unable to write, Eladio is physically trapped in a small room, and symbolically trapped inside himself; the dummy is a facet of his personality that he would like to get rid of, but cannot. It is the truth he cannot forget or purge. It thus represents in a complex iteration of present and past, both Eladio’s own voice tormenting him that he did not save those lost, but also the presence of others in himself – they are eternally present in him through his inability to forget. It is therefore a ghost of the past but also a visual and material representation of the traces, or scars, of others within himself. The one-person drama shows Eladio in conversation with the dummy and/or with himself, multiple voices from the past/from himself arguing, discussing and in strife about what to do, or what to think. The restrictions of the room itself evoke the situations of the disappeared who were incarcerated in darkened rooms, unable to get out, or to hear the truth about what was happening, with no idea about what would be likely to happen to them or to others. In this representation of the past intersecting with the present, the dummy is not manipulated like a figurative puppet; it hangs, occasionally operated by Eladio as he attempts to bring life to it, and to gain some freedom from its oppressive presence, unable to do so. Here we see a fragmented view of the puppet: the puppet does not refer directly to the dictator himself, but instead becomes an internal figure within the character’s psyche. The distorted form of reality which was presented politically under the dictatorship is seen as enacted upon the memory and consciousness of the individual. In doing this, the recurrent theme is twofold: in political terms, it is a reminder that political and external actions are both affected and effected by the actions of individuals within society; furthermore, it notes that this distortion of reality remains inscribed in the memory and consciousness of those who have experienced it, thus becoming a part of their ongoing identity. Haunted by the voices from the past, Eladio turns in on himself until he tries to destroy the dummy, but is unable to. Jaime Lorca is perhaps the best-known contemporary Chilean puppeteer. His work has toured widely and he is perhaps Chile’s current best-known puppeteer. Lorca was one of the founders of the physical theatre company La Troppa, which gained international recognition in 2004 with a performance of Gemelos, based on a novel by Hungarian writer Agota Kristoff, The Notebook. For Lorca, puppetry is an extension and development of physical theatre. He trained in theatre at the University of Chile during the years of the dictatorship but found the curriculum uninteresting and untheatrical. In a similar way to Catalan puppeteers, he sought new forms to express his vision and wished to distance himself from text and traditional acting, seeing the text as complicit with the dictatorship (due to its status as an established document). La Troppa was set up as a devising collective with no director; the choice to work in this way directly reflected the company’s wish to refuse to follow “official” processes, as officialdom was associated with the government. Instead, the company wished to find new and different relationships for theatre, and explored the dynamic and theatrical relationships on stage offered through the use of objects, puppets and people. Even the name of the company (the “Troop”) was an attempt to subvert the use of

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military terminology to mean something enjoyable, rather than associated with terror. Lorca notes, however, the deep scars left by the dictatorship. It was not simply a case of putting the past behind them. Within Lorca’s work, all scenic elements, including actors and puppets, operate within a series of dynamic power relations. Puppets are often used to represent the disappeared, or that part of consciousness associated with memory. War haunts the performances, even if the war represented is not the same war as the one experienced by the Chilean people. The company’s best-known play, Gemelos, is set in the Second World War. Lorca noted that: “One of the things that attracted us was the climate of war . . . there is an obvious parallel” (Olavarría: 10). In this performance twin boys explore themes of cruelty and reconciliation during the war where they are mistreated by their grandmother. Puppets are used to represent both the disappeared and the marginalised: a dead soldier, the suffering figure of the mother; a deserter from the army tortured by the police; and to represent the internal thoughts of the twins. Lorca later founded a new company, El Viaje Inmóvil (The Motionless Journey) which explores the relationship between the actor and puppet on stage. He is eloquent on the effects of the dictatorship on the artist: “You are alone, and there is no help available, which obliges you to develop muscles . . . in the sense that everything comes from inside, you can’t look for anything, because the enemy is outside” (García Silva: 412). Lorca believes that theatre offers a kind of therapy to work through trauma; he comments that trauma is inherited through the family, and that since “Chile (can be seen as) a family”,16 therapy is needed in order to revisit and revise the traumas of the past. Puppets in his work speak the voices of the disappeared, lost, or uncover stories previously hidden. A 2008 production, The Last Heir, sets the story in Chile attempting to gain independence from the Spanish crown; once more puppets perform alongside actors as ghosts of the past. The dominant themes expressed by both Radrigán and Lorca are examples of an interest in puppetry within adult performance to reflect and show hidden voices, and ghosts from the past. Other companies have also drawn on these themes, including El Equilibrio Precario (loosely translated as Off Balance), Periplos, La Luciernaga and La Orkesta, companies set up in the late 1980s or 1990s. All these artists found in puppetry a means to represent “other”, “lost” voices and to analyse the past. Lorca’s statements about theatre as “family therapy” testify to the need to heal through opening up dialogue and debate about unresolved questions. Hernández (2009) notes that the theatre of post-dictatorship is frequently marked by exile, identity and questions of memory. He cites the play by Marco Antonio de la Parra, A brief history of Chile, in which a teacher desperately tries to teach history and geography without any maps, books or chalk to write. The play points to the desperation felt by the society after the dictatorship to try and understand what their history was; who they were; how to rebuild a society and believe in it when the resources of history were so shattered. The loss experienced by people was not only of loved ones, but also of a sense of

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integrity within society; this in turn led to fear and psychological loneliness, themes explored by Radrigán in the 1980s (Hurtado and Piña 2011). The use of puppetry in these two different, but linked, contexts shows different facets of their ability to enable people to deal with trauma, to try and understand political violence and to offer people a means to move forwards. In the case of Catalan puppetry, the recuperation of popular forms and the use of carnivalesque laughter as a means to destroy the trauma of the past dominated the post-dictatorship period. Puppeteers created playful public spaces for people to embrace cultural identity and to recognise that they could be part of rebuilding society with more positive future possibilities. In Chile, however, without a well-established popular puppetry tradition, puppetry was used alongside actors in adults’ theatre to provide distance from the dreadful events of the dictatorship and for society to recognise the damage done. In doing so, these performances show the effects of dictatorship on people. Perhaps the single linking factor between the two scenarios is the fact that the puppet is used to depersonalise and to distance, whether this is through comic lampooning (thus turning the figure of the dictator into a nonsensical and archetypal figure), through celebrating the power of the popular folk hero who is representative of everyperson; or through representing difficult, traumatic or repressed parts of the collective psyche. A further link is their ability to represent the people, and not just the individual. More widely, and for the reasons expressed earlier, the potential of puppetry within postdictatorship societies could be a means to heal and to highlight what should never be repeated.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

By this I mean the cultural corpus of artists’ work expressed in public. This is explored extensively in Amilivia (2016). See Jurkowski (1998). For example, Franco banned divorce and civil marriage; returned property previously distributed to its original owners; destroyed trade unions and imposed strict censorship (http://countrystudies.us/spain/23.htm). This political event and the response of the Catalan theatre company Els Joglars to it, is documented in Van Erven (1988), p. 163. These three writers belonged to a group of 20th-century Catalan writers who focused on identity, the use of Catalan and the specific use of Catalan contexts to develop prose; they are considered important for the development in Catalan literature. This Constitution marked the movement towards democracy in modern Spain. The Statute of Sau in 1979 noted particular rights and responsibilities of Catalan citizens and led to the Statute of Catalan Autonomy in 2005. See McCarthy, James, “Militant Marionettes: Two ‘Lost’ Puppet Shows of the Spanish Civil War”, Theatre Research International Vol. 23 (1998): 1, pp. 44–50. The term “bigheads”, refers to the giant masks worn by revellers in Catalan popular festivals. They represent different local characters, are usually made from paper mache and worn in processions and dances. They parade alongside giant puppets within the same festivals. The popular festival of La Patum in Berga, Catalonia, is one of the best-known and popular festivals of its type: it is “performed” during Corpus Christi and involves the

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ritual and festive processions of giant dragon puppets spitting fire, little devils and other supernatural puppet creatures. The dancing and processing typically takes place all night long, and the festival itself extends over several days. Fire and dragons, both emblems of Catalan culture, are both central to the festival. The play is based on the life of Mariana Pineda Muñoz, a 19th-century Spanish woman who fought for liberal ideals but was executed by garrotte for her political activities. This work is documented by the company: www.handspring.co.za The term “survivor guilt” is defined by Davidson as “existential guilt and anxiety at surviving in the face of others’ deaths” (Davidson, Shamai, “Mourning and the Holocaust Survivor”, in Charny, Israel (ed.), Holding onto Humanity: The Message of Holocaust Survivors, New York: New York University Press, 1992, p. 187). Davidson also notes that survivor guilt is a key element of the reconstruction of human identity after witnessing dreadful events, and is part of the return to a sense of individuality after being part of a faceless community (as treated by others), and is necessary in some way for the restoration of lost human values. See Hazan, Pierre and Sarah de Stadelhofen (eds.), Judging War, Judging History, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, for discussions on the operation and effects of Truth and Reconciliation Committees around the world. Revista Nos: www.revistanos.cl

References Amilivia, G. F. (2016): State Terrorism and the Politics of Memory in Latin America. Amherst: Cambria Press. Astles, C. (2007): “Catalan puppet theatre: A process of cultural affirmation”, Contemporary Theatre Review 17:3, 322–334. Baixas, J. (1998): Escenes de l’Imaginari. Barcelona: Institut del Teatre. Ciurans, E. (2003): “El Teatre Independent. Estat de la Qüestió”, Assaig de Teatre 37: 13–20. Crameri, K. (2008): Catalonia: National Identity and Cultural Policy, 1980–2003. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. García Silva, P. (2010): Una Mirada a la compañia “La Troppa”. Santiago: Universidad de Chile. George, D. and J. London (eds.) (1996): Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction. Sheffield: The Anglo-Catalan Society. Guibernau, M. (2004): Catalan Nationalism: Francoism, Transition and Democracy. London: Routledge. Hernández, P. (2009): El teatro de Argentina y Chile: globalización, resistencia y desencanto. Buenos Aires: Corregidor Ediciones. Hurtado, de la M. L. and J. A. Piña (eds.) (2011): “Los niveles de marginalidad de Juan Radrigán”, in Juan Radrigán: Hechos Consumados; Teatro: 11 obras. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 5–24. Jurkowski, H. (1998): The History of European Puppetry Volume Two: The Twentieth Century. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. McRoberts, K. (2001): Catalonia: Nation Building without a State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olavarría, P. (1999): “Trabajamos en base a la libertad y a la imágen absoluta”,in Vistazos (20). Santiago: Ediciones División de Cultura del Ministerio de Educación. Piña, J. A. (2010): Contingencia, poesía y experimentación: teatro chileno 1976–2002. Santiago de Chile: RiL Editores. Rubio Jiménez, J. (2005): “Titeres y renovación artistica en Espana durante el siglo XX”, in Titeres, J. A. Moreno (ed.). Urueña: Fundación Joaquín Díaz, 33–59.

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Saumell, M. (2006): “Els grups o l’altre teatre català”, in L’escena del futur: Memòria de les arts escèniques als Països Catalans (1975–2005), F. Foguet and P. Martorell (eds.). Vilanova i la Geltrú: El Cep i la Nansa, 103–122. Sobrer, J. M. (ed., transl.) (1992): Catalonia: A Self-Portrait. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stallybrass, P. and A. White (1986): The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen. Van Erven, E. (1988): Radical People’s Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zegers Nachbauer, M. T. (1999): 25 Años de Teatro en Chile. Santiago: Ministerio de Educación, División de Cultura.

9

Dagoll Dagom’s No hablaré en clase, a postdramatic response to Francoism David Rodríguez-Solás

A popular narration of the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain acknowledges that while the dictator died peacefully in bed, Francoism had to be defeated on the street (Fraguas 2008, 2011). Dictatorship in Spain outlived the person who masterminded a regime of terror and repression that lasted forty years. Reforms were implemented at a slow pace during the transition to democracy, arguably spanning the years 1975–1986. Today this political transition is seen as the most consequential historical process in contemporary Spain, and also the most contested. Many Spaniards have lost faith in the Spanish Constitution, claiming that it no longer guarantees fundamental rights of assembly, access to work and housing. The Constitution also limits the nation-building aspirations of a growing portion of the population, most recently in Catalonia. The hegemonic discourse that labelled the Spanish transition as exemplary has collapsed, exposing the shortcomings of its democracy and making relevant the analysis of how late-1970s Spaniards reflected on the process of democratisation. Artistic manifestations played a fundamental role in the construction of a democratic culture and in raising public awareness of the shortcomings of the political transition. Interestingly, theatre is regarded as a minority practice and pushed to the margins by hegemonic discourses that study post-Francoist cultural production favouring media consumption as the most relevant one to understand the transition. Furthermore, non-dramatic theatre has been practically obliterated, despite the fact that it transformed performing arts as theatrical performances were taken outside of theatres attracting young audiences that had traditionally turned their backs on theatre.1 Theatre houses were not the exclusive space in which to attend a performance. Since the 1960s, non-professional and independent theatre troupes have performed in lecture halls, churches, discos and music halls. In this regard, the alleged amateurism of the troupes and the ephemeral aspect of theatrical events have conditioned the marginality of theatre in the study of the democratisation process. It is my aim to include theatre among the cultural practices that contributed to create a democratic culture in the transition, and to keep Franco’s dictatorship accountable by exposing their repressive apparatus. The incipient Spanish democracy had to override Francoist laws that limited freedom of speech, among them the rules that controlled media, newscasts,

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education and cultural production until as late as 1978 in many cases. Censorship in Spain would last for several years after the death of Franco in 1975. Screenplays had to be submitted for pre-approval before the production of the film until February 1976; film censorship was abolished only in December 1977. Interestingly, theatre censorship was not discontinued until March 1978 (Muñoz Cáliz 2005: 409).2 All theatrical shows needed official authorisation in order to be staged. The director of the show would begin the administrative procedure by submitting a production application, along with the full text of the play, to the Government Regional Delegate Office. Later, a board of censors would examine the text and would propose either the approval, the prohibition of the play, or its conditional approval until a favourable report was produced after a dress rehearsal. The standard procedure made collective works more vulnerable to the eyes of the censors, who were reluctant to approve a play that did not include all the nuances that one could experience in a performance. No hablaré en clase (I Will Not Talk in Class) became one of the most representative plays of the transition; it was staged 265 times and attracted 55,000 spectators in a year and a half (Bozzo 2015: 44). The play is a good example of both the censorship that outlived the dictator and the strategies used by theatre troupes to elude coercive procedures. No hablaré en clase was a collective work by the Barcelona-based troupe Dagoll Dagom. This play experimented with the non-dramatic forms that were the staple of many groups established in the 1970s. Springing from 1940s education and popular culture, the play was a collage of excerpts from fascist primers that aimed at recreating what was life at school in 1940’s Spain. It was perceived as a political act both by its content and by its fragmentary form that expressed the resistance to representation. There was no narrative in No hablaré en clase, a theatrical piece framed by the beginning of the academic year and by a last scene that featured a suggestive funeral in which all actors responded to a series of litanies with the recurring formula “I won’t talk in class.” I analyse these and other scenes later, but begin with some reflections on this resistance to narration, and the political engagement of this piece aimed at a less traditional theatrical audience. Before receiving approval, this play went through two reviews by censors that altered the text considerably. Surprisingly, these first reviews show the different criteria among censors. One of them wrote that this was “una obra . . . difícil” [a play classified as . . . difficult]. Another censor claims “se ve a través de algunas insinuaciones que ironiza claramente en ocasiones y el peligro está en que la ironía se extienda a toda la obra” [at times, some clues clearly hint irony, and there is a risk if irony grows in the rest of the play]. The board adduced in their report that the play was banned “tanto por su contenido como por su forma” [as much for its content as its form] (Junta de Censura Teatral 1976). Censors abided by the common rules established in 1964, which were the same as those applied to film censorship the previous year. No hablaré en clase violated number 14, section 1 and 2, that banned disrespectful representations

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of both religious and political practices (Muñoz Cáliz 2005: 138). Theatrical censorship was far from being regarded as a streamlined coercive procedure, in fact censors interpreted the common rules in a subjective manner. In his report, Antonio de Zubiaurre was the only censor to mention the rule pertaining to the depiction of suicide and other random rules as arguments to ban this play. What Zubiaurre found subversive was ignored by other censors, and omitted in the final report. Admittedly, some of the censors were not familiar with the content of these common rules of censorship, which were created indeed to avoid the arbitrary decisions of the censors. Arcadio Baquero Goyanes, a censor between 1963 and 1969, confessed he did not know the rules by heart (Muñoz Caliz 2004: 19). Some scenes that were crossed out are included in the censorship dossier. An anonymous hand struck out lines, or complete scenes, that infringed upon the rules of censorship. Among them are sarcastic lines mocking the Catholic faith, “Debemos creer las verdades que Dios ha revelado y la Iglesia nos enseña” [We must believe in the truth revealed by God and taught by our Church] (Ollé and Parramón 1976: 6). Clearly, some of the banned scenes included strong ideas that ridiculed prayers, and, as in the following example, revealed the fascist political ideology behind Falange. This scene satirised how a teacher reviewed political science concepts with four students: ¿Cuál es la consecuencia del sufragio universal? La aparición de los partidos políticos. ¿Qué daño nos trajo ésto? La división entre los hombres y, por tanto, la lucha entre ellos para ver cual de los partidos podía alcanzar la mayoría de los votos y gobernar a los demás. I. ¿Cuál es el error fundamental del estado liberal? D. El no servir para nada, ni creer en nada y dejarlo todo a la eventualidad de las votaciones. I. ¿Y un Estado sujeto a las variaciones, podrá darnos la seguridad de que España sirva a sus destinos históricos, única justificación de su existencia? A. No, por que [sic] no cree ni siquiera en la existencia de España. I. ¿Qué hará la Falange para remediar ese error? B. Sustituir el Estado liberal por un Estado que esté al servicio de las verdades permanentes. (Ollé and Parramón 1976: 12) I. B. I. C.

[I. B. I. C. I.

What is the consequence of universal suffrage? The appearance of political parties. What were the disadvantages for us? Men were divided, thus they struggled to determine what party was able to win a majority of votes and rule the rest. What is the basic error of liberal democracy?

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D. It is useless, it has no principles and it delegates every decision to voting. I. What about a state subject to changes, would it guarantee that Spain will serve its historical destiny, which explains why Spain exists? A. No, because that state does not even believe Spain exists. I. What will Falange do to correct this error? B. It will replace liberal democracy with a state that serves eternal truth.] In total, text was crossed out on five pages of this first version, and two scenes were banned. Joan Lluís Bozzo succeeded Joan Ollé as artistic director of Dagoll Dagom after this play, and recalls that after this first veto the troupe expressed their frustration, publishing an obituary of the play in a local newspaper (Bozzo 2015: 16). However, a play that had been banned could be reviewed and resubmitted for a new assessment by the board of censors (Muñoz Cáliz 2006: L). Joan Ollé and Josep Parramón, who authored the first version of the play, tried it again with a new draft just a month after the initial rejection. This time around censors were agreeable; one of them classified the play as “un espectáculo inocente” [an innocent show] (Junta de Censura Teatral). A different report considered it an outdated play because “en la prensa se pide un día sí y el otro también la supresión del Movimiento-organización” [newspapers demand day after day the dissolution of the Movimiento Nacional]. Indeed, the one-party rule enforced in Spain for nearly forty years was to end a few weeks later, after Spaniards voted for a democratic state in the Political Reform Referendum on 15 December 1976. No hablaré en clase was provisionally approved by the board on 23 November 1976. Nevertheless, two of the three censors, and ultimately the board, recommended producing a report after a general rehearsal. The final report, known as visado de ensayo [rehearsal certification], was issued by a government official who had the last word to authorise a production. That person’s mission was to corroborate that the censored version coincided with what was on stage, paying attention that no additional scenes were included and that the staging was not infringing the rules of censorship. In this process of censorship, it should be noted that censors were working in their capacity as consultants, and other officials, who could be following specific instructions from the Ministry of Information, had the executive decision to authorise or ban a production, as the censor Baquero Goyanes pointed out (Muñoz Cáliz 2004: 21). In this regard, if the text of No hablaré en clase showed a derogatory depiction of Francoist indoctrination of pupils, the play’s non-linear narration, fragmentary form, and performing style was just as subversive. Ollé and Parramon relied on the collective work of this show to conceal their real intentions behind cryptic stage directions that were later developed in performance. Scene 12 is described in the text as follows, Aparece una niña (ACTRIZ 3) y se acerca a la mesa del área hogar. Recoge del suelo una muñeca con la que juega. Cansada de la inanimación del juguete, lo rompe. Seguidamente aparecen en escena dos personajes más

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(ACTRIZ 1, 2) llevando en sus manos una nueva vestimenta. Una vez a la niña le ha sido puesto el vestido, es subida sobre la mesa. Durante toda la escena un pintor (Act. 1) habrá estado plasmando la escena en un lienzo. [A girl enters (ACTRESS 3) and approaches the table in the domestic space of the setting. She picks up a doll from the floor and plays with it. She is tired of this motionless toy and breaks it. Then, two characters enter holding a new outfit for the girl (ACTRESS 1 and 2). After dressing the girl, they put her on the table. An artist (ACTOR 1) painted the scene on canvas.] (Ollé and Parramón 1977: n.p.) This inoffensive scene became an irreverent one in the staging. The girl got angry because after undressing the doll she could not find her genitals, and then she tore apart the toy. After that, music and lighting changed the mood and two nuns entered the scene, left the actress stripped naked, dressed her as the Virgin, and then lifted her onto a table. Nuns picked up the dismembered doll and rearranged the pieces to form Baby Jesus. The girl was scared during the whole scene, but at some point she would impersonate the Virgin, turning her eyes to the sky, thus “reproduint l’estampa d’una immaculada concepció surrealista” [reproducing the picture of a surrealist Immaculate Conception]. Only a spotlight illuminated the scene, which was punctuated by Shostakovich’s cello concert (Bozzo 2015: 33–34). It is very difficult to capture the visual aspect of a scene in a stage direction, but in this case the troupe deliberately left aside relevant information that would have irritated the board of censors. In the play, the satire was downplayed not only by omitting the details of the two nuns entering and the Virgin outfit that they carry in their hands, but by not making explicit the development of the scene. This scene was struck out in the first version submitted to the board of censors and included explicit references to nuns, the girl’s outfit, and her impersonation of the Virgin. One censor noted it as an example of the play’s “intención política” [political intention] (Junta de Censura Teatral). It is hard to know if this scene was finally included in the staging of the play in Barcelona or perhaps the troupe managed to omit it when the official attended the dressed rehearsal, but in Madrid it faced the strong opposition of a government official, who considered some of the scenes not suitable to be performed, and tried to stop the play the same day of the opening. Only the intercession of the General Director of Theatre from the Ministry of Culture, who was invited to the opening in Madrid, revoked the prohibition (Bozzo 2015: 17). Like many troupes before them, No hablaré en clase resorted to the non-dramatic form to elude censorship. Others, like the Catalan troupe Els Joglars, were not as fortunate; they ended up facing a court martial and were ultimately sentenced to prison. As with No hablaré en clase, Els Joglars’s farce La torna (Leftovers) was authorised by the board of censors and opened on 7 September 1977. It was based on the real execution in 1974 of a burglar on the same date as the Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich, which the play denounced as a cover-up of the political implications of this capital punishment (Breden 2006: 151). The political implications of this

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play did not elicit any immediate objections, and as Dagoll Dagom, Els Joglars staged the play in different cities in the Basque Country, Balearic Islands and the Valencian Country. Upon returning to Catalonia, on 11 December 1977, the play was banned and the troupe accused of slandering the army. As a result, a national and international protest demanded freedom of speech in Spain. A strike closed down theatres for several days, and actors and theatre professionals demonstrated in major cities of Spain and Europe (Anonymous 1978: 14–31). Dagoll Dagom protested with other peers in Madrid, where their play enjoyed a successful run. The La torna incident was a turning point in the fight for liberties in Spain, and has been well documented. It is my intention to prove that the non-dramatic form that No hablaré en clase shared with other iconic theatrical productions of the transition was a common strategy among new troupes that produced engaged political theatre. Over 100 fringe theatre companies operated in Spain in the early 1970s (Cantero). Catalan groups distinguished themselves for their resistance to traditional dramatic forms, which ultimately was a strategic approach to get around censorship. As Mercè Saumell has perceptively noted, Els Joglars did not face problems with censors prior to La torna for their use of mime, considered musichall theatre, and therefore censors were “merely concerned with the propriety of the costumes” (1996: 104). Likewise, Els Comediants was a troupe that benefited from the reinstitution of popular festivals in late Francoism, and devised an aesthetic that combined pagan celebrations with provocation in street performances (Saumell 1996: 113–117). Fringe theatre troupes in the Spanish state shared a contempt for commercial theatre and their anti-Francoist mobilisation (Saumell 1996: 103). Nonetheless, most of these groups disappeared when there was a demand to become professional companies and democracy was consolidated in the early 1980s. It could be argued that contemporary Catalan theatre was established in the 1970s. Besides the formation of these three troupes, new performance spaces such as Sala Villarroel and Teatre Lliure were inaugurated in 1973 and 1976, and Grec Festival began in 1976. Today, all these groups, spaces and festivals are landmarks of Barcelona theatre. One of the strategies to perform dissent in No hablaré en clase and other plays was through the soundtrack. Ollé selected post–civil war popular music, radio jingles, commercials and classical music by Shostakovich and Satie (Bozzo 2015: 33). Rather than creating a nostalgic atmosphere, the use of popular music responded to a conscious performance of dissent in the post-war years. As José Colmeiro has noted, popular music, and coplas in particular, served as a “collective act of survival” in the dark days of the repression (2003: 34). Indeed, coplas had been used similarly in some of Carlos Saura’s films such as El jardín de las delicias (The Garden of Delights, 1971) and Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens, 1975), and in Basilio Martín Patino’s iconic documentary film Canciones para después de una guerra (Songs for a Post-War, 1971). Patino edited newsreels into his film, stock footage, coplas, popular music and the incidental intervention of a voice-over to construct an audiovisual memory of life under Francoism. It is not surprising that censors understood the potential of the music featured

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in this documentary to incite a repulsive memory of Francoism, and therefore banned it until 1976. Canciones para después de una guerra would be fresh in the memory of many of the new audience that saw No hablaré en clase. In a similar way, Bozzo recalls the similarities of their play with Federico Fellini’s movie Amarcord. Fellini’s memory of fascist Italy became a cult film for Spaniards, who had to travel to southern France to watch it until it was authorised in Spain in 1975 (Bozzo 2015: 18). It is vital to note the performative significance of coplas in Spanish culture. They were traditionally staged impersonating the song’s protagonist; indeed these popular songs were often sing-alongs, because for the vanquished of the civil war, “the coplas were one of the very few ways that they could raise their voices and tell a painful story in the first person without putting themselves in danger” (Sieburth 2014: 9). In the analysis of this play, recognising related practices – the tactic Raymond Williams (2005: 48) suggests to better understand cultural processes – leads to the recognition of a network of texts and artefacts through which Spaniards reflected on their memories. A new democracy, it was broadly assumed, would need to assimilate the past in order to construct the future. Annabel Martín understands it as a “despertar compasivo hacia las incongruencias del pasado” [compassionate awakening to the incongruent past] that led to memory’s assimilation in the present time (2005: 200). Non-dramatic theatre has often been described as neo-avant-garde, postmodern, experimental or alternative, and studied as a singular theatrical art that distances itself from dramatic tradition. Hans-Thies Lehmann introduction of the concept postdramatic theatre in 1999 was a way to take into consideration the time, space, body and textual implications of this new theatrical aesthetics. No hablaré en clase, and similar plays in the 1960s and 1970s, aimed at a cathartic experience for the audience (Cornago 2000: 25), who identified references to fascist education and could relate these to their own experiences. This sort of ceremony that reproduced a traumatic experience of the fascist school is mirrored in the subtitle, Pan con aceite y azúcar y otras letanías [Bread with Oil and Sugar, and Other Litanies], that evokes the only sweet treat most families could afford to feed their children, bread with olive oil and sugar. Moreover, this subtitle plays with memorisation and subsequent repetition as the only form of learning allowed during Francoism. Describing the play as something else would put it in relation to other theatrical examples in this period that self-identified as prayer, ritual, ceremony, farce, carnival and circus. All in all, the labelling is not the only particularity of No hablaré en clase. The text submitted to the censors was signed by Joan Ollé y Josep Parramón, but all members of the troupe collaborated to select excerpts from primers and 1940s realia. Plays like No hablaré en clase required a new attitude from audiences and critics alike (Cornago 2000: 273–274). However, neither critics in Barcelona nor those in Madrid were able to make sense of the theatrical form. In the press release distributed before the run in Madrid, it was made clear that there was no intention to reproduce materials of the 1940s; rather Dagoll Dagom’s play was “la aproximación a una serie de conceptos que impregnaban el ambiente

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de los años 40 y que constituían el color e incluso el olor de aquella época” [an approximation of a series of concepts characterising daily life in the 1940s, which had about them the pervasive look and smell of Francoism] (Ollé and Parramón 1977). The critic of El Correo Catalán (Catalan Daily Mail) noted in his review that scenes worked independently; however the play lacked a dramatic form (Benach 1977). Other critics commented extensively on the use of excerpts from Francoist primers. What I’ve found in the critical discourse of the transition is a positioning of the reviewers in the Brechtian and Aristotelian dichotomy that was an undergoing discussion during the transition. Any play avoiding an adherence to either of these approaches was labelled as alternative, avant-garde or postmodern. No hablaré en clase is none of these. Its resistance to representation is a political stand against the inherited concepts of Francoism, and, I argue, against traditional classification of theatre in these terms. In postdramatic theatre the post is a rupture, a reconsideration of the relationship of non-dramatic forms with drama. Active spectatorship is required. As Karen Jürs-Munby explains, in postdramatic theatre “the spectators are no longer just filling in the predictable gap in a dramatic narrative but are asked to become active witnesses who reflect on their own meaning-making and who are also willing to tolerate gaps and suspend the assignment of meaning” (Jürs-Munby 2006: 6). Interestingly, non-traditional theatrical audiences were more at ease with this suspension of meaning. Performance space played a crucial role in this regard. No hablaré en clase opened in the off-circuit theatre of Casino de l’Aliança de Poblenou, a music hall in an industrial area of the city that became a landmark for protest folk singers in the 1970s. In the late 1960s it was the headquarters of the Operació Off-Barcelona, a failed initiative to establish a fringe festival (Gallén 1996: 27), which on the other hand inaugurated a network of independent performance spaces (Saumell 2010: 93). The play opened there on 25 February 1977, and had a successful run on weekends for over a month, until it moved to downtown. On 10 April 1977, the play inaugurated Saló Diana, a former movie theatre renovated as a performance space managed by the anarchist union Assamblea de Treballadors de l’Espectacle [Theatrical Stage Employees Assembly] (Pérez de Olaguer 2008: 101). The response of the audience in both venues was surprisingly receptive to the fragmentary nature of the performance, and contrasted with the cold reception from reviewers. No hablaré en clase became popular among younger audiences, who made the performance a political event to demand a real break with the Francoist past. Bozzo recalls that audience members carried with them communist, anarchists and starred Catalan flags that expressed support for an independent Catalonia. Curtain calls involved audience participation exceeding traditional reactions: “el final de la funció era impressionant: el públic aplaudia frenèticament, de forma desaforada, i molts aprofitaven per fer onejar les banderes, cridar consignes i llançar fulls volants” [it was an impressive grand finale: the audience applauded frenetically, driven by emotions, many took advantage of the opportunity to wave their flags, to shout slogans, and to throw leaflets] (Bozzo 2015: 36). Audience involvement

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depicted the coexistence of the theatrical performance with an event with political connotations. The opening coincided with the high point of mobilisation for democratic reforms and, in Catalonia, for the restoration of political autonomy, approved in 1932 during the Second Spanish Republic and interrupted at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. On 11 September 1976 a celebration of Catalonia’s national day, Diada, was authorised in Sant Boi de Llobregat for the first time in almost 40 years. The following year, one million people gathered in Barcelona to celebrate Diada and to demand a new statute of autonomy (Casanova and Gil 2014: 312). For this reason, audience reactions described by Bozzo are relevant as examples of how the fight for democratic rights was likewise an expression of national identity. In fact, audience members were bringing to the performance space what they could have experienced in anti-Francoist rallies, “crucial in propagating regional nationalist discourses, symbols, and rituals” (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 134). The use of flags other than the Spanish flag signaled the national aspirations of Catalans, and ultimately their opposition to dictatorship. Moreover, these flags were symbols of a specific nation-building model, one dedicated to the establishment of an independent state for Catalonia, as defended by, among other parties, PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya/Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia), a Catalan communist party that was only legalised in April 1977. Both social pressure and political negotiations prompted the recognition of the right of the regions to become autonomous in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The following year, the Catalan statute of autonomy was approved. Dagoll Dagom’s search for new audiences coincided with similar experiences of other independent troupes operating at the time.3 They attracted new audiences to their shows by performing in unusual spaces such as university halls and dorms, community centers and churches (Cantero 2015). No hablaré en clase was rarely staged in a commercial theatre. In Madrid, it opened at Sala Cadarso, a performance space which usually programmed experimental and groundbreaking plays attracting the youngest audience in the city (Monleón 1979: 59). Later, it toured for two months in Andalusia, performing in unusual places such as a sport complex, a soccer field and a college hall. In Galicia, for instance, they staged it at a club in the municipality of O Grove, before an audience sitting on stools (Bozzo 2015: 24–26). This move out of traditional performing circles not only brought their art closer to heterogeneous audiences, but also opened up new performance spaces in cities and towns around Spain, thereby exporting the successful model that had been tested in Madrid and Barcelona. The spectator of a postdramatic play such as No hablaré en clase is asked to postpone the creation of meaning. In this play there are moments characterised by silence, slowness and repetition, with little action. Conversely, they are followed by fast-paced scenes that oppose a narrative continuity. Scenes alternate frenetically between two spaces that represented a living room and a classroom. Consider, for example, Scene 4, which begins with a mother fitting a school

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uniform to her daughter. The latter asks her mother the meaning of obscure words that she does not understand, while a third actress appears to provide the dictionary definition. The scene changes rapidly to the classroom, where a vehement teacher is lecturing, and frequently switching subjects: Los elefantes de Aníbal cruzaron los Alpes. Los Alpes fueron cruzados por los elefantes de Aníbal. J’ai perdu ma plume dans le jardin de ma tante. Où est ma plume ? Ici ! España es una Unidad de Destino en lo Universal. Rótula, tibia, peroné, dedos, frontal, occipital, cúbito, radio, falange, falangina y falangeta. Eres cristiana? [Hannibal’s elephants crossed the Alps; therefore the Alps were crossed by Hannibal’s elephants. J’ai perdu ma plume dans le jardin de ma tante. Où est ma plume ? Ici ! Spain is a Unity of Destiny in the Universal. Kneecap, tibia, fibula, fingers, front, occipital, cubit, radio, phalanges. Are you Christian?] This was the first stage appearance of the actor playing the teacher, Pepe Rubianes, who became a popular stand-up comedian. On his demise in 2009, TVE, Spanish public television, released images of the play that let us assess the audience’s reaction to this scene (RTVE 2009). If it is true that memory can only be performed, this play resorts to the collective aspect of memory, and counts on the heterogeneous audience to recognise familiar situations and attitudes. Rubianes changed his tone after each sentence, creating a violent character. The audience response was enthusiastic, confirming that the postdramatic form was not an obstacle to a play that required the implication of the spectator, who “realizes that what s/he experiences depends not just on him/herself but also on others” (Lehmann 2006: 107). Plays like this demand collaboration from the audience, and involve an operation of self-interrogation, self-exploration and self-awareness (Lehmann 2006: 105). In this regard, postdramatic theatre in the 1970s offered an experience that did not require interpersonal exchanges, nor a mediated experience. Rather, as Richard Schechner interpreted it (2003: 162), theatre was a middle ground for interaction that facilitated the inclusion of the audience. The audience was confronted with the dark memories of their school years. But in the fragmentary postdramatic form that compose the discourse of the performance “like a fabric out of threads” (Lehmann 2006: 85), fragments are put at work to denounce state violence that was still current in the early years of the transition. In scene 10 a suspect is interrogated, but does not utter a single sound, relating the speechless situation of pupils and citizens under the rule of Franco. Scene 15 bore the stage direction “(Castigos)” [Punishments]. On stage, Rubianes played the torturer, wearing aviator sunglasses, like many undercover police officers at the Francoist intelligence bureau, Brigada Político Social [Political and Social Unit]. Still active in 1977, the bureau’s tortures were feared among political activists. The portrayed victim was a student wearing a uniform. He received the punishments that were uttered by another actor, “Regletazo

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Figure 9.1 Pepe Rubianes plays the torturer in No hablaré en clase. Phaoto courtesy of Dagoll Dagom.

en la mano – Regletazo en los dedos – Coscorrón – Cogotazo – Pescozón – Retortijón de brazo – Borrador en la boca” [A hit on the hand, a hit on the fingers, a bump on the head, a blow to the neck, a hit to the head, twisting the arm, eraser in the mouth] (Figure 9.1). Every movement was choreographed with drumroll. In both scenes, physicality carried the burden of transmitting what the play omits from the text. Scenes like this one call our attention to the body as the only subject matter. It is the performance of punishment which makes this scene meaningful. No hablaré en clase reveals new oppositional forms to fight Franco’s legacy from the realm of the performance. Dagoll Dagom’s practices reproduce the creative process of independent companies in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s. They used the play as a springboard; the performance reworked scenes to construct a text that sometimes developed the original idea with new images, movements, and circumstances. Coincidentally, these new theatrical practices were breaking the codes of censorship. The differences between the versions of the play that I have located and the performance text are considerable. As the run of the show was extending, the troupe added scenes initially banned. The final scene of the play was originally a litany in which all actors participated. One of the actors recites the Prayers of the Rosary, which he begins to

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Figure 9.2 Final scene of No hablaré en clase. Photo courtesy of Dagoll Dagom.

mix up with references to popular culture and the names of the participants in the play (Figure 9.2). The remaining six actors responded to in the recurring formula “Ora Pro Nobis” [Pray For Us] that is eventually substituted by “No hablaré en clase”: Salud de los enfermos – Ora pro nobis (una veu començava a dir “No hablaré en clase”) Rufugio del pecador – Ora pro nobis/No hablaré en clase Martillo de herejes – Ora pro nobis/No hablaré en clase Luz de Trento – Ora pro nobis/No hablaré en clase Juan de Ávalos – Ora pro nobis/No hablaré en clase La campaña del bote – Ora pro nobis/No hablaré en clase Sáenz de Heredia – (A partir d’aquest moment s’introduïen a la lletania els noms dels actors i les actrius de la companyia. Ara ja tots contestaven) “No hablaré en clase”. (Bozzo 2015: 46) [Patient’s Well-being – Pray for us (a voice uttered “I will not talk in class”) Sinner’s shelter – Pray for us/ I will not talk in class Heretic’s drill – Pray for us/ I will not talk in class Advocate of the Council of Trent – Pray for us/ I will not talk in class Juan de Ávalos – Pray for us/ I will not talk in class

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Panhandle fundraising – Pray for us/ I will not talk in class Sáenz de Heredia – (From this moment, the names of the actors were introduced in the litany. All answered the same) I will not talk in class.]4 This scene is a good summary of what this performance accomplished: a recreation of Francoist education, not a representation of the written script. Assessing theatrical practices of a dictatorship requires looking at the censorship that practitioners had to overcome. Furthermore, it entails a broader look that takes into consideration how political performances, in times when freedom of speech is lacking, often take a non-dramatic approach. My aim has been to assess postdramatic theatre of the Spanish transition to democracy with tools that, rather than limiting to the aesthetic consideration of the performance, facilitate its ideological reading.

Notes 1 In her otherwise useful survey of cultural consumption during the transition, Paloma Aguilar (2009) includes the staging of plays. On the other hand, she does not contemplate the surge of independent companies and non-dramatic theatrical practices. 2 One can see the same unbalanced critical attention in film censorship and in theatre censorship. Film censorship has been the object of study of Román Gubern (2012) since the late 1970s, while theatre censorship has only been studied systematically lately, and yet attending exclusively to playwrights, as Berta Muñoz Cáliz does in her monumental research project. Therefore, the collaborative work of many of the troupes, who suffered censorship as well, remains to be studied. 3 Spanish theatre from the 1970s has been largely ignored thus far. A new project sponsored by the Centro de Documentación Teatral [National Centre for Theatre Research], Institut del Teatre [Theatre Institute] in Barcelona, and Centro de Documentación de las Artes Escénicas de Andalucía [Andalusian Centre for Performing Arts] aims to put on record the theatrical practices that have not been yet systematically studied. The project surveys troupes, shows and performing spaces; it documents the ephemeral theatrical practices of the transition that are accessible online at http://teatro-independiente.mcu.es/index.php. 4 Among the popular culture references are propaganda slogans that Francoism used to instill Spain’s political exceptionalism (Sinner’s shelter, heretic drill and advocate of the Council of Trent), and two of the official artists of the fascist regime. Juan de Ávalos was one of the sculptors working at Valle de los Caídos, the controversial monumental memorial to honour the fallen of the Spanish Civil War. José Luis Sáenz de Heredia directed in 1942 Franco’s script Raza.

References Aguilar Fernández, P. (2009): “Cultura política, consumo cultural y memoria durante la Transición”, in Tiempo de transición (1975–1982), A. Guerra and S. Clotas (eds.). Madrid: Fundación Pablo Iglesias, 81–115. Anonymous (1978): “Cronología [de La torna]”, Pipirijaina 8–9: 14–31. Balfour, S. and A. Quiroga (2007): The Reinvention of Spain: Nation and Identity since Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benach, J. A. (1977): “Aliança del Poble Nou: No hablaré en clase”, El Correo Catalán 4 March: n.p.

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Bozzo, J. L. (2015): Memòries trobades en una furgoneta. Els primers èxits de Dagoll Dagom. Barcelona: Empúries. Breden, S. (2006): “La torna de la torna by Els Joglars: History and Production. Teatre Romea, Barcelona, October 2005”, Gestos 21: 149–157. Cantero, C. “Teatro Independiente en España: sus particularidades y sus lugares.” El teatro independiente en España, 1962–1980, http://teatro-independiente.mcu.es/ (accessed 16 December 2015). Casanova, J. and C. Gil Andrés (2014): Twentieth-Century Spain: A History, M. Douch (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colmeiro, J. (2003): “Canciones con historia: Cultural Identity, Historical Memory, and Popular Songs”, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 4.1: 31–46. Cornago Bernal, Ó. (2000): La vanguardia teatral en España (1965–1975). Del ritual al juego. Madrid: Visor. Fraguas, R. (2008): “La dictadura murió en la calle”, El País 16 September, http:// www.elpais. com (accessed 18 December 2015). ——— (2011): “Nicolás Sartorius: El 20-N Franco falleció en la cama pero su dictadura murió en la calle”, El País 4 November, http:// www.elpais.com (accessed 18 December 2015). Gallén, E. (1996): “Catalan Theatrical Life: 1939–1993”, in Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction, D. George and J. London (eds.). Wiltshire: The Anglo-Catalan Society, 19–42. Gubern, R. (2012): “Film Censorship”, in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, J. Labanyi and T. Pavlovic (eds.). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 391–401. Junta de Censura Teatral (1976): “Expedientes de censura de No hablaré en clase” Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). Expediente 1138/76. Jürs-Munby, K. (2006): “Introduction”, in Postdramatic Theatre, K. Jürs-Munby (Tr.). New York: Routledge, 1–15. Lehmann, H.-T. (2006): Postdramatic Theatre, K. Jürs-Munby (trans.). New York: Routledge. Martín, A. (2005): La gramática de la felicidad. Relecturas franquistas y posmodernas del melodrama. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias. Monleón, J. (1979): “Teatro: el cierre de la Cadarso”, Triunfo 878, 24 November: 59. Muñoz Cáliz, B. (2004): “Arcadio Baquero Goyanes. Miembro de la Junta de Censura Teatral entre 1963 y 1967. Una entrevista de Berta Muñoz Cáliz”, Las puertas del drama. Revista de la Asociación de Autores de Escena 18: 17–21. ——— (2005): El teatro crítico español durante el franquismo, visto por sus censores. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española. ——— (2006): Expedientes de la censura teatral franquista. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española. Ollé, J. and J. Parramón (1976): No hablaré en clase. Typescript. Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). Expediente 1138/76. ——— (1977): No hablaré en clase. Segunda Versión Revisada. Typescript. Biblioteca Española de Música y Teatro Contemporáneos. Fundación Juan March, Madrid. Pérez de Olaguer, G. (2008): Els anys difícils del teatre català. Tarragona: Arola Editors. RTVE (2009): “Rubianes y su primera actuación para la televisión, con Dagoll Dagom”, rtve. es. Archivo RTVE. 2 February. (accessed 10 January 2016). Saumell, M. (1996): “Performance Groups in Catalonia”, in Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction, D. George and J. London (eds.). Wiltshire: The Anglo-Catalan Society, 103–128.

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——— (2010): “Els grups de teatre a Catalunya”, in La revolució teatral dels setanta. II Jornadas de debat sobre el repertori teatral català, F. Foguet and N. Santamaria (eds.). Lleida: Punctum & GELCC, 93–102. Schechner, R. (2003): Performance Theory. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Sieburth, S. (2014): Survival Songs: Conchita Piquer’s Coplas and Franco’s Regime of Terror. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Williams, R. (2005): “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”, in Culture and Materialism. London: Verso, 31–49.

10 The politics of community and place in o bando’s Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! Vanessa Silva Pereira1

Luís Bernardo Honwana’s “Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso!” The short story that the Portuguese theatre company o bando adapted to the stage in 2010 was written by the Mozambican Luís Bernardo Honwana during the 1960s, published in 1964 and translated into English shortly after. “Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso!” (NMCT from now on) is the first story in the eponymous collection that became a symbol for the anti-colonial struggle in Africa and, after Mozambique’s independence, became part of the Mozambican school curriculum as one of the landmarks of Mozambican literature. Racial, colonial and social conflicts are integral to all of Honwana’s short stories included in the Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! collection, each illustrating, with different degrees of violence, particularly extreme in “Dina”, the consequences of the exploitative Portuguese colonial regime in Mozambique. NMCT is the story of how a group of school children in a small Mozambican village during the colonial period came to kill the harmless Cão Tinhoso (Mangy Dog). Cão Tinhoso is ostracised by the people and animals of the village. Only Isaura, who is different herself, shows Cão Tinhoso love and affection. One day the colonial administrator decides the dog should die. But the administrator is far too important to carry out such a task, so Cão Tinhoso’s execution goes down the chain of command, first to the veterinary doctor, then to his assistant, and then to the group of school children who are led by white Portuguese boy, Quim. Finally, Quim passes on the task of killing the dog to the bottom of the pyramid, Ginho, who represents the assimilado (assimilated) character. Ginho was part of a small percentage of educated native Mozambican inhabitants that shared some privileges during the regime but mostly suffered racist abuse, discrimination and oppression from the Portuguese colonisers. Ginho fails in his mission of killing Cão Tinhoso as his empathy and conscience prevents him. In the end, despite Ginho’s change of heart and Isaura’s attempts to intervene, Cão Tinhoso dies, shot many times by the other children. Niyi Afolabi (2001) and Cláudia Pazos-Alonso (2007) believe that the ambiguity and indirectness of Honwana’s style is a subversive device, aimed to escape censorship, which was operational in the Portuguese African colonies,

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even though to a much lesser extent than in Portugal. The textual ambiguity explains the number of disparate readings not only of the dog itself but also of the story overall. NMCT is not merely a story about an old lonely dog that a group of kids are persuaded to kill. It is an allegory for colonialism. The personified mangy dog described in the story is an ambivalent character. Nothing much is known about Cão Tinhoso despite the narrator’s numerous references to the dog. Cão Tinhoso is described as an old stray dog, covered in scabs, with blue eyes looking “like someone asking for something without wanting to say it” (Honwana 1969: 75). The following descriptions are essentially repetitive, giving out similar information each time but with slight differences, creating the impression of a chorus, an echo or even a spectre, a ghost, that is there but simultaneously not there. The dog is neither a dog nor a person, neither black nor white, and whose image Ginho, the assimilado boy, has a difficulty to both retain and ignore. In the numerous literary criticism commentaries that the story originated, Cão Tinhoso has been taken to be both as a metaphor for colonised Africa, abused and destroyed by Western rule (Burness 1977: 103), and as a symbolic representation of the dying Portuguese colonial regime itself (Mata 1987: 115). Mark Sabine (2004) and Pazos-Alonso (2007) offer yet other readings for Cão Tinhoso. For these critics, the ambiguity of the dog (who is described as neither white nor black) mirrors the in-between position of the assimilado, African by birth but culturally European. Each one presents very different interpretations of the act of killing Cão Tinhoso. Pazos-Alonso believes the story is a call to arms and violence to fellow Mozambicans, as a result of the assimilado’s (Cão Tinhoso) impossible and unsustainable position in Portuguese Africa. For PazosAlonso, the short story advocates the necessity of armed struggle (2007). For Sabine, however, Cão Tinhoso points to the urgency of Ginho unlearning the paradigm of masculinity promoted by the white coloniser, one that promotes random violence and aggression and leads to the oppression of women and the emasculation of the African patriarch (largely absent or passive in the collection of the short stories). Sabine sees Cão Tinhoso as a reminder of the forgotten African patriarch, that under colonialism is denied any role in the education of young people. For Sabine, Cão Tinhoso corresponds “less neatly to the decadent colonial system than to the patriarchal order of pre-colonial Africa, enfeebled, demonised, and displaced by the colonial power, yet worthy of veneration for its embodiment of seniority, fortitude and integrity” (Sabine 2004: 40). Afolabi’s (2001) analysis of the original short story is particularly interesting, as this is very close to o bando’s reading of the text in their theatre adaptation. Afolabi expands the interpretation of Cão Tinhoso to include both readings, to represent on the one hand the brutal and violent coercion of Mozambicans and an allegoric representation of colonialism itself. Afolabi convincingly argues that the allegory of Cão Tinhoso is so ambiguous that it can stand for both European coloniser and African colonised. The dog has blue eyes and is very old. But it can also stand for the colonised people in its resignation suffering for arbitrary reasons.

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The question then is: why is Cão-Tinhoso’s gaze so bothersome to everyone? Could it be that both the colonizer and colonized are appalled at the level of dehumanization and victimization that Cão-Tinhoso represents? The gaze becomes a challenge: the difficulty at looking at oneself in the mirror for fear of seeing a guilt-ridden image as well as the shame of either being so brutal or brutalized within the colonial system. (Afolabi 2001: 37–38) The director of o bando’s adaptation, Nuno Pino Custódio, chose to do a non-realist adaptation of Honwana’s short story. NMCT, with its simple style and boyhood perspective, has lent itself to being adapted several times to the stage and screen, in Mozambique and elsewhere, but in Portugal, o bando’s was the first stage adaptation of this quintessential Mozambican anti-colonial text. For his adaptation, Custódio had no Cão Tinhoso visible on stage, except as a manifestation of the characters’ consciousness. The director adapted the short story inspired by the structure of classic tragedy. The actors alternated between performing individual characters, and acting jointly as one. The story’s chorus; stood for, in this version, the conflicted narrator of Honwana’s original short story, Ginho. The dog, Cão Tinhoso, is in this production a symbolic and absent character. Cão Tinhoso stands for the representation of fear or brutality, as it mirrors the consciousness of both the perpetrators of and/or accomplices to violence. In Custódio’s words, “a ideia de que tudo o que façamos no mundo exterior, seja connosco, seja com outro ser, seja até com um objecto, não passa de um encontro com a nossa essência mais íntima” [everything we do in the exterior world, whether it happens on our own, in our relations with others, or even with an object, is nothing more than an encounter with our most intimate essence] (o bando 2010b). Or as Afolabi would put it, looking at Cão Tinhoso is like “looking at one self in the mirror” (Afolabi 2001: 38).

O bando’s Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! (2010) NMCT was rehearsed and performed for the first time in Palmela, about an hour’s drive from Lisbon, following a year of other productions by o bando set in the capital. It brings together two themes particularly dear to o bando’s work: theatre inclusive of all ages, from young children to adults, and theatre that is rooted in a specific location. It is easy to find the appeal of this short story to both younger and adult audiences, even if the strong language used in the play meant that the age certificate had to be renegotiated and was finally lowered from twelve to six, in harmony with o bando’s claim to produce theatre across the age spectrum. NMCT also had the obvious advantage of its setting in a primary school, a particularly familiar space for the younger public. In o bando’s adaptation of NMCT the (dis)placement of the original context is a key element of the contemporary (and localised) rereading of Honwana’s short story. Touching upon the exploitative relations between politicians and ruled citizens, bosses and employees, adults and children, blacks and whites, colonisers

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and the colonised, NMCT denounces the power relations at play in the colonial context of 1960s Mozambique as artificial and unfair. Published during Honwana’s imprisonment between 1963 and 1966 for being a member of Frelimo – the Mozambican liberation movement against the Portuguese colonial rule – the anti-colonialist element is a fundamental part of this text’s history and content. Translated into English shortly after, in 1969, NMCT became internationally symbolic of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa. After Mozambique’s independence in 1975, it entered the Mozambican national literary canon and eventually the school curriculum, and has been read by successive generations of Mozambican school children. The story, as adapted by o bando, both foregrounds and displaces the original context of colonised Mozambique, inviting spectators to reflect on power relations not only in the past colonial setting but also in their own present circumstances. In the summary used to introduce the play in o bando’s programme, written by Miguel Jesus, who was also responsible for suggesting this text to o bando, the emphasis is put on the multiplicity of power relations portrayed in the story, rather than on the specific context of Mozambican colonisation by the Portuguese.2 Pois ao olharmos o Cão Tinhoso vemos também o cão que somos, o cão do medo, o cão da guerra, o cão colonizado, o cão colonizador, o cão coragem, o cão decadência, o cão fantasia, o cão ingenuidade, o cão criança adulta, o cão fatalidade. (o bando 2010b) [When we look at Cão Tinhoso, we see also the dog that we are, the dog of fear, the dog of war, the colonised dog, the colonising dog, the dog of courage, the dog of decay, the fantasy dog, the naïve dog, the dog child-adult like and the dog of fatality.] Neither the “colonised dog” nor the “colonising dog” are identified by concrete historical contextual markers in the play’s synopsis, and only in one of the actors’ remarks included in the programme is the Portuguese colonial regime made the central focus. Raúl Atalaia, who had lived in pre-independence Angola, claimed that: “tive a ajuda da escrita de Luís Bernardo Honwana para me recordar o som do ganir de boca fechada do Fascismo e do Colonialismo Português” [through the writings of Luís Bernardo Honwana I was taken to remember the sounds of squealing with a closed mouth produced by Portuguese Colonialism and the Fascist Regime] (o bando 2010b: programme). o bando’s avoidance of addressing the specific colonial context of the original story in the quoted synopsis and in the production itself could be seen to fall within the “silence” that covers up the colonial war and the dictatorial regime in Portugal. The silencing of the Estado Novo regime in its aftermath has been pointed out by many theorists of Portuguese culture. José Gil described this phenomenon as Portuguese non-inscription (Gil 2005: 78). The almost fifty years of repressive dictatorship, the violence of Portuguese colonialism that would escalate into a bloody colonial war, the rushed decolonisation process that followed the 1974 coup d’étate; all left deep wounds in Portuguese society.3 This

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turbulent period of recent history has been traditionally repressed and pushed out of public discourse, to be confined to individual private memories alone. Calafate Ribeiro (2012) explains such collective disengagement: The magnitude of these events in contemporary Portuguese history, on the one hand, and the scarcity of studies on Portuguese colonial history, on the other, allow for the colonial to be viewed as an external event and not as an occurrence that is deeply internal either to Portugal or to the subsequently independent African countries. The Colonial War thus becomes incomprehensible, public memory of it becomes inadvisable, it becomes invisible and therefore confined to groups who bear its memory: former combatants and their families. (Calafate Ribeiro and others 2012:12) As it will be discussed in this chapter, o bando’s on/off (dis)engagement with NMCT colonial heritage paradoxically engages with and surpasses the collective silencing of the dictatorial/colonial periods. The absence of the specific colonial circumstances in o bando’s NMCT is particularly striking, as the short story remains largely unknown in Portugal today, and therefore the original text would not easily populate the spectators’ minds. Unlike most of the works produced by o bando in the last 20 years (and in contrast to NMCT’s reputation in Mozambique and at international universities teaching Lusophone Studies), neither text nor author were known by the majority of the Portuguese audience, and had not been known by either cast or director prior to the commissioning of the work. Conversely, the Portuguese authors regularly staged by o bando are widely recognised in their own right and one could even say that the cultural kudos lies primarily with the texts themselves, not with o bando’s adaptation of these texts. This is particularly the case with o bando’s 2004 Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, inspired by the novel of the same name written by José Saramago, Nobel prize winner for literature in 1998. With o bando’s productions of Lusophone texts, and with Honwana’s short story in particular, the reverse happens, however. If the short story collection was largely unknown in Portugal, then o bando, as one of the most respected and long-running companies of the Portuguese independent theatre, gave the text a visibility, status and recognition that were missing from the Portuguese context and by doing so, o bando breaks the silence when it brings out into the open the difficulties and memories of the colonial period. o bando’s production eclipses the solitude of the literary text. The words voiced by the actors are experienced collectively by the audience that watches a theatre performance that re-enacts the company’s long tradition in politics of place and community. While not an obvious choice for text, o bando’s adaptation of NMCT does resonate with some of o bando’s most important traits over the years, including political participation, outdoor performances and community theatre. Established in 1974, at the height of the politicisation of the arts and theatre in Portugal, o bando’s objectives and theatre practices illustrate in its early years the

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political commitment of a generation. Surviving the post-revolution years and undergoing many changes in members and aesthetics, the company has been categorised as political independent theatre, but also children’s theatre, popular theatre, community theatre and street theatre, among others. While the majority of companies central to the Portuguese independent theatre movement had been formed prior to the revolution, o bando was established shortly after the Carnation Revolution, on 15 October 1974, by a group of Portuguese artists returning from exile under the leadership of João Brites. o bando’s foundation and early work corresponds to the most obviously political, stage of independent theatre in Portugal (Rebello 1977; Porto 1985). Following the Carnation Revolution, the Portuguese independent theatre companies were overtly political, and prioritised a didactic approach to theatre. Originally, o bando was a popular theatre project, of theatre accessible to all and in particular children. o bando’s productions during the 1970s and 1980s were devised collectively, travelled extensively in Portugal and included local traditions and festivities. Its early works reflect, according to Maria Helena Serôdio, “[u]m militantismo político, de sentido radical (que na altura encontrava uma situação histórica relativamente favorável” [a political militancy, radically orientated (that at the time encountered a particularly favourable historical period] (Serôdio 1994: 142). During the 1990s, o bando’s work changed significantly. o bando started to take part in large state-endorsed events, such as Europalia. Frequent government commissioning and the profusion of state-endorsed events in the 1990s resulted in a period of considerable expansion for Portuguese independent theatre, including o bando (Serôdio 2000). Following Europalia, at Expo92 in Seville, the company presented Borda d’Água (On the Edge of Water), which was performed in the lake in the Gulbenkian Gardens and at the mouth of the river Dão in Tondela, central Portugal. In 1994, o bando participated in the festival Lisbon Capital of Culture. In 1998, the company was commissioned to create the street parade Peregrinação (Pilgrimage), which happened daily at the Lisbon Expo98. A year later, o bando was commissioned to provide the street parade Madrugada (Early Morning) for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. More recently, in 2010, o bando produced Os Bigodes na Res Publica (Moustaches in the Res Publica) as part of the official commemoration of the centenary of the Portuguese republic. Early on in the company’s change in direction, Dionísio (1993, 1994) expressed wariness about the governmental agenda behind such large-scale events. For Dionísio, the Cavaco Silva-led government used art events as a key instrument of its right-wing propaganda. There is an implication here that o bando’s radical theatre project had given way to institutionalisation and commodification in the 1990s. Rather than institutionalisation or commodification, Brites counterargues the role that o bando’s participation in Expo98 played in the development of a new approach to street theatre in Portugal. For Brites, it was the success of Peregrinação that fostered a significantly positive change in the artistic and financial interest raised by street performances in the country (Gomes 1999: 5). o bando’s move to its permanent base on the outskirts of Palmela in the following year did in fact go

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hand-in-hand with the establishment of the International Festival of Street Theatre in the town (o bando 2009: 72).4 While Brites’ remarks about o bando’s positive impact on Portuguese street theatre could be questioned as based on empirical evidence alone, there is something to be said about the accessibility of such megaevents. Beyond the perils of institutionalisation, o bando’s street performances can be seen as feeding into the company’s historical concerns about accessibility, as, since its foundation, o bando has been interested in taking theatre to all. Today, o bando is identified with the following key features: adaptation of Portuguese narrative canonical texts to the stage, many from 20th-century authors, large-scale, outdoor, site-specific productions and community engagement. Most of these are clearly identifiable in o bando’s 2010 adaptation of NMCT.

The politics of community in o bando’s Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! In o bando’s history, a focus on Portuguese culture and literature has always been present through the folk elements included in the staging of its productions since the 1970s and 1980s, and in the numerous adaptations of Portuguese contemporary canonical writers during the 1990s and the 2000s. Although the company never altogether excluded from its repertoire texts from Portuguesespeaking countries, from the mid-2000s, a more consistent expansion into the Lusophone world took place. In 2005, o bando adapted a novel by the Brazilian writer Ricardo Guilherme Dicke, O Salário dos Poetas (Poets’ Salary). Adapted in 2007, Em Brasa (On Fire) draws on the experiences of Brazilian immigrants living in Portugal, and on a collage of texts by Portuguese and Brazilian writers. Then, in 2010, the company abridged the Mozambican short story NMCT by Luís Bernardo Honwana. When explaining its interest in the Lusophone world, o bando declares: Neste tempo de globalização que impõe a língua inglesa e que nos liga contratualmente à Europa, defendemos que estamos mais perto do Brasil do que da Alemanha. [In today’s world, [while] globalisation imposes the English language and binds us contractually to Europe, we reiterate our belief that we are closer to Brazil than to Germany.] (o bando 2008: 6) By asserting relatedness between Portuguese-speaking countries, o bando is construing a local that does not limit itself to national boundaries, but which is Portuguese-language based. This “local” is seen as a potentially oppositional force to the pressures of globalisation, which Brites identifies in particular with the dominance of the English language: [A]ssusta-me essa ideia de uma Europa unificada, uniforme, normalizada, globalizante onde os menos influentes têm pouco a dizer e andam a reboque

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dos mais influentes. Nāo nos podemos esquecer que o inglês que agora elegemos como ponte linguística é também a língua de um ocupante que exercita explicitamente os seus interesses e poder econômico. [I find scary the idea of a unified, uniform, normalised and globalising Europe, where the less powerful have little say and anchor themselves to the most powerful. We should not forget that the language selected as a linguistic bridge, English, is also the language of an invader, a territory which pursues its own interests and economic power.] (Werneck 2009: 284) o bando’s objections to the globalising force of English, and the company’s proposal of an oppositional Portuguese language-based community have much in common with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s analysis of PortugueseEnglish relations. Santos simultaneously explores Portugal’s relationship to its former colonies and to Britain in his seminal postcolonial work, “Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-identity” (2002). In his article, Santos proposes that Portugal occupies the position of an inter-identity, a coloniser that was itself colonised by the English. For Santos, Portugal’s semi-peripheral position was first established in relation to the way the colonial system was organised (centred on British colonialist models), and is maintained in the current context of the European Union and the latecapitalist globalised economy. Practicing a subaltern colonialism, both “the colonized other, and the colonizer as himself a colonized other” (Santos 2002: 17), Portugal’s relationship to its colonies was characterised by ambivalence, interdependence and hybridity between the Portuguese coloniser and the colonised (Santos 2002: 16). For Santos, Portugal’s integration into Europe seems to lend itself to “reproducing, in new terms, the semiperipheral condition” (2002: 10). Taking this into consideration, Santos proposes that postcolonial discourses should be a response to such “hegemonic globalization” processes fostered by England and the United States. For Santos, a counter-hegemonic globalisation can be formed through “new local/global alliances among different social groups oppressed by the different kinds of colonialism” (2002: 37), and he proposes, but does not develop, the idea of “an epistemology of the South” (2002: 16). Both o bando and Santos suggest that a community based on a shared language can be an effective response to English-centred globalisation processes. This provocative idea of “new local/global alliances” does not go unchallenged. Ana Paula Ferreira (2007) has pointed out that Santos’ proposal for a Portuguese language-based postcolonialism can be charged with re-asserting Portugal’s supremacy in the former colonies. Ferreira argues that the concept of a Portuguese language community perpetuates both neo-colonialism, where the Portuguese language dominates in the former Portuguese colonies as opposed to English or French, and an imperialistic timescale that structures history from the colonisers’ point of view. Ferreira states:

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[a]s de-centred and semi-peripheric, not coinciding with either Europe or the non-Europe and as newly anti-colonial and indeed, utopic as “the time-space of official Portuguese language” may be vis-à-vis the Empire of neo-liberal globalization, such an imagining cannot be seen apart from the specific ex-colonial historical context that engendered it. (2007: 36) Ferreira describes the Portuguese language community as a “neo imperialist fantasy” (2007: 36) dependent on such disputable claims as that “there is such a thing as a common, somewhat fixed ground of language, bringing together a myriad of temporally and locally diverse colonizers and colonized” (Ferreira 2007: 37). This chapter argues that o bando’s productions of Lusophone texts, while engaging discursively with the notion of a Portuguese language community, remain grounded in the specificities of their authors, cultures and the characters they portray. With NMCT, o bando chose a text that evokes the colonial war and the Portuguese colonial past from a postcolonial perspective; that is, the rewriting of the colonial history from the point of view of the colonised. The Portuguese language community is not seen “apart from the specific ex-colonial historical context that engendered it” (Ferreira 2007: 37), which is one of Ferreira’s main objections to Santos’ argument. Secondly, and taking into account the classic, canonical and well-established Portuguese authors that o bando has staged, it is undeniable that being produced by a company such as o bando entails sharing that same status as a classic, still more so if the Portuguese audience is largely unlikely to know the text or the author, as is the case with NMCT. o bando invited Honwana to present a paper in Palmela’s library, and organised a joint art exhibition in Vale de Barris featuring dolls dressed in the Mozambican sarong, the capulanas. A parallel process took place in 2005 with O Salário dos Poetas, when Ricardo Guilherme Dicke was also invited to Portugal, and there was also an art exhibition on Mato Grosso. By inviting Brazilian and Mozambican writers to speak in public seminars, the linguistic differences in the phonetics and/ or syntax of the Portuguese spoken language across the Lusophone world cannot be overridden, as in Ferreira’s claim. By exhibiting art that features local folk culture from Mato Grosso and Maputo, the dominance of Portugal-centred references also comes into question. The particular adaptations chosen by o bando do engage with the Portuguese colonial past, but also address present-day issues affecting the relations between citizens and countries that speak Portuguese. What o bando so successfully established with its adaptation of NMCT is a temporally and locally diverse reading of Honwana’s short story. This rereading resonated with the young members of Vale de Amoreira’s community, located in the immediacy of o bando’s home in Palmela. Vale de Amoreira is an area afflicted by serious social problems and home to a huge migrant community (Lourenço 2008). Members of the community’s youth theatre group, ValArte, were among NMCT’s audience. These young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds connected to what they saw on stage. o bando’s production spoke to

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some of Vale de Amoreira’s youth, though they had no first-hand experience of the period the original short story was set in, or even of the country where it was set, as they were second generation immigrants, and therefore Portuguese citizens. NMCT was not strictly a piece of community theatre, as it did not integrate the community’s direct participation into the production. Forms of community participation in NMCT included the open rehearsals. During the creative process the wider community watched a rehearsal and took part in a question and answer session. Children from the Palmela primary school where the production was to be staged, and a group of students of a special curriculum, differentiated by their underprivileged social background and disruptive behaviour, were also welcomed by the company to watch a rehearsal, ask questions, and talk to the actors. The “here” and “now” were central to this production’s philosophy from the beginning, and fostered in the creative process throughout. The collective of actors strongly affected the work in a rehearsal process that fostered improvisation. The troupe were free to choose and experiment with the characters, adapt and intercalate their own words with Honwana’s as result. But the role played by the “here” and “now” in o bando’s NMCT is perhaps best exemplified in the production’s prologue. At the beginning of the performance each night, the actors come in and walk to the front of the performance area, facing the spectators and looking them in the eye. During the prologue, they hold in their hands the costumes that will make their individual characters. The actor in charge of presenting the prologue on the day explains that, as well as being actors, they are spectators of the spectators, so the work they do on stage depends on the audience. The actors then start clapping to a certain rhythm while pointing at the spectators. Gradually and naturally, the audience joins in. Only then, the actors take their place on the set, sitting on the wooden structure. The idea that the actors are spectators of the spectators, or that the spectators may take precedence over the actors is an inversion of the traditional hierarchies associated with the theatre. It works particularly well in this production in relation to this first moment, the prologue. It also ties in with the parallel work o bando did with the schools that came in, visited rehearsals and saw the production. o bando’s intentional community engagement and audience participation included visits to rehearsals and Q&A sessions, but not all engagement was planned. There was a spontaneous discussion that happened with one particular group of students after one of the performances that is worth mentioning here. A group of students, aged between 11 and 16, residents in Vale de Amoreira and members of ValArte theatre group, spontaneously approached the actors after the performance they had just watched, wishing to discuss it. During the conversation that ensued, the students asked the actors to sit through a session of forum theatre, a technique the students practised in their local community theatre group. In the forum theatre session, the young spectators analysed in the presence of NMCT’s cast the meaning of the play they had just watched, their identification/dissociation with each of the characters. In doing so, the Vale de

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Amoreira young residents and ValArte members literally made the actors into spectators of the spectators. The actors’ emphasis on the active and empowered role of the spectators to NMCT is particularly significant here, considering that this group of students belonged to ethnic minority groups and came from an area dominated by problems of economic deprivation and social exclusion. Within the particular context of these students, differentiation through social background and the issues of power/disempowerment at the heart of Honwana’s story and o bando’s production resonated strongly. The students’ willingness to share their own personal histories with the actors, and against the backdrop of a story drawing on Portuguese colonisation, questions hierarchical notions of dominant culture and presupposed notions of community separation: actors/ spectators, adults/teenagers, teacher/students. For David Held, cosmopolitanism represents “each person liv[ing] in a local community and in a wider community of human ideals, aspirations, and argument” (Held 2010: 229). o bando’s adaptation of NMCT produced an example of cosmopolitan ideology by offering to people from different ethnic, educational, generational and economic backgrounds an opportunity for interconnection and dialogue, side by side with affirmation and respect for different local communities and cultures. In NMCT, colonisation and oppression are central topics of the production. Here, the division and separation between different national and cultural identities addressed by the play are overridden in the performance experience by a sense of shared humanity.

The politics of place in Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! Located for most of its run in a school in Palmela’s historic town, this production is not site-specific in a strict sense.5 For Nick Kaye, “site-specific” refers to the “practices which, in one way or another, articulate exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined” (Kaye 2000: 1). Using Wrights & Sites’ taxonomic diagram for found spaces, Fiona Wilkie has further specified as site-specific only those “performances in which a profound engagement with one site is absolutely central to both the creation and execution of the work” (Wilkie 2002: 150). Using Wilkie’s terminology, NMCT can be classified as “site generic” instead, as it establishes a particular relationship with schools as buildings, rather than being dependent for its creation and understanding on a specific school. Besides Palmela’s primary school, NMCT was also performed in other types of buildings. It was performed in o bando’s home, Vale de Barris, at one of their performance spaces, and outdoors again as part of the yearly communist festival, Festa do Avante. When using found spaces for theatre performances, generally the outdoors or public buildings, Richard Schechner claims that “the given elements of any space – its architecture, textural qualities, acoustics, and so on – are to be explored, not disguised” (Schechner 1968: 54). In NMCT the found space, the public building Escola Básica de Palmela, is however secondary to the production, used mainly as a part of the spectators’ area and as a backdrop to the

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seating and performance spaces. The play’s set, a circular wooden structure, was positioned at night in the open air in the school’s playground (together with the audience seating), but none of the school’s buildings (except for possibly the toilets) were used or visited by the spectators, although the actors used a classroom to prepare for the performance. Not strictly site-specific, the found space of Escola Básica 1–2 de Palmela did relate to NMCT. The primary school haunted the performance through the imposition of its codings and restrictive regulations with regard to both the actors and the audience. Honwana’s short story is mainly set in the school and playground areas of a rural Mozambican village. The physical performance place of o bando’s NMCT, the playground of a primary school built during the Estado Novo dictatorship, therefore resonates literally and ironically with the original text. There is a commonly shared institutional weight in schools, whether in Mozambique or Portugal, past or present, but as a typical example of Estado Novo architecture, this school places the audience at the heart of the historic moment portrayed in Honwana’s short story. In the real setting of a clearly identifiable Plano do Centenário school, the spectator is forced to re-engage with the past dictatorship through its surviving visible architectural markers, even if neither performance text nor set directly refer to the Portuguese regime.6 Performed in a Plano do Centenário school, NMCT potentially reactivates in the spectator the memory of a period of authoritarian history (whether lived first-hand or inherited) from which s/he, like the Portuguese Prime Minister at the time, José Sócrates, might have preferred to “break free”. The Socialist Party government had, from 2008, been carrying out a reform of Portuguese primary schools that deactivated or refurbished several Plano do Centenário schools. This project was described by the then Prime Minister as a historic demarcation of the establishments built by the Estado Novo: “romper com as escolas do passado salazarista que durante décadas causaram prejuízos incalculáveis ao País [. . .] esta é uma revolução que está a acontecer para acabar de vez com esta nódoa negra em termos de educação que comprometem o futuro do nosso país” [to break free from the schools of the Salazarist past which for decades have brought to the country uncountable costs. [. . .] This is a revolution happening in order to put an end once and for all to that educational blemish that compromises the future of our country] (Lusa 2008). By placing the performance in a working school, the spectator is furthermore made aware that schools are, with the exception perhaps of such libertarian models as Paulo Freire’s, places of authority and control. Jesus, when greeting the audience at the beginning of the outdoor performance, asks the spectators not to smoke or, if doing so, to remember to put the cigarette butts in the ashtrays provided, as the children and teachers would be in the next day for classes. Through the present and past examples of restriction of freedom and regulatory subjugation activated by NMCT’s spatial circumstances, the audience is better prepared to watch on stage the power struggle at the heart of Honwana’s short story. While the audience’s first contact with found space may be one of recognition and possibly association through personal experience (as a significant

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number of primary schools in Portugal are Plano do Centenário schools), the set of o bando’s production of NMCT, on the other hand, takes the spectator away from the familiar site of a Portuguese Estado Novo school, and through allusion and metaphor evokes the Mozambican village school in Honwana’s short story. In NMCT, costumes and the set are fundamental in taking the spectator on a journey in terms of location and site, using colours (red and orange) and materials (wood and sand) often associated with the African continent. More specifically, the set used in the play is a circular wooden structure higher than stage level and filled in the middle with sand, and the actors wear basic costumes similar in style, which include shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops in red, orange and green. On top of this base costume, the actors put on individual garments when they perform their individual characters (a hat for Mr Sousa, a skirt for Isaura, a coat for the administrator, a vest for Quim, a work coat for the teacher). Other extra-performance elements reinforce the geographical and temporal location of the original text. In the personal greeting Jesus offers to the spectators before each performance, and which is typical of o bando when at Vale de Barris, Jesus points out that this is an abridged version of a 1964 text written by a Mozambican author, Luís Bernardo Honwana. This information is then repeated in the prologue to the play. In NMCT, the prologue, however, varied slightly each night as the actors improvised the text to explain the context of the original short story. Depending on which actor introduced the production, more or less weight was given to Portuguese colonial history, but it was there nevertheless, even if not always clear in Custódio’s non-realist adaptation, at least it was explicitly included in its extra-performance elements.

Conclusion NMCT constitutes a production that challenges the spectator to symbolically travel through different times, spaces and communities. Alongside an emotional journey, the spectator is not only exposed to the physical discomforts of watching an open-air performance, but also to the pleasure of a space that disavows most of the rules and regulations of traditional theatres. This chapter hopes to have demonstrated that o bando’s rejection of a realist historical approach to its theatre production is not a refusal to acknowledge the weight of Portuguese colonialism in history. The production’s setting, site, and other performance and extra-performance elements all inscribe very clearly the dynamics of colonised/ coloniser. This adaptation has chosen, nevertheless, not to limit the politics of the production to the colonial dimension of the original short story, and invite further reflections on the relationships and many manifestations of power/powerlessness dichotomies at work in contemporary Portuguese society. This chapter finishes with comments by the author of NMCT. Honwana was invited by o bando to attend the play’s preview, meet the company and cast, and give a talk in the local library as part of Conferências de Palmela. In an interview at the time, Honwana summed up NMCT in a very similar way to Jesus’ synopsis included in the play’s programme: “[o] narrador é um jovem que fala dos seus

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medos, da sua relação dentro do grupo de companheiros, mas também do modo como observa a sociedade onde vive, as relaçōes do poder, a situação colonial, as ressonâncias da Guerra, em que os sentimentos humanos se extremam no que há de bom e de mau” [the narrator is a young man who is speaking of what he is afraid of. He talks about his interactions with his young friends but also his opinions on the society he lives in, on the power relations, on the colonial context, on the echoes of the War, when human feelings oscillate between the most positive and negative extremes] (Nunes 2010: 15). As in Honwana’s quote, and notice here the capitalisation of war in the original transcription, it is not that Mozambican’s colonial war is disavowed in the 2010 production, it is rather that history is echoed rather than spoken of. Honwana was particularly enthusiastic about the 2010 production, as in the same interview, his words are paraphrased as follows: “o encenador e os seus actores terem conseguido ‘agarrar’ na sua história os aspectos que gostaria que ficassem, além das questōes circunstanciais” [director and actors understood the aspects of his story worth being portrayed, beyond the circumstantial issues] (Nunes 2010: 15). In o bando’s adaptation the (dis)placement of context (time and place) is a balancing act. The company’s take on NMCT recalls the specific historical circumstances of the original story in the programme, in the prologue, in interviews and public seminars. What it does on the night of the performance is something different. It invites the spectators to project themselves onstage, despite, or perhaps because of, the colonial spectrums portrayed. An understanding of violence, oppression and fear that does not in this production rely on the weight of history alone.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on my PhD thesis, Negotiating the Alternative in a Postmodern Theatre: o bando, Kneehigh, Foursight and Escola de Mulheres, University of Manchester 2011. 2 NMCT was performed by Nuno Nunes, Rosinda Costa, Raúl Atalaia, Sara de Castro and Nicolas Brites. Nuno Pino Custódio was the director. It was first performed 20 May 2010 in Escola Básica 1–2, Palmela. 3 The expression “colonial war” refers in fact to three wars: in Angola between 1961 and 1974, in Guinea-Bissau between 1963 and 1974, and in Mozambique between 1964 and 1974. Independence was granted to the Portuguese colonies (except for Timor and Macau) of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe shortly after the 25th of April 1974 Carnation Revolution. The rushed process of Portuguese “decolonisation” was “the most shameful moment” of Portuguese history, according to the historian Veríssimo Serrão, and was characterised by the abandonment of the former colonies, which was particularly damaging to Angola and Mozambique, throwing them into years of civil war and massacre (quoted in Andrade 2002: 117). 4 o bando’s home since 2000, Vale de Barris is at the heart of a small agricultural community in Palmela. 5 Co-produced with Palmela’s city hall and financed by two national development funds (PORLisboa and QREN) and the Regional European Development Fund (o bando 2010b). 6 Plano do Centenário schools were built by the Estado Novo regime between 1941 and 1969. This project took its name from the official state celebrations of the centenary of the foundation of the nation (1140) and the restoration of independence (1640). Varying in size, all schools are identical in style and can be found all over the country.

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References Afolabi, N. (2001): Golden Cage: Regeneration in Lusophone African Literature and Culture. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Andrade, J. (2002): Dicionário do 25 de Abril. Lisbon: Nova Arrancada. Burness, D. (1977): Fire: Six Writers from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde. Washington: Three Continents Press. Calafate Ribeiro, M., R. Vecchi and A. Sousa Ribeiro (2012): “The Children of the Colonial War: Post-Memory and Representations”, in Plots of War: Modern Narratives of Conflict, I. C. Gil and A. Martins (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter, 11–23. Dionísio, E. (1993): Títulos, Acções, Obrigações: sobre a Cultura em Portugal 1974–1994. Lisbon: Salamandra. ——— (1994): “Um Projecto de Mil Espaços”, in O Bando: Monografia de um Grupo de Teatro no seu Vigésimo Aniversário da sua Singularidade Artística e Independência Política, o bando (ed.). Lisbon: Grupo de Teatro O Bando, 89–133. Ferreira, A. P. (2007): “Specificity without Exceptionalism: Towards a Critical Lusophone Postcoloniality”, in Postcolonial Theory and Lusophone Literatures, P. de Medeiros (ed.). Utrecht: Portuguese Studies Center, 21–40. Gil, J. (2005): Portugal, Hoje: O Medo de Existir. Lisbon: Relógio D’Água Editores. Gomes, R. T. (1999): “Exercitar o nosso Refúgio: Entrevista a João Brites por Rui Telmo Gomes”, Observatório das Actividades Culturais 6: 5–9. Held, D. (2010): “Principles of Cosmopolitan Order”, in The Cosmopolitanism Reader, G. W. Brown and D. Held (eds.). Cambridge: Polity, 229–247. Honwana, L. B. (1969): We Killed Mangy-Dog, & Other Stories, D. Guedes (trans.). London: Heinemann Educational. ——— (2008): Nós matámos o Cão-Tinhoso. Lisbon: Biblioteca dos Editores Independentes/ Edições Cotovia. Kaye, N. (2000): Site-Specific Art. London: Routledge. Lourenço, V. (2008): “Formas de Participação Cultural”, Observatório das Actividades Culturais 16: 75–87. Lusa (2008): “José Sócrates anuncia investimento de 33,3 ME em 31 Centros Educativos”, 10 April, www.rtp.pt/noticias/pais/jose-socrates-anuncia-investimento-de-333-me-em31-centros-educativos_n60224 (accessed 4 July 2016). Mata, I. S. (1987): “O Espaço Social e o Intertexto do Imaginário em Nós matámos o CãoTinhoso”, in Literaturas Africanas de Língua Portuguesa, Colóquio no Centro de Arte Moderna 1985. Lisbon: FCG, 107–118. Nunes, M. L. (2010): “Luis Bernardo Honwana: A Escrita Num Só Livro”, Jornal de Letras 2–15 June: 14–15. o bando (1994): O Bando: Monografia de um Grupo de Teatro no seu Vigésimo Aniversário da sua Singularidade Artística e Independência Política. Lisbon: Grupo de Teatro O Bando. ——— (2008): “Candidatura ao Apoio Directo Quadrianual 2009–2012”. (unpublished text, o bando Archive). ——— (2009): Teatro O Bando: Afectos e Reflexos de um Trajecto. Palmela: Cooperativa de Produção Artística Teatro de Animação o Bando. ——— (2010a): “Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso!. Folha de venda do Espectáculo”. (unpublished text, o bando Archive). ——— (2010b): “Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso!. Programme”. (unpublished text, o bando Archive). Pazos-Alonso, C. (2007): “The Wind of Change in Nós matámos o cão-tinhoso”, Ellipsis 5: 67–85.

170 Vanessa Silva Pereira Porto, C. (1985): “10 Anos de Teatro em Portugal”, in 10 Anos de Teatro e Cinema em Portugal, 1974–1984, C. Porto and S. Menezes (eds.). Lisbon: Editorial Caminho, 15–153. Rebello, L. F. (1977): Combate por um Teatro de Combate. Lisbon: Seara Nova. Sabine, M. (2004): “Gender, Race and Violence in Luís Bernardo Honwana’s Nós matámos o Cão-Tinhoso: The Emasculation of the African Patriarch”, in Sexual/Textual Empires: Gender and Marginality in Lusophone African Literature, H. Owen and P. Rothwell (eds.). Bristol: HIPLAS/Lusophone Studies 2, 23–44. Santos, B. S. (2002): “Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and InterIdentity”, Luso-Brazilian Review 39: 9–43. Schechner, R. (1968): “6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre”, The Drama Review 12: 41–64. Serôdio, M. H. (1994): “À Flor das Palavras: uma Retórica Teatral da Paixão nos Trabalhos d’o Bando”, in O Bando: Monografia de um Grupo de Teatro no seu Vigésimo Aniversário da sua Singularidade Artística e Independência Política, o bando (ed.). Lisbon: Grupo de Teatro O Bando, 141–151. ——— (2000): “Growing up and Gaining Visibility (1996–1999)”, in The World of Theatre 2000 Edition, I. Herbert and N. Leclerq (eds.). Bangladesh: International Theatre Institute, 193–197, www.fl.ul.pt/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=634%3Agr owing-up-and-gaining-visibility-&catid=112%3Acentro-estudos-teatro&Itemid=1464 (accessed 9 August 2008). Werneck, M. H. (2009): “Cenas de Leitura e Desleitura”, in Texto e Imagem: Estudos de Teatro, M. H. Werneck and M. J. Brilhante (eds.). Rio de Janeiro: Sete Letras, 265–287. Wilkie, F. (2002): “Mapping the Terrain: A Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain”, New Theatre Quarterly 18: 140–160.

Part III

Texts

11 Bridging literary traditions in the Hispanic world Equatorial Guinean drama and the dictatorial cultural-political order1 Elisa Rizo Drama, in much the same manner as the rest of the literary genres cultivated in Equatorial Guinea, signals concurrent processes of nation-building and decolonisation. In spite of its potential for penetrating in a national audience with little access to formal education, dramatic writing has not been a favoured expression of Equatorial Guinean published authors, most of who tend to write poetry, narrative or essay. Notwithstanding a reduced corpus, the dramatic texts available to the readers inside and outside of Equatorial Guinea emerge as an active space in the formation of discourses of nation and citizenship. This is in spite of the environment of surveillance under which these texts are written and performed.2 Indeed, the political censorship that surrounds dramatic writing in Equatorial Guinea (and all literary and journalist writing for that matter) is reflected in most plays. Referring to this issue, Marvin A. Lewis has indicated in An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea, that corruption and power are the forces that permeate theatrical texts.3 His observation, as well as the very subtitle of his book, Between Colonialism and Dictatorship, remind us that Equatorial Guinean dramatic writing (and literature in general) is produced in the cracks of historical, political and economic forces that have maintained this sub-Saharan country and its population in the margins of Hispanism and the global community. Furthermore, Lewis’ remarks prompt us to recognise a mechanism inherent to Equatorial Guinean literature, one that forms “another sensibility, another consciousness of the condition of marginality: that in which marginality is the condition of the center”,4 as Trinh T. Minh-Ha would put it. Under the preceding considerations, Equatorial Guinean drama comes to light as a literary practice that signals awareness of a marginal location within the global system. Consequential to this trait of Equatorial Guinean drama, I will call attention to the manner in which Pancrasio Esono’s El hombre y la costumbre (Man and Custom, 1990), and Trinidad Morgades’ Antígona (Antigone, first published in 1991 and then re-printed in 2004.) respond to a context determined simultaneously by national policies, on the one hand, and by agendas of “cultural diplomacy”5 and economic expansion on behalf of different countries with interests in Equatorial Guinea, on the other hand. I suggest that focussing on this tension between the national and the transnational might help us identify points in common between Equatorial Guinean plays and other dramatic traditions.6

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This chapter will begin with an overview of national and transnational politics that have impacted Equatorial Guineans, before moving on to the dramas mentioned ealier to observe their treatment of national/transnational tensions. In the process, I will highlight the differences or similarities between the proposals for civic participation presented in these plays and those of a larger effort on behalf of African dramatists across the continent to promote social consciousness among their national audiences. Finally, to the extent that these dramas reflect – directly or indirectly – on a Spanish colonial past, Equatorial Guinean theatre is recognised as an art that bridges other literary traditions produced in the Hispanic world.

The making of a national culture: between local politics and transnational economics The Equatorial Guinean population has endured decades of transition toward the solidification of their nation-state since the end of the Spanish colonisation in 1968. Shortly after independence, Equatorial Guineans saw their democratic ideal truncated, as the government of Francisco Macias Nguema – elected president in 1969 – progressed into a violent and isolating dictatorship.7 In 1979, Macias was defeated through a coup d’état known as the “Golpe de libertad” (Freedom’s strike) led by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Once more, the initial sense of optimism that came with the beginning of this new administration deteriorated quickly as the autocratic nature of Obiang’s rule became evident. In fact, time has shown that, if Macias’ government was based on hostility, systematic assassination, and torture; Obiang’s regime (prevailing until these days) has continued with this pattern, although in a less bloody fashion and somewhat more concealed. Moreover, a diachronic view of Obiang’s government unveils that his management has recurred to an additional strategy to stay in power: the attraction of foreign capital. Related to this fact, the agenda of economic cooperation and cultural diplomacy of other countries, Spain and France in particular, during the 1980s and early 1990s, reveals the impact that neo-colonial interests also play in the shaping of domestic politics and official statements on national culture delivered by the Equatorial Guinean president. Within Equatorial Guinea’s complex postcolonial history, one event is associated with major developments in national policies on culture and economics: the Primer Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano de Cultura (or First International Conference of Hispanic-African Culture), celebrated in the Equatorial Guinean city of Bata in June of 1984.8 This was a conference intended to locate Equatorial Guinea within the spectrum of the Spanish-Latin American relations, and at the same time, within the African nations. With this objective, this meeting was attended by intellectuals from Equatorial Guinea, other African countries, Latin America9 and Spain. In sum, the attendees recommended a plan to foster a civic society on the basis of a common language and common cultural and spiritual references; namely, the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture, the revitalisation of pre-colonial languages and cultures and the recognition of a

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national chapter of the Catholic Church that would integrate local cultural elements into the religious practice. Given the location of Equatorial Guinea in a predominantly Francophone region, for the Equatorial Guinean intellectuals involved this meeting symbolised an effort to instill civic participation while fostering a national identity that acknowledged and defended their country’s Hispanic singularity. While these cultural and economic dynamics echo old colonial competitions in the region, they also reveal a sense of national identity that assumes a location in the margins of Hispanidad and, to a much lesser extent, of the Francophone countries,10 an identity evolving in the midst of a constantly shifting and everforming distinctiveness, always dependent on non-local matrixes. In this view, the search for a model of civic participation is set for one that will equip the population with the ability to recognise the centrality of their situation within a world that insists on their marginality. By proposing and evaluating different models of citizenry, the dramas by Esono and Morgades11 respond to the positioning of their country within the previously described global dynamics. Hence, Equatorial Guinean playwriting, in spite of the censorship practised by their governmental regime, emerges as a space where politics are reflected upon, and where the population is presented with tools to analyse their situation as well as their alternatives. In this light, drama becomes a potentially accessible platform where the competing models of national identity – whether introduced by the national government, by transnational powers, or by independent intellectuals – can be evaluated by the population.

Performing the official policy of national citizenry: Esono’s Man and Custom Over the 11-year period between 1979 and 1990, the one television station and the one radio station in Equatorial Guinea were controlled by the government and were dedicated to the celebration of the president and his cabinet.12 Accordingly, since 1985, authors were permanently requested to create works that would support the government’s “cause” of enhancing the image of the president.13 In this circumstance, some writers opted for exile, others for silence, and some others for dissidence. Nevertheless, there were others who took upon Obiang’s call and supported the governmental “cause.” Moderately futuristic, the plot of El hombre y la costumbre (Man and Custom, 1990)14 by Pancrasio Esono15 is situated in the year of 1999. The play envisions an economic bonanza in which Equatorial Guineans, thanks to the support of the government, are able to grow crops, manufacture products, buy, and sell products nationally and internationally. But most importantly, the drama places emphasis on the observance of traditional values within the process of modernisation in order to achieve balance between progressive and customary practices. In this light, Esono’s drama echoes Obiang’s call for “adapting (. . .) traditional forms to the legal and administrative structures of our times.”16

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Structured in two acts of five and three scenes respectively, the drama focuses on two nuclei of characters: those who have successfully incorporated modernity and local customs; and those who have failed in such integration. Within the dynamics of the play, this failure could be due to engagement in corrupt actions or embracing ‘erroneous’ (i.e. noncompliant, non-state sanctioned) interpretations of the African tradition. The first act elaborates on elements such as the revitalisation of long-established practices – like community cooperation in agricultural activities – via state programmes, while underlining the importance of the education provided by the state (even if obtained abroad) in the process of becoming better citizens. The second act focuses on traditions that pertain to the private sphere, specifically the role of women and men in society. Interestingly, in both acts the behaviours attributed to model citizens – obedient, hard working, disciplined, well versed on African traditions and thankful to the government – are proposed as the kind of conduct needed to enhance the stability of the country. Thus, throughout the play, it becomes obvious that the state’s prosperity, based on the obedience of the population (“buenas costumbres” and “buenas tradiciones” (“good customs” and “good traditions”), is more relevant than the development of a sense of belonging to a national community. Since the play is set to providing an imagery of governmental policies and national dreams, it is not surprising, then, that the main characters are bureaucrats. In the first act, we observe the arrival of Jesusa, Andrés and Juan. These characters have received higher education thanks to the state’s support and have been appointed to the little town of Mezdap to implement a federal programme to modernise agriculture, and with this, to help farmers in maximising their production, commercialising it and exporting it (25). Consequently, they act as distributors of the government’s projects for development, playing a key role in the instruction, training and administration of modern agricultural techniques, including the distribution of modified seeds, fertilizers and the allocation of loans for farmers (23–29). However, the play concentrates principally on one of these bureaucrats, Juan, whose failure is tied to ignoring African traditions and other “good habits” in his efforts to become “modern.” Echoing the title of the play, it is implied by other characters that he practises malas costumbres (bad habits or customs): he is corrupt, lazy and libertine. Predictably, a highlight of the play is an attempt to rescue Juan from himself. In scene 5, Andrés shares with him an important lesson that he learned while studying Agriculture in the imaginary first world, “Progalaxia”: ANDRÉS:

Pues estuve 5 años en la Progalaxia, estudiando. Allí me di cuenta de verdad y aprendí que el mundo da vueltas . . . En la Progalaxia hay muchas tradiciones, pero es el continente más evolucionado. Muchos pueblos olvidan sus buenas tradiciones; esto no es bueno. Lo paradójico es que los pueblos más evolucionados del globo son los que más guardan sus buenas tradiciones; las tradiciones son lo que llamamos cultura, en otros términos.

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[ANDRÉS:

I spent 5 years in Progalaxia, studying. There, I became aware of things . . . There are many traditions in Progalaxia because it is the most evolved continent. [. . .] Many peoples forget their good traditions; this is not good. The irony of it is that the globe’s most evolved peoples are those who guard their good traditions; in other words, tradition is what we call culture.] (34)

In an openly didactic and moralistic manner, the dialogue continues: JUAN: ANDRÉS:

[JUAN: ANDRÉS:

A lo mejor tienes razón. La tengo. No lo dudes, hermano. El hombre está condicionado por la sociedad en que subsiste. Siempre que lo que hagamos no vaya contra la moral de la sociedad, contra la moral cristiana o contra las leyes, se puede considerar como una buena costumbre. You may be right. I am right, brother, do not doubt it. Man is conditioned by the society that surrounds him. As long as our actions do not go against the morals of society, Christian morality, or the law, you can be sure that those are good habits.] (34)

Hence, African tradition is presented as a realm closely related to social and Christian morals as well as the laws regulated by a government. This depiction also presents at least one implication: it seems to borrow from the strategies of population control exercised by the colonial policies of francoist Spain. The latter becomes evident when contrasting Andrés’ advice with Spanish colonialist texts, like the one entitled “La cultura, problema fundamental de colonización” (“Culture, the Fundamental Problem of Colonization”). In this document, education in “Spanish Guinea” was supposed to: intentar despertar facultades, encauzar instintos, para que aquéllas forjen al hombre conciente y éstos le conduzcan a una actividad llena de virtudes17 [try to awaken abilities, guide instincts, so that the first ones would build a conscious man, and the latter would lead him to a behavior filled with virtues.] The text continues stating that colonial education should: en sentido español, hacer hombres cuya formación sea equilibrada y conforme a las leyes de la moral y de la vida cristiana, con cuyo conocimiento y práctica se acerquen a la perfección humana y espiritual que debe ser el verdadero fin de la educación.18

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[in a Spanish sense, build men whose formation would be balanced and in conformity with the moral and Christian laws, with which knowledge and practice they could reach human and spiritual perfection, which is the true objective of education.] By contrast with Álvarez’s text, it seems that virtue, respect for Christian morals, and adherence to laws – the main objectives of cultural assimilation during the colony – are echoed by the bureaucrat Andres in Esono’s drama, as when he utters “Siempre que lo que hagamos no vaya contra la moral de la sociedad, contra la moral cristiana o contra las leyes, se puede considerar como una buena costumbre.” [As long as our actions do not go against the morals of society, Christian morality, or the law, you can be sure that those are good habits] (34). Problematically, all through the play, the so-called traditional values are evoked as a thing of the past that must be revived and cherished. Only the elderly seem to know about these Bantu values and, even though they preach them (as in the second act, when they offer an explanation of “nsua,”19 (39–43), they remain in the periphery of the action. The characters that carry the plot and the “relevant” knowledge for the public sphere are those educated abroad, like Andrés. Hence, this literary elaboration presented initially as afro-centric, ends up favouring foreign perspectives in the end. Even though El hombre y la costumbre does not make direct reference to the economic and cultural interactions between Equatorial Guinea, France and the African French bloc, and Spain, Esono’s portrayal of a more modern Equatorial Guinea relies on the imitation of foreign (more specifically, colonial) paradigms. Consequently, in Esono’s model of good citizenry, Equatorial Guineans are requested to embrace local traditions as they mimic a culturally abstract “other” (Progalaxia) that, conflictingly, is reminiscent of Francoist educational values. Seeing this way, El hombre y la costumbre complies with a structure that perpetuates the historical and structural dependency of Equatorial Guinea in relation to former metropolitan powers, a phenomenon described by Aníbal Quijano with the term coloniality of power as he approached the Latin American neocolonial context. While I recognise the differences between the neocolonial realities of Latin America and Central Africa, in the case of this play and the governmental policies it seems to embody, the concept of coloniality of power helps to describe how former dominated populations perpetuate the model of Eurocentric hegemony as if it were the only epistemic knowledge available.20

From local to universal: the margin as the centre There is another trend within contemporary Equatorial Guinean drama that manages to deliver alternative proposals for national culture than those conveyed by colonial-like, dictatorial neo-conservatism. These dramatic texts introduce an analysis of the Equatorial Guinean circumstance at the national and the transnational level and, at the same time, reveal an awareness of a variety of conceptual political frameworks that are sustained in other national experiences in

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Africa. Thus, in spite of marked local differences and approaches, the reader may encounter an indirect dialogue between the production of Equatorial Guinean writers and others of neighbouring countries about common issues. One focus of such dialogue is the continued oppression and impoverishment of the national population in spite of the consolidation of their independences. In this regard, Femi Osofisan, one of Nigeria’s most notable playwrights, has appealed for a farewell to Negritude and proposes an embracing of post-Negritude. Osofisan’s concept offers a self-reflective analysis that denounces the appropriation of Negritude-like rhetoric by dictatorships and insists on the caducity of Negritude’s polarised logic. Moreover, post-Negritude places the concerns of Africa and its population at the “centre” of study. From this perspective, Osofisan’s term considers the critical evaluation of the present through the scope of history. He states: post-Negritude does not [. . .] believe in, or promote, a willful mystification of the African past [. . .] post-Negritude does not reject the past either; it only demands a critical attitude to the exhumation of our heritage, such that such remembrance will not just present our culture as a static, nostalgic monument, but rather as a dynamic process, hybrid, and sometimes even self-contradicting.21 Post-Negritude could be understood, then, as a present-day effort on behalf of African intellectuals to analyse those instances in which the rhetoric of Negritude, and national discourses linked to authoritarian regimes in general, were used by different agents to build structures of domination within the national realm after independence; and that, in some cases, has resulted in atavistic cultural policies. Although in his proposal Osofisan criticises postcolonial theory’s shortcomings, his argument is in alignment with Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s proposal delivered in No Master Territories is that Post-Negritude recognises the need to put the experiences of margin at the centre of the discussion to achieve liberation. It is because of this parallelism with Minh-Ha’s proposal that I consider Osofisan’s alternative as a viable model to observe the formation of a margincentred grammar articulated by African playwrights, as it pertains to the Equatorial Guinean dramas. Looking back at the policy on national culture and national economy developed by the Equatorial Guinean government during the 1980s, it is remarkable to see how the very same context that surrounded the production of Esono’s play also encompasses the production of Morgades’ Antígona. This play attests to the shared concern between the Equatorial Guinean thinkers and other African intellectuals, while inviting the Equatorial Guinean audience to engage in a different conceptualisation of the national realm. First published in 1991 in the banished cultural magazine África 2000, Morgades’ elaboration of the Sophocles’ Antigone seeks to locate Equatorial Guinea in the universal realm.22 Organised in three acts, corresponding to the dawn of independence, the elections, and the collapse of Francisco Macias’ brutal regime,

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Morgades’ Antígona recollects the feelings of hope among Equatorial Guineans at the moment of independence as well as the national deterioration at the hands of Macias. Consequently, the original Greek plot is modified and some important characters, such as Henon, are eliminated. Other important changes include the transfer of the role of Creón to that of the president (el presidente) and the incorporation of elements such drums and dancers.23 Equally, while one of Sophocles’ Antigone salient features is the use of the chorus to point moral questions derived from the actions of the characters; in Morgades’ Antígona, this structural aspect is substituted by the “voces.”24 The drama problematises the idea of building a nation-state centred on one man’s power. Hence, at different moments in the play, like the one that follows, these “voices” state the president’s moral responsibilities, his privileges and duties: VOCES:

[VOICES:

Has sido escogido entre tus hermanos para establecer en esta tierra la libertad, la paz y la justicia. [. . .] No eleves tu corazón con la soberbia. Tu vida será alargada si te comprometes a hacer el bien común. El bien de tu pueblo es el primer pensamiento que deberá estar en tu mente todas las mañanas de tu existencia y la última mañana, al retirarte para el descanso eterno de la noche. You have been chosen among your brothers to establish freedom, peace and justice in this land. [. . .] Do not inflate your heart with arrogance. You life will be elongated if you commit to the common good. The welfare of your people should be your first thought as you wake up every morning of your existence including the last morning, when you take your leave to rest in the eternal night.] (240)25

Thus, the voices establish that the president is no longer an ordinary man; his life is to be dedicated to his people. When the president fails to perform according to these standards and begins the massive killing of his own people because of fear of a rebellion against him, the voices are quick to remind the audience of the universal morals against which the character of the president turns his back. Additionally, the voices announce the subsequent punishment: VOCES: [VOICES:

El mal es más fuerte que tú. Te ha vencido. Has acabado con el primer tropiezo. Tu pueblo acabará y tú con él. Evil is stronger than you. He has defeated you. You have been destroyed at the first tight spot. You people will perish and you with them.] (242)

With a conspicuously deterministic tone, the allegory of Macias’ dictatorship in Antígona frames the lost opportunity to form a participatory society after independence. Nevertheless, this determinism fades away as the play advances.

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One of the key elements of this “weakening” of the deterministic mode lays in the fact that Morgades’ elaboration of this Greek tragedy seems to focus on the condemnation of the ill reasoning of the tyrant. In Act III when Antígona confronts the Presidente, who condemned her for burying the people he had sent to kill, she responds “with serenity and determination” (muy serena y decidida): Sólo es justo obedecer las leyes que son dictadas para educar al pueblo, para el bien del pueblo. PRESIDENTE: ¿No es justo enseñar al pueblo a obedecer la ley? La ley dice: no matarás; y han querido matarme. ANTÍGONA: Estás vivo. PRESIDENTE: Venían a matarme. ANTÍGONA: Te veo allí, y ellos ya no existen. [ANTÍGONE: It is only just to obey the laws dictated to educate your people, for the good of the people. PRESIDENT: Isn’t it just to teach the people to obey the law? The law says: you shall not kill; and they wanted to kill me. ANTIGONE: You are alive. PRESIDENT: They were coming to kill me. ANTIGONE: I see you there, and they no longer exist.] (243) ANTÍGONA:

As in Sophocles’ Antigone, the Equatorial Guinean character of Antígona is a symbol of justice and human will that unveils faults in the tyrant’s logic. In contrast to Sophocles’ tragedy, however, the character of Antígona does not commit suicide, nor is the tyrant given a chance to reflect upon his mistakes. Young Antígona survives the tyrant, who dies alone, abandoned by his followers. Critics such as Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins suggest that the transplantation of the Helenic tragic trope as well as similar re-enactments of classical pieces in a non-Western, postcolonial context could be interpreted as an indirect contestation of the values of the old European empires.26 However, other critics, like Abiola Irele, propose a different application for Greek and Roman classic tropes in African literatures: Helenic and Roman civilizations have a direct significance for us as much as for any European . . . they made the conceptual breakthrough responsible in large part for the scientific and technological civilization which defines the modern world.27 Thus, Irele claims the right of African authors to access the tools of deductive thought that lie in Greek tragedy, not only to respond to colonial structures, but to analyse Africa’s own national circumstances and to discuss the political and moral elements around the founding of societies ruled by state policies. Expanding on his approach, we can begin to realize the analytical nature of the Equatorial Guinean Antígona.

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As in Sophocles’ Antigone, in Morgades’ tragedy the dialogues between the entities symbolizing the laws of tradition and those of the state open a debate about which of the two better ensure human welfare. Following Sophocles’ model, Morgades raises a moral question regarding the limit of the state’s authority over its people. Coincidentally, the same feature has been noted in Sophocles’s tragedies. Angel Ma. Garibay noted a contention in the classical texts between the state and the individual and thus, an indication of the dangers of the state’s power: El equilibrio entre la sumisión a las normas tradicionales y políticas y de la dignidad del hombre, que puede oponerse a ellas, cuando le son nocivas y van contra principios más altos que atisba en su interior, es para mí el mejor de los dones de Sófocles en su obra trágica. [One of the major achievements of Sophocles’s tragic oeuvre is the balance achieved between submission to traditional and political norms, and human dignity. Man can rise against these norms if they are either damaging to him or go against higher values.]28 Consequently, the defence of human dignity defines the common ground between the classic tragedy and its Equatorial Guinean counterpart. Visibly, Morgades contextualises this message in Equatorial Guinea’s history, specifically the period between 1968 and 1979 (Independence and Macias’ regime). Therefore, her play calls for resistance to the dictator. Moreover, her work suggests that this action of subversion is in harmony with God’s and nature’s laws. Thus, while Sophocles’ Antigone commits suicide as the only way to resist state laws, which transgress her morals, the Equatorial Guinean character of Antígona escapes death and is able to witnesses the death of the tyrant. Morgades’ turn to the image of an erupting volcano in the final scene appeals to nature’s destructive/inventive dynamics, which seems to approve of Antígona’s resistance to the dictator. Seeing it in this manner, the eruption of the volcano conveys, in spite of the chaos, the necessary force to establish a new start. Antígona is able to flee from the fury of the eruption with the help of an anonymous character. The president, alone, remains on the collapsing stage. As the result of the eruption, a new order emerges at the end of the play. This new reality is described with a prophetic tone (reminiscent of the Bible’s Book of Revelations) by the voices: VOCES:

[VOICES:

Y vi un nuevo cielo y una nueva tierra; porque el cielo anterior y la tierra anterior han pasado, y el mar de sangre ya no existe. Ví también una limpia y sana ciudad. Oí una voz que decía al pueblo: Mientras vivas bajo Mi Ley no serás destruido . . . And I saw a new sky and a new earth; because the previous earth and the previous sky have passed and the sea of blood no longer exists. I also saw a clean and vigorous city. I heard a voice that told my people: While you live under My Law, you will not be destroyed . . .] (245)

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This last intervention of the voices seems to refer to a supra-natural influence that incites the renovation of the Equatorial Guinean nation and hence, reestablishes its dignity. However, the historical allusion to this moment of “salvation” is problematically linked to the beginning of the “new order” that substituted Macias’ regime: that of Obiang’s. From this standpoint, the analytical potential of the play is limited to that of the first dictatorship. In spite of this restraint, the play introduces a declaration of the right of the population to confront oppression in the promise that liberty (represented in the play with Antígona) will prevail. On the other hand, the final words of the voices convey, once again with a biblical tone, a warning: “while you live under my law, you will not be destroyed.” In spite of the omission of any critical comment to the current regime, the play could obliquely suggest a warning to the new government to obey “universal” morals. The voices, thus, may be recognising the new governmental cycle as one under probation, in which the new leader will have to prove his aptitude to rule. While Morgades presents an image of self-renewal (symbolised by the volcano) in correlation with Western biblical dogma, her play also demonstrates a conscientious appreciation of the Equatorial Guinean circumstance. The metadramatic critical apparatus that frames this reconstruction of the Greek tragedy justifies the identification of Morgades’ piece as part of African post-negritude drama as it underscores theatre’s capability of historical and social reflection. In the end, Antígona reveals an objective of re-organising a recent and traumatic past, while advocating – even if subtly – the civic right to demand fair treatment by state leaders. The preceding observation of Equatorial Guinean drama during the 1990s suggests that the development of this genre is marked by two main tendencies: one that is tied to a national and transnational politic agenda; and a second one that shows signs of questioning and confronting that agenda. In this framework, the official discourse of Equatorial Guinean culture and economic development, with its spread of propaganda and celebration of the ruling class, as seen in Esono’s play, has proven efficient only in the measure that it hinders the possibilities for a real improvement in the living conditions of the population and that it ensures the continuation of the authoritarian regime. On the other hand, Morgades’ play interrogates the possibilities of sustaining human dignity in a dehumanising environment, echoing other African thinkers, such as Wole Soyinka.29 In the same way, Morgades’ “Antigone” shares many points in common with the preoccupations of post-Negritude espoused by Osofisan, such as the desire to foster citizen awareness and civic action. This nuance of Equatorial Guinean drama within the broader realm of African letters – even if unintentional – marks a tendency within this national literature to move away from a discourse based on binary oppositions (traditional versus modern, Western versus African) into a more complex logic that centres on the advancement of the human and civil rights of marginalised populations. Equally, Equatorial Guinean drama emerges a site of reflection on the configuration of national formation within the context of present transnational capital interests that have evolved from colonial structures of power. Located, due to

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economic policies, in the margins of Francophone countries and, due to a colonial past, in the margins of Hispanism, Equatorial Guinean texts (dramatic and of all sorts) gain from a unique perception. However, in regards to its acknowledgement in Spanish speaking areas, it faces at least two difficulties: one is due to this country’s far away location and the absence Equatorial Guinean books in Latin American libraries and bookstores (they are more accessible in Spain); the other difficulty is that of the remains of institutionalised exclusion of Black writers in Hispanic literary studies. It is a fact that, until very recently, within the Hispanic literary canon (Spanish and Latin American), the production of Afro-Hispanic writers has been effaced to a corner. As Afro-Hispanic studies gain acceptance, it is key to incorporate in them the study of the Equatorial Guinean literature. Read alongside the literature written by Spanish American authors of African descent, the emergent Equatorial Guinean literary tradition provides the opportunity to examine several key themes, such as the experiences on both sides of the transatlantic foundation of colonial and capitalist systems in the Hispanic world, the construction of racialised societies, as well as the opportunity to learn from diverse epistemologies that emerge from other historically marginalised spaces, such as those of Amerindian literatures and the literature produced by various diasporas in the Hispanic World. Indeed, Equatorial Guinean literature provides a juncture to analyse proposals for the dismantling of hegemonic practices of exclusion and, in that task, to bridging literary traditions within the Hispanic World.

Notes 1 This is an abridged version of “Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural Political Order” which appeared in Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature, Ed. Antonio Tillis. London: Routledge, 2011, 142–161. 2 The present work focusses on written drama, not performance. 3 Lewis’ chapter on drama is dedicated to Morgades’ Antigone, Esono’s Man and Custom and Avila Laurel’s Domestic Men and Imperfect Preterit. Lewis’ study provides a much-needed background on these plays and points out stylistic and thematic characteristics, noting the impact of national and international politics in Domestic Men specifically (89). Although the present study does not include Imperfect Preterit, it adheres to Lewis’ while it focusses on how the tension between local/national and transnational forces impacts works of the same Equatorial Guinean playwrights. 4 Minh-Ha, Thinh T. “No Master Territories”, 216. 5 I am borrowing Mary Niles Maack’s definition of “cultural diplomacy”: “that aspect of diplomacy that involves a government’s efforts to transmit its national culture to foreign publics with the goal of bringing about understanding for national ideals and institutions as part of a larger attempt to build support for political and economic goals.” In “Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy in Francophone Africa during the Cold War”, 2. 6 I further develop this theoretical approach including also narrative, essay and poetry in an upcoming article. 7 Liniger-Goumaz describes this process in “Dictadura y complicidades”. 8 This conference was organised by writer Donato Ndongo (now in exile) and artist Leandro Mbomio. Taped Interview with Donato Ndongo, 15 April 2006.

Equatorial Guinean drama and the dictatorial cultural-political order 185 9 Latin American participants included writers of African descent such as Manuel Zapata Olivella and Nicómedes Santa Cruz, Ibid., 33–34. 10 In addition to French, as recently as July 2007, Portuguese was also declared an official language of Equatorial Guinea by President Obiang. It should also be pointed out that the presence of U.S. oil companies has had an impact on social dynamics within Equatorial Guinea. For a study that deals with one Equatorial Guinean drama, (not included in the present work) popular cultures, and the impact of U.S. presence, see Rizo (November 2006). 11 Mbare Ngom Fayé refers to these plays to indicate the relative growth of the dramatic genre during the 1990s in “Literatura africana de expresión española”, 131. 12 United Nations, “Core Document forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: Equatorial Guinea”. 13 Obiang states in his 1985 book Guinea Ecuatorial, país joven, (Equatorial Guinea: a young country) that Equatorial Guinean intellectuals where those who: “sacrificing their personal, familial and material aspirations, were inspired by a permanent desire to contribute to the process of national re-building embraced by the government” [sacrificando sus aspiraciones personales, familiares y materiales, están animados por una voluntad permanente de contribuir en el proceso de la reconstrucción nacional emprendido por el Gobierno] (“Discurso con ocasión del manifiesto de adhesión de los intelectuales equatoguineanos”, 351). 14 According to Donato Ndongo, along with Trinidad Morgades’ Antigona, Esono’s play was staged in the Centro Cultural Francés in the 1990s. Donato Ndongo, “Seminario de literatura africana escrita en español”, Spring 2005. 15 As of 2007, Esono was the Secretary of Culture for the Equatorial Guinean government. (Source: Webpage of the Equatorial Guinean government: www.ceiba-guineaecuatorial. org/guineeangl/ indexbienv1.htm.) 16 Guinea Ecuatorial, país joven, 98. Obiang’s statement shows a remarkable alignment with one of the main objectives of the Bank of Central African states: “to Africanize the structure and the decision making organisms of the Central Bank”. (BEAC, XXe Anniversaire, 1972–1992 (22), quoted by Abaga Edjang, “El advenimiento del Euro y sus consecuencias económicas para Guinea Ecuatorial”, 16). 17 Álvarez, H.R, “La cultura, problema fundamental de colonización”, quoted by Negrín Fajardo, Historia de la educación de Guinea Ecuatorial, 145. 18 Ibid. 19 A Bantu practice that has been inaccurately paralleled with the practice of Western dowry. 20 For a definition of “coloniality of power” see Aníbal Quijano’s “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina”, 117. 21 Femi Osofisan, “Rites of Post-Negritude Remembering”, 10. 22 An in-depth analysis of this written drama and its performance by the Equatorial Guinean theatre company Bocamandja is presented in “Glocalizing Democracy through a Reception of the Classics in Equatorial Guinean Theatre: the Case of Morgade’s Antigona” Rizo (2016). 23 This feature was noted by Kathleen McNerney in “A Guinean Antigone”, 237. 24 Adaptation noted by Lewis, 91. 25 All quotes come from the 2004 reprint of this drama in the Arizona Journal of Cultural Studies. 26 Helen Gilbert & Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics 38–42. 27 Irele, “In Praise of Alienation”, in The Surreptitious Speech, 223. 28 Garibay, introduction to Las siete tragedias, XIII. 29 Soyinka’s Climate of Fear focuses on the systematic suppression of human dignity of different national governments across the globe.

References Abaga Edjang, F. (2002): “El advenimiento del Euro y sus consecuencias económicas para Guinea Ecuatorial”, Cuadernos: Centro de Estudios Africanos de la Universidad de Murcia 2: 9–39.

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Abah, O. S. (2003): “Perspectives in Popular Theatre: Orality as a Definition of New Realities”, in Theatre and Performance in Africa, E. Breitinger (eds.). Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 79–99. AECI (11 February 2005): “Memoria de Actividades 2005”, Red de Centros Culturales. Representación “Los hombres domésticos.” Centro Cultural Español de Bata, www.aeci. es/09cultural/03prom/memoria/fichacc.asp?Registro=193&NumActividad=1339 ——— (25 November 2005): “Memoria de Actividades 2005”, Red de Centros Culturales. Representación “Los hombres domésticos.” Centro Cultural Español de Malabo, www.aeci. es/09cultural/03prom/memoria/fichacc.asp?Registro=194&NumActividad=1500 Cusak, I. (1999): “Hispanic and Bantu Inheritance, Trauma, Dispersal and Return: Some Contributions to a Sense of National Identity in Equatorial Guinea”, Nations and Nationalism 5.2: 207–236. Esono, P. (1990): El hombre y la costumbre. Madrid: U.N.E.D. Garibay, Á. M. (1998): “Introduction to Sophocles”, in Las Siete Tragedias. México: Editorial Porrúa, xiii. Gilbert, H. and J. Tompkins (1996): Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Gobierno Guinea Ecuatorial (1985): Informe final del Primer Congreso Internacional HispánicoAfricano de Cultura. Malabo: Ediciones Guinea. ——— (2006): “La apertura diplomática” en Guinea Ecuatorial, Página de Internet del Gobierno Institucional, www.ceiba-guinea-ecuatorial.org/10denoviembre. Irele, A. (1992): “In Praise of Alienation”, in The Surreptitious Speech, Y. Mudimbe (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 210–224. Irving, J. (1999): “For Better or For Worse: The Euro and the CFA Franc”, African Recovery 12.4. United Nations website. 10 December 2006, www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/ afrec/vol12no4/euro.htm Lewis, M. A. (2007): An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. Liniger-Goumaz, M. (2001): “Dictadura y complicidades”, in Misceláneas guineanas. La Chaux: Editorial Tiempos Modernos, 155–158. Tiempos próximos (eds.) Lipski, J. (2004): “The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea”, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8: 115–130. McNerney, K. (2004): “A Guinean Antigone”, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8: 235–238. Minh-Ha, T. T. (1995): “No Master Territories”, in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, B. Ashcroft, G. Griffits, and H. Tiffin(eds.). London: Routledge, 215–218. Morgades, B. T. (2004): “Antígona”, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8: 239–245. Negrín, F. (1993): Historia de la educación de Guinea Ecuatorial. Madrid: U.N.E.D. Ngom, M. (2003): “Literatura africana de expresión española”, Cuadernos 3: 111–135. Niles, M. M. (2003): “Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy in Francophone Africa during the Cold War”, Libraries & Culture 36.1: 58–86. Obiang, T. (1985): Guinea Ecuatorial, país joven. Malabo: Ediciones Guinea. Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (2006): 6 December, www.francophonie. org/. Osofisan, F. (1999): “Theather and the Rites of ‘Post Negritude’ Remembering”, Research in African Literatures 30.1: 1–11. Otabela, J. (2004): Literatura emergente en español: Literatura de Guinea Ecuatorial. Madrid: Biblioteca Crítica de las Literaturas Luso-Hispánicas, Ediciones del Orto & Universidad de Minnesota.

Equatorial Guinean drama and the dictatorial cultural-political order 187 Rizo, E. (15 April 2006a): Taped Interview to Donato Ndongo. Columbia, Missouri. ——— (November, 2006b): “Teatro guineoecuatoriano contemporáneo: el mibili en El fracaso de las sombras”, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 7.3: 289–310. ——— (2016): “Glocalizing Democracy through a Reception of the Classics in Equatorial Guinean Theatre: The Case of Morgades’ Antígona”, in Receptions of the Classics in the African Diaspora of the Hispanophone and Lusophone Worlds: Atlantis Otherwise. Lanham: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 91–109. E. Rizo & M. Henry (eds.). Soyinka, W. (2005): Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. United Nations (12 September 2003):“Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: Equatorial Guinea”, Human Rights Instruments, www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf /898586b1dc7b4043c1256a450044f331/9e4b668cbed6413bc1256e31002e2d5f/$FILE/ G0345121.pdf. U.S. Embassy in Malabo (12 January 2005): “The United States in Equatorial Guinea: Religious Freedom Report”, 2003: U.S. Embassy, http://usembassystate.gov/malabo/. wwwhreligion. html ——— (2004–2005): “Official Reports on E.G.”, U.S. Embassy. 12 January 2005, http:// malabo.usembassy.gov/200405_democracy_hr_support.html.

12 Soldiers without orders, actors without stages Carlos Manuel Varela’s Interrogatorio en Elsinore and Bosco Brasil’s Novas diretrizes em tempos de paz Katya Soll In Carlos Manuel Varela’s Interrogatorio en Elsinore (Después de la Ratonera) [Interrogation at Elsinore (After the Mousetrap)], the lead Actor from Hamlet’s play-within-a-play has been arrested for his role in Hamlet’s conspiracy to overthrow the government. His interrogations and torture run parallel to the second half of the Shakespearean play, whose events we hear about secondhand from the Interrogator. The Interrogator’s attempts to force the truth from him are constantly undermined by the shifting circumstances of Shakespeare’s play, as key characters die and shift allegiances. As the Actor struggles to understand what role art can play in the face of torture and repression, the Interrogator struggles to hold on to his own identity as, offstage, his boss and mentor Polonius is killed, Laertes rebels, the entire royal family dies, Fortinbras takes over, and his regime in turn collapses. While the Actor is able to find new hope in the endurance of memory and art, the Interrogator is left broken, without a purpose or anyone to obey. The parallels to Bosco Brasil’s Novas diretrizes em tempos de paz [New Directives in Times of Peace] are striking. Set in 1945, as both World War II and Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo are coming to an end, it also portrays the interrogation of an actor by a lower-level functionary who has lost his purpose as his regime changes. Clausewitz, a Polish actor, arrives in Brazil to start a new life as a farmer, having lost faith in art after the horrors of the Nazi occupation. It is up to former torturer Segismundo to decide whether or not to let him enter the country. In the absence of fixed orders, Segismundo proposes a bet: if Clausewitz can move him to tears, he can enter Brazil. Having heard Segismundo’s stories about his duties as a member of the secret police, Clausewitz despairs of finding humanity in him. Yet when he hears how lost Segismundo is now that the government is changing and trying to erase all traces of its repressive past, he decides to try. He tells the story of a man he watched die in prison, replacing his last words with Segismundo’s opening monologue from La vida es sueño [Life is a Dream]. Listening to this speech about a man trapped by circumstance, asking why he has less freedom than a bird, a beast, a fish, or a stream, Segismundo cries. Seeing this, Clausewitz resolves to remain an actor, concluding that art does still have a place in the world. As the curtain falls, at Segismundo’s request, Clausewitz begins telling him the story of his Golden Age namesake.

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Both plays respond to contemporary contexts of dictatorial repression: Interrogation premiered near the end of military rule in Uruguay, while New Directives was written after the last dictatorship in Brazil. Each seeks simultaneously to examine the inner workings of power from the base of the repressive apparatus and to explore and ultimately reaffirm the relevance of art in times of repression, goals which are achieved through the adaptation of classic theatrical texts. This chapter will explore the intersections between these new and classic texts and the history of recent dictatorships in Uruguay and Brazil, in order to understand how the plays define theatre’s role in the construction and interpretation of society’s memories of repression. The concept of adaptation itself is key to this process. The plays these authors have chosen to adapt are themselves testaments to the power of theatrical adaptation. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is in fact an adaptation of a previous English play that was an adaptation of a French novel that was an adaptation of a 13th-century Danish history text (Foster 1998). Within the play, Hamlet creates an adaptation of The Murder of Gonzago that he dubs The Mousetrap: a device which forms the core of Hamlet, located exactly in the middle of the play and marking the shift from contemplation to action. Theatre itself is thus defined as a catalyst for action, and in Varela’s version becomes the catalyst for an entirely new story. Calderón de la Barca’s comedia likewise acknowledges the centrality of the theatrical, as the action is motivated by successive performances of identity and relationships. The play itself is an intertextual product of its time, borrowing freely from myth, philosophy, and other authors. The key monologue that is appropriated in New Directives, in which Segismundo begs heaven to tell him why he is so punished in life, marveling at the freedom of beasts and birds, “¿y yo, con más alma/albedrío/vida,/tengo menos libertad?” [but I, with greater soul/will/life,/ have less freedom?] (Calderón de la Barca 2000: 13–14),1 is itself an adaptation of the themes, imagery, and structure of a series of previous soliloquies by Lope de Vega, Guillén de Castro, and Calderón himself, among others (Buchanan 1908; Jones 1979). These more recent adaptations are therefore situated as merely the latest step in a constant series of palimpsestuous literary evolutions. Coming from the Latin adaptare, meaning to fit, adjust, or make suitable (Fischlin and Fortier 2000: 17), adaptations such as these involve the invocation and alteration of a known story, making it fit or suit a new context and focus. As Linda Hutcheon defines it, “adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication” (2006: 7); it is “an extended, deliberate, announced revisitation of a particular work of art” (170). It therefore provides authors the opportunity to invoke a series of pre-existing themes, narratives, and characterisations, without binding them to the original form and context. For the audience, then, adaptation is a process of comparison and contrast, as audience members experience the new work in constant dialogue with the known source-text. This allows authors to call attention to key changes and commonalities in characterisation or theme that might otherwise pass unnoticed. In politically charged contexts, adaptation can further serve the role of masking intention, as commentary on the present moment is filtered through a respected and seemingly unrelated

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literary or historical lens. Adaptation of this kind thereby functions on additional levels of signification, as the audience must make connections not only between the source-text and its adaptation but also between the adaptation and their own societal circumstances. For Carlos Manuel Varela, writing Interrogation at Elsinore in 1983, two years before the end of Uruguay’s military dictatorship, this constituted an especially risky proposition. Despite a long history as one of the most politically and socially stable countries in the region, an economic depression led to political instability in Uruguay and the imposition of strict neo-liberal reforms, removing many protections and assistance programmes for the lower classes and leading to further social instability, which was met in turn by government repression of workers and leftist groups (Mirza 1992: 29). This chain of events consequently brought about the rise of the Tupamaros, a leftist urban guerrilla organisation. The government turned to the military to end this crisis, giving them more and more authority and freedom for independent action, while removing many civil liberties and imposing censorship. In many ways, by the late 1960s, Uruguay was already a military dictatorship in everything but name (Caetano and Rilla 1987: 13). When the military formally took over the government in 1973, they emphasised the need to combat subversive action as one of their leading justifications for suspending democracy, despite the fact that the Tupamaros had been defeated six months earlier (Walker 2007: 37). The extremely repressive conditions created by the dictatorship ranged from military control of schools, highly restrictive censorship, and book-burning to the widespread detention of citizens (1 in 50 was imprisoned at some point) and the relentless use of torture (Walker 2007; Weschler 1990; Frega 2008; Weinstein 1975; Servicio 1992). The regime also actively targeted the theatrical community for severe repression: La ola represora alcanza también a los integrantes del movimiento teatral uruguayo, cerrando salas, prohibiendo autores e inhabilitando a numerosos e importantes actores, directores y técnicos. Muchos son encarcelados y torturados, otros son amenazados y un gran número debe optar por el exilio, sobre todo en los años 1972 y 1973. De más de veinte grupos de teatro de los años sesenta, se pasará así a seis o siete a mediados de la década de los setenta. [The wave of repression also reaches the members of the Uruguayan theatre movement, closing theatres, prohibiting authors and barring numerous and important actors, directors, and technicians. Many are imprisoned and tortured, others are threatened, and a large number has to choose exile, especially in the years 1972 and 1973. Of the more than twenty theatre groups in the sixties, there will only be six or seven left by the middle of the seventies.] (Mirza 1992: 45) By 1983, a slow demilitarisation was underway, but repression continued all the same. Nevertheless, Mirza denotes this period as one of resurgence in the

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Montevideo theatrical community, “caracterizada por el crecimiento y participación cada vez más entusiasta de un público que descubría en el teatro un espacio de encuentro y de resistencia donde exteriorizar de alguna forma su protesta y su necesidad de expresión y de libertad, paralelamente al lento proceso político” [characterized by growth and the ever more enthusiastic participation of a public that was discovering in the theatre a space for meeting and resisting where they could externalise in some way their protest and need for expression and freedom, parallel to the slow political process] (46). In such conditions, adapting a European classic allowed Varela an opportunity to avoid censorship while commenting on imprisonment, torture, and the role of art in the face of brutality. The primary tool for repression in Uruguay was long-term imprisonment, spanning years, coupled with intense physical and psychological torture. Such imprisonment for long periods in psychologically damaging conditions made it nearly impossible for many to resume normal lives afterwards. As one survivor of Libertad Prison remarked, “In Argentina, the authorities disappeared people. In Uruguay, they disappeared people’s lives” (qtd. in Weschler 1990: 162). This permanent psychological damage was a deliberate, institutional feature of the prison system: Libertad, Punta de Rieles, and their associated institutions were methodically designed to demolish the mental, emotional, and moral integrity of their inmate population. Furthermore, they were so designed by psychologists working closely with the military. “The war continued inside the prison,” Dr. Martín Gutiérrez, Libertad’s first psychiatrist and a subsequent advisor to the ruling junta, recently explained [. . .] “Day after day, rule after rule – all was part of a grand design to make them suffer psychologically.” (131) This phenomenon is echoed in the play, as the Actor endures long-term imprisonment, coupled with psychological abuse from the Interrogator, such as being left for days or even weeks in a dark cell with the dead body of one of his company (Varela 1991: 50). While in Hamlet the second half of the action moves fairly quickly, here we are given the impression that events stretch out, in an almost suspended, unending cycle of abuse; as the Actor says, “Es imposible medir el tiempo,” “Creo que hace meses que no sale de aquí” [It’s impossible to measure the time, I think that it’s been months since you last left here] (33, 65). The scenes of his interrogations are coupled with scenes of his wife protesting in public and calling for the return of her husband, like so many mothers and wives of the disappeared and imprisoned throughout South America. The play therefore reuses Hamlet’s own strategy of showing the audience something like their society’s own crimes to provoke a reaction: the play’s the thing in which he’ll catch the conscience of the regime. Varela’s adaptation has its metatheatrical roots in Hamlet’s own adaptation of his uncle’s crime for the stage: Hamlet has the actors adapt a play they already know to more closely

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resemble the murder of his father, just as Varela does here with Shakespeare.2 Varela builds on this theme by constantly repeating the play-within-a-play: the Interrogator has the Actor re-enact it for him over and over, hoping to find some new insight into what has happened to his world, while outside the jail the Actor’s Wife performs it again and again, in order to reveal the King’s crime to society at large. Through these metatheatrical repetitions, the play establishes performance as an embodiment of societal memory and a means of understanding and processing traumatic events. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is particularly well suited to the task of discussing and affirming the importance of memory. As María Bonilla points out, “[El i]nicio y final del Hamlet están vinculados por un mandato de memoria, de no olvido” [The beginning and end of Hamlet are linked by a command of memory, of not forgetting], as first the Ghost instructs Hamlet to “remember me” and finally the dying Hamlet enjoins Horatio to remember and “tell my story” (Bonilla 2000: 11; Shakespeare 2001: I.v.91, V.ii.334). The key difference in these moments is the intention behind them: for the Ghost, memory is tied to revenge and Hamlet must give up his own life for the sake of his father’s memory, but Hamlet’s plea to Horatio is to remember through storytelling, a wish which breaks the cycle of violence and creates the possibility of a way forward for the (albeit few) remaining characters. The true guardians of memory, however, are not the princes and kings of Shakespeare’s tale; on the contrary, la memoria aparece guardada en aquellos que no hacen la historia (guardias, cómicos, sepultureros y demás ciudadanos del reino) pero que son igualmente víctimas de los acontecimientos. Ellos reconocen claramente los signos de la descomposición, de lo que vendrá, aunque aún no se sepa qué es. [memory is shown as preserved by those who do not make history (guards, clowns, gravediggers, and other citizens of the kingdom) but who are equally victims of these events. They recognise clearly the signs of decomposition, of what is coming, even if they don’t know what that is yet.] (Bonilla 2000: 11) In Varela’s adaptation of the play, it is these characters who come to the forefront, becoming the focus of the discussion of historical and traumatic memory, through the medium of theatrical performance. This function of theatre becomes particularly explicit in the ending scenes. Throughout the play, the Actor has struggled to maintain a sense of hope and artistic identity in the face of all that has happened to him. He admits to the Interrogator on several occasions, “Ya no puedo inventar más,” “No puedo actuar, estoy agotado” [I can’t invent anything else, I can’t act, I’m worn out] (Varela 1991: 44, 59). Yet despite this feeling, he hangs on to the belief that theatre and art matter. As the government falls, the Actor recounts a dream that he had: Hoy soñé que una mujer vestida de negra se acercaba a mí y extendía su mano . . . yo la seguía . . . y de pronto llegaba junto a otras mujeres que

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lloraban. Ellas habían perdido a sus esposos, a sus hijos, a sus amigos. Ellas dijeron que toda Dinamarka [sic] sentía su dolor . . . y que el mismo cielo se oscurecía para no ver tanta injusticia. Ellas lloraban . . . y yo sentía que volvía a tener fuerzas. [Today I dreamt that a woman dressed in black came up to me and held out her hand . . . I followed her . . . and suddenly I was arriving next to other women who were crying. They had lost their husbands, their children, their friends. They said that all of Denmark felt their pain . . . and that the sky itself was going dark so as not to see so much injustice. They cried . . . and I felt myself grow strong again.] (70) When given the chance to leave in the end, he declares: “Voy a volver a actuar afuera. [. . .] Voy a salir y voy a gritar con todas mis fuerzas. Quiero que todos me escuchen. Quiero que todos sepan que Equión va a armar de nuevo su teatro” [I’m going to go back to acting out there. [. . .] I’m going to leave and I’m going to shout with all my might. I want everyone to hear me. I want everyone to know that Echion is starting his theatre up again] (74). Instead of despairing, he finds both the voice that was taken from him in prison and a new purpose in art’s function as living memory. The Interrogator, on the other hand, has been left behind by a world in which he no longer has a purpose and is too afraid to leave the prison. As he gradually loses first his boss, Polonius, who was like a second father to him, and then all sense of stability, he tries to cling to his job: “Yo no puedo dejar de buscar, de interrogar” [I can’t stop looking, or interrogating] (68). In the final moments of the play, he too recounts a dream: Tengo miedo de salir, ¿comprende? Anoche tuve un sueño. Un pedazo del rey Claudio venía hacia mí . . . flotando. Alguien había destrozado su cuerpo. Un hombre joven. Alguien con las mismas ganas de Hamlet, alguien que pedía justicia como Hamlet. La armadura mutilada cruzó dos veces por mi guardia. Yo estaba allí, como un soldado, vigilando la entrada de un castillo que ya no tenía dueño. La armadura flotaba en la noche y salpicaba de sangre mi cara. Yo quería irme, pero seguía allí, esperando órdenes que no llegaban. Entonces apareció un nuevo rey y avanzó para darme una orden pero de su boca no salió ningún sonido. Me quedé allí, esperando, como un soldado, esperando. Empecé a preguntarme qué hacer, para qué seguir allí días y noches esperando órdenes que no llegaban. Días y noches . . . Entonces supe que esto no puede tener fin. [I’m afraid of leaving, do you understand? Last night I had a dream. A piece of King Claudius came towards me . . . floating. Someone had destroyed his body. A young man. Someone with the same desires as Hamlet, someone who called for justice like Hamlet. This mutilated figure crossed by my post twice. I was there, like a soldier, guarding the entrance to a castle that didn’t have an owner anymore. The figure floated in the night

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and splashed my face with blood. I wanted to leave, but I remained there, waiting for orders that never came. Then a new king appeared and came forward to give me an order, but no sound came out of his mouth. I stayed there, waiting, like a soldier, waiting. I started to wonder what to do, why remain there day and night waiting for orders that didn’t come. Days and nights . . . Then I realized that this couldn’t have an end.] (74–75) His participation in repressive government and refusal to consider the humanity of others have now left him directionless and lost. As he stays in the cell, paralysed by his fear, the Actor runs out and is heard shouting: “Oigan todos: ¡aquí está Equiooon! ¡Aquí está Equioooon!” [Listen everyone: Echiooon is here! Echioooon is here!] (75). The message is both clear and hopeful: art is a path forward that will restore those who embrace it, while those who have embraced death, suspicion, and pain will lose their place in the world. Bosco Brasil’s New Directives in Times of Peace comes to a similar conclusion, though by a different adaptive process.3 While the events of Interrogation are situated in the same world as Hamlet but branch off in a new direction, the Brazilian play connects both to another historical context via analogy and to Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream through intertextual references and parallel themes and characterisation. The play is set at the end of an earlier dictatorship, Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo, but was written in 2001, as the country continued to deal with the aftereffects of the military regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Here, the purpose of adaptation is not to avoid government censorship, as censorship had at this point been lifted; nevertheless, many still did not wish to discuss the recent past. The play thus speaks to members of society who are more willing to confront a more distant past than their own, while still drawing clear parallels between that past and the present. Unlike Uruguay, Brazil has a long history of governmental instability and military intervention in politics. Getúlio Vargas came to power with military assistance in 1930, formally overturning the constitution and establishing a dictatorial regime (the Estado Novo or New State) in 1937. Vargas was removed from power by the military in 1945, followed by democratic elections in 1946. He was then elected democratically in 1950, and committed suicide hours before another intended coup would have removed him from office in 1954. After another decade of progressively more and more leftist democratic leaders, the military took power completely in 1964, maintaining repressive control of the nation for the next two decades. While there are obvious differences between these two eras – unlike the later regime, Vargas was a civilian; he supported economic nationalism and was wary of US involvement; and his populist rhetoric made him extremely popular among the working classes and earned him the nickname “Father of the Poor,” which in turn made the later military dictatorship avoid mention of him and even revile him4 – there are also significant points of commonality. In both cases, the military directly or indirectly took control in times of economic upheaval, forming governments that

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emphasised centralisation and industrialisation through authoritarian nationalism. National discourse was characterised by censorship and the rhetoric of imposition of power “for the public good.” Together with the demonisation and brutal suppression of leftist movements and anyone connected to them, there was also a premium placed on Catholic conservatism and the so-called traditional values of family, order, and discipline. Despite Vargas’s rhetoric of inclusion, both governments were socially conservative and were characterised by extreme economic inequality. Furthermore, during both eras economic policy did nothing to ease and much to exacerbate this inequality. The final phase of the later dictatorship, a phase known as the abertura (or opening), was modelled on Vargas’s Estado Novo, since military leaders felt it represented a more internationally acceptable form and style of societal control. The president elected in 1985, Tancredo Neves, had even played a role in aiding the post-Vargas transition to democracy, though he died before taking power (Levine 1999; Dávila 2006). Instead of focusing on the controversial figure of Vargas himself, New Directives links the two periods through the depiction of institutionalised state violence and repression. The acts of torture that became institutionalised terror practices under the military dictatorship had their roots in the Estado Novo’s secret police (Smallman 2000: 119). After the fall of the Estado Novo, the military adopted these tactics to weed out internal rebellion, which then “became a bridge to the general use of terror against society” during the military regime (117). Indeed, without context, it would be impossible to identify which of the two periods descriptions such as the following refer to: In my brother’s presence they beat my sister-in-law’s naked body till she fainted. They burned my brother with lighted cigarettes till he had two hundred burns. He was hit on the head till he lost consciousness and then was given an injection in the arm which revived him and the torturers began again. Another torture consisted in choking him, six times in the course of the night. Furthermore, both of them were tortured with electric shocks, and one of his wife’s ears was badly burnt. (qtd. in Smallman 1999: 16) While this description in fact pertains to the aftermath of a Communist rebellion in 1935, the tactics employed echo through the pages of Brasil: Nunca Mais (published in English as Torture in Brazil), a detailed account of the “pervasive use of torture by Brazilian military governments [from] 1964–1979,” based on the military’s own records (Dassin 1986: Title page). So when, in the play, Segismundo describes the acts of torture that he performed as a member of the secret police – burning prisoners’ bodies with cigarettes, administering pepper enemas, beating them and burning their genitals (Brasil 2007: 91–92) – these descriptions are equally, if not more, evocative of the military dictatorship as they are of the Estado Novo. By adapting this older history, the play comments on repression not as a characteristic of a single period, but as a long-standing institutionalised

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practice in Brazil, a part of the country’s history and political culture that must be confronted. With its link to European immigration from World War II, the Vargas era also provides the playwright the opportunity to link Brazil with Calderón de la Barca’s Poland, opening up the connections to Life Is a Dream. These connections are not meant to obscure the play’s intent, but rather to allow it to comment on the role of theatre in society. Although the play does not explicitly announce itself as an adaptation of Life Is a Dream, the intertextual links are obvious from the beginning, as one of the two characters is named Segismundo and the other comes from Poland, the setting of the Calderón comedia. Segismundo’s connections to his namesake are slowly revealed: he too is of unknown parentage, growing up a brute who mistreats others. Now he has also been abandoned: with the transition to democracy, his padrinho has informed him that his services will no longer be required: “Eu sei que ninguém quer saber de mim. Eu fiz o que eles mandaram e eles querem esquecer que mandaram fazer o que eu fiz” [I know that no one wants to know anything about me. I did what they ordered and they want to forget that they ordered me to do what I did] (Brasil 2007: 97). Yet, like his namesake, he too may be redeemed. This Segismundo is situated at the beginning of his journey to redemption, but, like Calderón’s Segismundo in his opening encounter with Rosaura, his heart is finally touched. Just as the Golden Age character “must go from the lowest form of human life, the equivalent of the cave man, to the highest – the human being who learns to be civilized” (Honig 1970: xxiii), the Brazilian Segismundo begins as the lowest of the low, a man who simply obeys brutal orders “[s]em pestanejar. Sem nem cobrir o rosto” [[w]ithout blinking. Without even covering my face] (Brasil 2007: 98). Yet now the terms of his life have changed: in his last phone call with his padrinho, the boss tries to erase their entire past: “Eu perguntei se era uma ordem. E ele respondeu que eu podia tomar o que disse como eu bem entendesse. Ele nunca tinha me dado uma ordem na vida, foi a última coisa que falou antes de desligar o telefone” [I asked him if that was an order. And he responded that I could take what he said however I wanted to. He had never given me an order in my life, that was the last thing that he said before hanging up the telephone] (99). This loss of his past, of his previous understanding of his place in the world, parallels the destabilising effect of Segismundo’s encounter with Rosaura and prepares him to connect with that character’s existential despair. As Clausewitz recites the speech, claiming it as the last words of a dying Nazi prisoner, Segismundo’s tears and recognition of himself in the prisoner longing for freedom are simultaneously a metatheatrical recognition of himself as the Calderonian character whom Clausewitz is in fact quoting. The fusion of these two stories is cemented in the final moments of the play, as, at Segismundo’s request, Clausewitz narrates the events leading up to that opening speech in Calderón’s tale. The audience is thus left with the hope that he will follow the same path as Calderón’s Segismundo did: rediscovering his humanity and learning to treat others with compassion and mercy.

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Clausewitz has found this hope as well, restoring his faith in the theatre. Earlier he has remarked that he was on stage when the Nazis crossed the border into Poland, and, as an artist, he didn’t know what to do: “Porque era a única coisa que eu podia fazer: estar presente. E guardar na memória. [. . .] Eu não vivi. Eu coleccionei lembranças. [. . .] Eu cometi um crime monstruoso. Eu estive presente. E não fiz nada. Eu sobrevivi” [Because it was the only thing I could do: be present. And remember. [. . .] I didn’t live. I collected memories. [. . .] I committed a monstrous crime. I was present. And I didn’t do anything. I survived] (95–97). Since art could not save Europe from the ravages of the Nazi regime, he has rejected his former way of life and resolved to work the land instead: “Eu decidi ser agricultor. Eu não quero mais saber do Teatro. O senhor acha que tem lugar para o Teatro no mundo, depois desta Guerra?” [I decided to be a farmer. I don’t want anything more to do with the Theatre. Do you think that there is a place for Theatre in the world, after this War?] (85). His survivor’s guilt made him lose all faith in art’s ability to respond to crimes against humanity, but seeing Segismundo, a confessed and brutal torturer, cry upon hearing a 400-year-old soliloquy makes him rethink his choice: Eu receitei esse monólogo todas as noites durante um ano . . . [. . .] Eu me lembro dos alemães cruzando a fronteira do meu país. Mas me lembro também da primeira vez em que li um autor espanhol. [. . . E] eu ganhei a aposta. O senhor chorou. Olhe aqui o salvo-conduto manchado com as suas lágrimas. [. . .] Foi o Teatro. [. . .] Para o senhor eu não provei nada. Eu provei para mim mesmo. [. . . E]u sou ator. Esta é a minha profissão. Eu ainda não sei para que serve o Teatro no mundo depois da Guerra. Só sei que eu tenho que continuar a fazer o que eu sei fazer. Um dia alguém vai saber para que serve. Se serve. Para mim me basta fazer. Fazer teatro. [I recited that monologue every night for a year . . . [. . .] I remember the Germans crossing the border into my country. But I also remember the first time I read a Spanish author. [. . . And] I won the bet. You cried. Look here at my pass, stained with your tears. [. . .] It was Theatre. [. . .] I haven’t proved anything to you. But I proved something to myself. [. . .] I’m an actor. This is my profession. I still don’t know what good Theatre does in the world after such a War. I just know that I have to keep doing what I know how to do. Someday someone will know what good it does. If it does any. For me it’s enough to do it. To do theatre.] (104–105) While theatre may not have been able to prevent the atrocities of war, New Directives shows that it still can speak to the humanity in each person, even when that seems to have been lost. Both plays thereby affirm that art is worth doing, even in the face of brutality and repression. These adaptations, as Julie Sanders explains, are “less about echoes, repetitions, or rephrasings, however fundamental these are in practice, than about the identification of shared codes and possibilities. The discovery of

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these codes enables acts of endless (re)creativity in new contexts” (2006: 154). The very possibility of invoking common knowledge of two 400-year-old plays is itself a testimony to the enduring power of theatre and its place as an embodiment of memory and understanding. The link between memory and the spoken or performed word is explicitly stated by Varela’s Interrogator: “Las letras se borran . . . y el mundo pierde sus colores, pero la memoria sigue activa. Oye nombres y no los olvida; escucha informes nuevos y los registra” [Letters fade . . . and the world loses its colors, but memory remains active. It hears names and doesn’t forget them; it listens to new reports and registers them] (1991: 68). Theatre can still speak to a traumatised society, helping them process the events of the past and move forward without forgetting.

Notes 1 All translations of quotations are my own. 2 Even the name of Hamlet’s play would have had a certain resonance in Uruguayan dictatorial society: “the mousetrap” was the term used for a police technique in which they would raid a house and then leave, but a group would stay behind to watch the house all night, “por si algunas de las personas buscadas volvían a la casa a horas inesperadas” [in case some of the wanted people returned home at unexpected times] (Walker 2007: 30). 3 Although the play was not written until 2001 and premiered in 2002, Bosco Brasil confirms that the idea first occurred to him in 1986, during the early days of democracy in Brazil (2007: 72). 4 The military regime of 1964–1985 did not emphasise their similarities to Vargas, possibly because the ousted leftist president Goulart shared a similar populist style and appeal to the working classes (Levine 1999: 127). “By 1964, the military thought little of Vargas, choosing to remember him not for the tight partnership he shared with the armed forces between 1930 and 1945, but for his populism of 1951 through 1954, years in which he governed on the promise of expanded economic and political rights for workers” (Dávila 2006: 262).

References Bonilla, M. (2000): “II. Hamlet o la tragedia de la memoria”, Cuadernos de Trazos 1. Ofelia: 10–15. Brasil, B. (2007): Cheiro de chuva; Novas diretrizes em tempos de paz. São Paulo: Aliança Francesa, Consulado Geral de França em São Paulo, Imprenta Oficial do Estado de São Paulo. Buchanan, M. A. (1908): “Segismundo’s Soliloquy on Liberty in Calderón’s La vida es sueño,” PMLA 23.2: 240–253. Caetano, G. and J. Rilla (1987): Breve historia de la dictadura. Montevideo: CLEAH, Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Calderón de la Barca, P. (2000): La vida es sueño. El gran teatro del mundo. Barcelona: Ediciones Folio. Dassin, J. (ed.) (1986): Torture in Brazil: A Report by the Archdiocese of São Paulo, J. Wright (trans.). New York: Vintage Books. Dávila, J. (2006): “Myth and Memory: Getúlio Vargas’s Long Shadow over Brazilian History”, in Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives, J. R. Hentschke (ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 257–282.

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Fischlin, D. and M. Fortier (2000): “General Introduction”, in Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. D. Fischlin and M. Fortier (eds.). New York: Routledge, 1–22. Foster, M. E. (1998): “The Sources”, in The Play Behind the Play: Hamlet and Quarto One, A. Shiras (ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1–21. Frega, A., et al. (2008): Historia del Uruguay en el siglo XX (1890–2005). 2nd ed. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Honig, E. (1970): “The Magnanimous Prince: Life is a Dream”, in Life Is a Dream, P. Calderón de la Barca, E. Honig (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang, xvii–xxxv. Hutcheon, L. (2006): A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge. Jones, H. G. (1979): “Dos fuentes del primer soliloquio de Segismundo”, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 28.1: 129–136. Levine, R. M. (1999): The History of Brazil. The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Mirza, R. (1992): “El naturalismo y sus transgresiones”, in Teatro uruguayo contemporáneo: antología, R. Mirza (ed.). Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 11–64. Sanders, J. (2006): Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Routledge. Servicio Paz y Justicia, U. (1992): Uruguay Nunca Más: Human Rights Violations, 1972–1985, E. Hampsten (trans.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Shakespeare, W. (2001): “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Ann Arbor, MI: State Street Press, 1071–1112. Smallman, S. C. (1999): “Military Terror and Silence in Brazil, 1910–1945”, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes 24.47: 5–27. ——— (2000): “The Professionalization of Military Terror in Brazil, 1945–1964”, LusoBrazilian Review 37.1: 117–128. Varela, C. M. (1991): Interrogatorio en Elsinore (Después de la Ratonera). Montevideo: Instituto Nacional del Libro. Walker, B. (2007): Benedetti, Rosencof, Varela: El teatro como guardián de la memoria colectiva. Buenos Aires: Corregidor. Weinstein, M. (1975): Uruguay: The Politics of Failure. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Weschler, L. (1990): A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers. New York: Pantheon Books.

13 Complicitous acts in Argentina’s theatre La nona and De a uno Ariel Strichartz

In the immediate wake of Argentina’s most recent military dictatorship (1976– 1983), the newly restored democratic government under the leadership of elected president Raúl Alfonsín sought to punish those members of the military responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and assassination – the disappearance – of an estimated 9,0001 individuals deemed as “subversives” by the military regime.2 Against this backdrop of the Trial of the Generals, the nation as a whole interrogated its role in such state-sponsored violence: What was the responsibility of those Argentines who had refused to believe that the disappearances were actually occurring? By having ignored the violence, were they somehow complicit with it? Argentine theatre practitioners, as well, took up this national preoccupation with the issue of individual and collective culpability (Graham-Jones 2000: 125). Aída Bortnik’s3 play De a uno (One by One, first staged in 1983),4 for example, implicates those citizens who, in attempting to seclude themselves within the supposed safety of the private sphere, actually contributed to the state-sponsored violence they sought to evade. In Bortnik’s work, family members obstinately focus on the Sunday meal as they actively participate in the disappearance of relatives, friends, and neighbours by shoving them under the kitchen table – a space representing the public sphere – or turning a blind eye while someone else commits a similar act. Given the political context in which Bortnik’s play was written and first staged, the overt treatment of state-sponsored violence and of the issue of complicity is not surprising. Nevertheless, six years before the political opening in which De a uno premiered, Roberto Cossa’s5 La nona (The Grandmother, first staged in 1977)6 also employed the framing device of the middle-class family to explore political violence and the question of culpability. La nona portrays the destruction of the Spadone family as a result of the insatiable appetite of the family’s centenarian grandmother. Although family members undertake a series of frenzied strategies to feed their gluttonous matriarch, ultimately their inability to attribute their problems to her or to actively bring about her destruction causes their own annihilation or self-exile. The two plays in question therefore bookend the Proceso: Cossa’s work appearing on stage one year into the dictatorship and Bortnik’s work emerging at the regime’s end. While both plays take up the issue of acquiescence, the

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difference in their treatment of dramatic space is key for understanding how each play confronted Argentine spectators with the question of responsibility at the time of its premiere. In La nona, the protagonists attempt to alternately contain or displace the grandmother in their efforts to isolate her from the private sphere. This evasion of responsibility is initially possible, given that the spaces to which they attempt to relegate their matriarch – and which remain off stage and therefore invisible to the work’s spectators – appear to be separate from the domestic sphere. The passivity of the family when faced with violence and the off-stage representation of the public sphere are logical given the repressive context in which La nona was first staged. Unlike the indirect treatment of political violence and complicity in La nona, in De a uno, these same themes take centre stage: the public sphere is represented by the space under the kitchen table located in the middle of the stage. In their attempt to blind and deafen themselves to the violence that is literally right under their noses, the protagonists of Bortnik’s play contribute directly to the disappearance or exile of others. By positioning this dynamic within the public’s view, De a uno challenges the spectators to witness not only the violence that the play’s protagonists willfully ignore, but also the sinister consequences of such denial. The central position of the public sphere, on the stage and in the play’s project, manifests the political aperture that marked the context of the work’s creation. In 1976, responding to surging inflation and increasing violence between the government and guerilla units, Argentina’s army abducted President Isabel Perón and took over the government, instituting its so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization). While the regime set about creating a free-market economy, it simultaneously implemented a systematic and brutal campaign of repression. Rather than risk converting its victims into heroes and martyrs through public executions, the military engaged in what Marcelo Suárez-Orozco calls “the war by vanishment” (483). The modus operandi of the armed forces followed a pattern of kidnapping-disappearance-torture. The majority of victims (62%) were apprehended in their own homes during the night. Armed commandos or death squads known as patotas would surround the block and enter by force. The victim was beaten and sometimes tortured at that very site, then hooded and dragged into a waiting vehicle to be taken to a clandestine detention centre (Centro Clandestino de Detención – CCD), from which he or she rarely emerged alive (Nunca Más 8). Both La nona and De a uno stage their dramatic action in the domestic kitchen, in these plays synecdoche for the private sphere. By drawing on the framing device of the home, the plays in question recall the conflation of the public and private spheres during the dictatorship. The regime’s discursive practices defined the family as the principal site of moral education and, as such, a key bulwark in the fight against subversion (Filc 34–35). Yet while the government’s discourse considered the family the only safe place for the formation of “true” Argentines – that is, those who upheld the junta’s ideology – the regime’s self-proclaimed role as moral arbiter laid the domestic sphere open to militarisation, thereby resulting in the complete collapse of the public and private domains (Filc: 38–39, 46–47; Taylor: 102).

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In its performative aspect, theatre is uniquely positioned to play out such spatial relationships and, in so doing, to reveal the discrepancy between the dictatorship’s discursive claims and its actions. As Michael Issacharoff explains, the visual and three-dimensional nature of theatre necessarily implies a multi-layered use of space. Theatrical space actually consists of three distinct components: theatre space, scenography, and dramatic space. Both theatre space (as architectural design) and scenography (stage and set design) can be relatively fixed in meaning. Dramatic space, however, is elusive and dynamic because it is mediated by and represented through various elements, including language (both dialogue and stage directions), gesture, and props. Given that this treatment of space as a semiotic system varies according to playscript, dramatic space is never univocal (55–57). Issacharoff further divides dramatic space into mimetic and diegetic space. While the former is represented onstage and remains visible to the audience (primarily through sight but sometimes additionally through dialogue), the latter remains offstage and as such is purely verbal (58). Far from being independent, mimetic and diegetic space interact dynamically to produce meaning and dramatic tension in a given work. When mimetic space is fixed by the use of a single set, the diegetic tends to be manifold, representing several spaces at once. Conversely, a more varied use of mimetic space tends to be accompanied by a more restricted use of the diegetic (66). In addition to this visual interplay between the mimetic and diegetic, auditory elements may also contribute to dramatic tension. For example, offstage sounds may be used to represent diegetic space. The very fact that these sounds are audible to the public, however, in effect transforms the invisible (that is, the space they represent that the public cannot see), into the visible (61). La nona and De a uno manipulate dramatic space in order to comment on the complex relationship between the public and private spheres during the Proceso. Contemporary social theorists have explored space and spatial organisation as expressions of abstract social relations, investigating the way in which physical and geographical markers shape positions in society such as identity, community and borders. Michael Keith and Steve Pile use the term “spatiality” to describe this relationship between the spatial and the social. In the place of traditional notions of private vs. public, Keith and Pile argue that “simultaneously present in any landscape are multiple enunciations of distinct forms of space” (6). Indeed, the multitude of existing and often irreconcilable understandings of space indicates the elusive nature of space and spatial relationships suggested by La nona and De a uno. While theorists including Keith and Pile emphasise the unfixed nature of any given space, nearly all acknowledge the extent to which our daily lives are organised around the concept of irreducible and strictly delineated sites. Michel Foucault elaborates on the series of seemingly dichotomous and inseparable values that permeate many modern societies: And perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared

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to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. (23) The plays examined in this chapter challenge this entrenched separation of public and private, representing instead a dynamic interplay between the two spheres and thereby leveling criticism both at the dictatorship’s militarisation of the domestic domain and at those citizens who dared not question the regime’s actions. For Foucault, this insistent division between spaces in modern secular society has its source in the deep-rooted concept of the sacred. In his analysis of the individual spaces delineated by society, Foucault conceives of spatial organisation in terms of units called sites, which he defines as “relations of proximity between points or elements” (23). Thus, rather than privilege a hierarchical model for the organisation of bodies fixed in space, modern society concerns itself more with sites, which are only transitory combinations of various points in the trajectory of moving bodies. Foucault goes on to describe two particular types of sites, or organisations of points in space, pervasive in modern societies. While utopias are a perfected or inverted representation of society, and are therefore unreal to the extent that they have no real place in society, heterotopias exist as real places. Foucault further divides heterotopias into two subcategories. Crisis heterotopias are privileged, sacred or forbidden places set aside for individuals considered in crisis, such as menstruating or pregnant women (24). These sacred spaces, however, are slowly being eclipsed by heterotopias of deviation, such as rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons (25). Foucault’s concepts of heterotopia are particularly useful when analysing the treatment of social space during the dictatorship, as well as the treatment of dramatic space in the plays in question. Heterotopias of deviation multiplied in Argentine society under the Proceso in the form of CCDs, where the victims of kidnappings were literally made to disappear. Yet given that the ideology behind the Proceso was one of curing the ailing country and cleansing it of all subversive elements, the CCDs resemble as well heterotopias of crisis. In the dictatorship’s ideology of cleaning up diseased elements, the CCDs could even be described as those heterotopias “entirely consecrated to these activities of purification” (Foucault 26). The desperate attempts by the protagonists of La nona to rid themselves of their grandmother and her destructive appetite by either enclosing her in her room or displacing her onto society echo the creation of heterotopias of deviation elaborated by Foucault. As Cossa’s work demonstrates, however, the violence incarnated in La nona is perpetuated in the space of the family kitchen, making it impossible to isolate the domestic realm as a sacred and uncontaminated sphere. In this way, La nona turns its gaze on those who, in feeding the violence, bring about their own destruction or disappearance.

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The protagonists of La nona comprise a family spanning four generations, including the grandmother (La nona), her daughter (Anyula), the latter’s nephews (Carmelo and Chicho) and Carmelo’s wife (María) and daughter (Marta). Within each of the two acts of the work, the dramatic action is presented in a linear fashion and is divided into a series of brief scenes, separated by blackouts. Each scene follows the same general sequence of events: the conception of a plan for displacing La nona, the execution of the plan, and finally its failure (Pérez: 60–63). The succession of increasingly shorter scenes and the growing desperation of the family with La nona’s appetite create a sense of growing momentum toward inescapable ruin. While the first act, which represents the frustrated attempts of the family to rid themselves of La nona, is generally comic in tone, the second act is characterised by a darker humour, as the initial refusal to deal proactively with the matriarch’s voracious appetite results in the death or exile of the rest of the family. In La nona, Cossa draws on the grotesco criollo, an autochthonous theatrical form thematically focused on the tragic grief and disappointment of Argentina’s immigrant sector. Having arrived in the country in search of success, the protagonists of these works have encountered only failure, corruption, humiliation and familial dissolution, usually caused by financial difficulties. The grotesque anti-hero is described as part puppet, part human and part beast – an identity that is reinforced by his staggering and clumsy movements. Because the immigrants portrayed are typically of Italian origin, the language of the grotesco criollo is characterised by the use of cocoliche, a mix between Spanish and Italian. Indeed, in La nona the grandmother is painted in grotesque terms, likened to a half-human, half-beast who darts out of her cave-like room only to consume with feverish voracity all that is put in front of her (Pérez 36, 38). Yet Cossa’s work implicates not only the grandmother, but also the other family members who initially evade the responsibility of destroying her. The family first takes her for a physical examination, hoping that her health will fail imminently and they will be relieved of taking any decisive action. Unfortunately, the doctor reports that she is in perfect condition and the Spadones can look forward to having a grandmother for many years to come. They subsequently marry her off to Francisco, the 80-year-old owner of a local kiosk, who is under the false impression that he will inherit valuable land in Italy when she dies. La nona, however, consumes all his merchandise and remains fit as ever while Francisco suffers a debilitating stroke as a result. Both of them return to the Spadone household, thereby adding to the already burdensome task of feeding the family. Following this failed attempt to marry off the grandmother, all the family members take on odd jobs. Even don Francisco is stationed at busy street corners to collect donations, until he mysteriously disappears, probably to be exploited by another family. Finally, the Spadones attempt to kill La nona, first by asphyxiation and then by poisoning. Just as the members of the Spadone family are reluctant to admit that La nona is the source of their financial difficulties, certain sectors of Argentine society refused to believe the extent of the atrocities committed under the dictatorship.

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Scholars such as Juan Carlos Kusnetzoff and Juan Corradi have cited this denial of evidence of abject practices as one of the key modes of adaptation to fear in civil society. In Cossa’s work, the family’s efforts to displace La nona – and the responsibility for her destruction of everything around her – recalls the “passion for ignorance” described by Corradi (119). Even when they wish for La nona’s destruction, however, the family members are unwilling to bring it about actively. They set up a possible “accident” (her asphyxiation or poisoning), then leave the room and hope that the problem will be solved when they return. This ineffectiveness has its origins in their blind respect for the abstract idea of family, and particularly for the importance of the grandmother as the trunk of the family tree.7 When Chico suggests that they send La nona to the street to work as a prostitute, Carmelo becomes inflamed and retorts that the family has always been decent. The fact that Carmelo and María’s daughter Marta is contributing to the family income precisely by working as a call girl, however, reveals the illusory nature of this decency. Even when Marta begins to serve her clients in her bedroom, emerging exhausted and ill in her bathrobe only to meet her basic biological needs, her parents prefer to believe that she is a well sought-after manicurist. For the Spadone family, the space outside the house signifies economic hope, specifically the opportunity to unburden themselves of the financial strain represented by La nona. Rather than examining themselves as the possible cause of their own destruction, they repeatedly try to displace the responsibility outward, into the diegetic realm, whether onto the physician, don Francisco, or society at large. The root of their suffering, however, lies not only within their home, but in themselves and their adherence to false values such as extreme individualism (Chicho),8 happiness and self-realisation based on material wealth (Carmelo), and blind obedience to an idealised concept of family, even at the cost of the individuals in this social nucleus. The corruption and very blindness of the protagonists is what has given birth to the monster that is La nona (Pérez 65; González Álvarez 86). Indeed, although La nona’s demands are endless, and the destruction she leaves in her wake undeniable, she does not directly cause the death of the other protagonists. For instance, Marta’s death is caused by her work as a prostitute and her ensuing illness; Carmelo suffers a fatal heart attack as he prepares to strike la Nona; don Francisco is presumably stolen; Anyula’s demise is brought about by error, as she mistakenly drinks the poison intended for La nona; and Chicho kills himself out of desperation (Pérez 60). In fact, La nona’s power – symbolised by her implacable appetite – grows proportionately with the evasion practiced by the other characters, as they ineffectively scramble to rid themselves of her. While the kitchen and other rooms in the house are made visible to the audience, La nona’s room is merely suggested, thus existing only as diegetic space. This space is described as a cave from which she greedily emerges solely to eat, underscoring her monstrous qualities. In order to control the extent of her damage, family members attempt to confine her as much as possible to her circumscribed space, much like the heterotopias of deviation described by Foucault. In

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the end, however, they succeed in doing so only by bribing her with food. Yet by feeding La nona, the family is actually complicit in her existence. The fact that the cave is separate from the other living quarters indicates not the innocence of the other family members, but rather their desire to hide, deny or displace the corruption that exists amongst them (Previdi Froelich: 137). In fact, the cave’s proximity to the kitchen, where the family gathers and eats, ensures that the destruction incarnated by La nona spills out into this familial space, sucking up everything and everyone in its path. As the work progresses, the effects of this ravage become apparent not only in the protagonists themselves, but in the house, as one by one the appliances and furniture are sold in order to feed La nona. By the play’s end, the familial sanctum represented by the kitchen is empty, devoid even of the falsely reassuring image of the family meal. Despite the violence that permeates the work’s dramatic action, spectators and critics initially interpreted La nona as a metaphor for time, a consumerist economy, or immigration. It was not until 1979, when the regime’s violations of human rights were widely known, that Argentines viewed the figure of the insatiable matriarch as an allegory for the dictatorship devouring its own children (Zayas de Lima, 1992b: 138–139). In addition to analysing the work’s changing reception through interviews and reviews, Perla Zayas de Lima has traced the evolution in the graphic representation of La nona on posters announcing the play’s various productions. Significantly, while the poster for the play’s premiere portrayed the figure of La nona as an innocuous elderly woman, over time her figure became increasingly more sinister. In 1985, following the publication of the CONADEP report, Nunca Más, the poster announcing the staging of the play by Elenco Estable de Santa Rosa portrayed a figure more malevolent than any of its predecessors (Zayas de Lima, 1992a: 203–204). Similar to La nona, De a uno operates as a metaphor (feeding represents abetting violence); however, the allusion to the dictatorship is far more direct in Bortnik’s work. The play’s events unfold in the kitchen during a family meal on “a long Sunday that lasts for eight years” (58). While the eight-year duration of the Proceso is thus compressed into a continuous meal, the public sphere with its political violence is represented by the space under the kitchen table, which is likened to an altar and is tall enough to accommodate standing actors underneath. The family members – parents Daniel and Julia; Julia’s father and brother, Héctor; and children Claudio, Gaby and Pablo – are determined to isolate themselves from the violence that surrounds them, distracting themselves with the ritual of a Sunday meal. Yet one by one, multiple inhabitants of the kitchen are pushed or pulled into the space under the kitchen table. By ignoring the constant reminders of the desaparecidos emanating from under the table, the entire family – and the nation it represents – becomes complicit in the violence they try to eschew. That the dramatic action of De a uno occurs on a Sunday, as well as the initial stage directions indicating the altar-like quality of the kitchen table, helps to establish the concept of the family kitchen as a sanctified space. Daniel and

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Julia repeatedly invoke the quasi-sacredness of Sundays when admonishing their children. For example, Julia warns her daughter not to irritate her on a Sunday: “Put me in a bad mood on Sunday and I swear I’ll kill you, Gaby, eh?” (59).9 In a similar manner, Daniel emphasises the higher expectations he has for his family on a Sunday and reminds his children that a cardinal rule in the family is to behave respectably at the dinner table (61, 63). As the play progresses, it becomes obvious that the morality upheld by Daniel and Julia precludes any involvement in or awareness of the greater political climate surrounding them. For example, Daniel celebrates the act of shaving as a symbol of civilisation: (Standing. At one side of the stage. With a towel as a bib, he shaves, facing the audience) . . . one renews the face upon shaving . . . a symbol of civilization, that’s a shaved face. Hairs bring us closer to animals and distance us from the air, from light, from sensitive contact with life . . . Shaving, every day, is to renew one’s encounter with the heat and the cold of the world and face that encounter like a complete man, like a creature freed from the atavisms of the species. (58)10 Daniel’s references to maintaining contact with the world around him are strikingly ironic given his obsession with blocking out anything not related to the immediate disciplinary problems associated with the family meal. He goes on at length about the virtue of sealing a house, a new invention that hermetically protects the structure and those within it from anything originating in the outer world: And to top it off, you don’t even have to pay for the application, because it’s self-adhesive, and your house is left sealed, completely sealed: it’s guaranteed! Do you know what it means that no door or window lets any dirt, noise, or anything else filter through? Nothing filters through! . . . Don’t tell me that it’s not a sensational invention! In the middle of the city you can be isolated. (68)11 Daniel’s praise for this method of physically blocking out the surrounding world reveals his zeal for remaining isolated from far more serious threats than those posed by dust and noise – namely, the violence taking place in the name of national security. As the play progresses, this effort to remain ignorant of the greater political situation becomes increasingly difficult. At the beginning of the play the family members are able to ignore the subtle movements of the tablecloth and the knocks that emanate from this space, as described in the stage directions regarding Julia as she prepares the family meal: A movement of the tablecloth causes her to stop. She lingers, without ceasing her mixing. Waiting. The movement repeats itself. She adjusts the

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tablecloth and gently kicks it under the table. She waits again. Everything motionless, she continues her task. (59)12 However, the subtle movements under the table grow in intensity throughout the play, and eventually the protagonists themselves are shown disappearing or being pushed into this space representing the public sphere. Jean Graham-Jones explains that each protagonist who is sacrificed represents a different kind of victim of the Proceso: Julia’s brother Héctor is pushed under the table by Daniel when he announces his voluntary exile to Europe; Gaby’s boyfriend José is sent into hiding because his sister, Inés, is disappeared by the military police; Rita, the mother of José and Inés, is pushed under the table by Julia when she seeks the latter’s help in finding her children. The youngest son’s death in the Malvinas/ Falklands War makes him the final victim (2000: 113). Given the protagonists’ active role in the disappearance of others, the moral policy of “taking care of one’s own” practiced by Daniel and Julia can only come to signify an abandonment of those who need them the most, as family members are gradually victimised by the political situation. For example, Julia always prepares a special cake for Héctor when he visits. After his exile to Europe, however, she blocks her memories of him by obstinately focusing on her role as a nurturing mother. PABLO: Who was it who liked Mom’s cake so much? JULIA: You, dear . . . PABLO: No, I mean someone who came to visit, for whom you made it especially . . . JULIA: I always made the cake for you all, dear; have you ever seen your mother more concerned for strangers than for her own family? (68)13 Because Julia is unable to tolerate the political conscience embodied by Héctor, her own brother loses his status as family and becomes a complete stranger whose absence is neither recognised nor mourned. The play’s dramatic structure underscores its thematic reinterpretation of the Sunday meal ritual as a scene of negation and complicity. Within this one-act play, the dramatic action is framed at once by the structure of the eight-year meal and the victimisation of the previously mentioned characters. The first cut establishes the familiar setting of a family meal, as Julia prepares the food, Gaby sets the table, and Daniel and the grandfather prepare to partake of their weekly vermouth. Héctor’s self-exile occurs as the family enjoys the main dish. As Julia clears the table and prepares dessert, José and Inés join the ever-increasing population under the table. During dessert, Rita joins them. As Pablo leaves for the war in the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, Gaby forgets José and follows her mother’s example of distracting herself with cooking and feeding. The victimisation of each of these characters and the passage to the next “course” of the

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meal are marked by a slight rise in volume of a distorted waltz. In the final two cuts, the illusion of a meal is no longer intact as the protagonists turn on one another with resentful accusations for the death of Pablo. Thus, as this family is apparently nourished, in fact it eats away at itself and others until there no longer exists any semblance of tranquil unity. In the society of fear created by the military during the Proceso, Argentina’s citizens chose not to see the violence that surrounded them, just as the protagonists of De a uno remain ignorant of the ever-growing population under the table. Even in 1976 and 1977, at the height of the disappearances, Argentines refused to believe the gravity of the carnage occurring in their own country (Suárez-Orozco: 470). Terrified and paralysed by the military’s show of force, Argentinean citizens became metaphorically blinded and mute; nobody saw anything, nobody knew anything. Kusnetzoff has denominated this phenomenon “percepticide,” or the literal and voluntary death of perception (107). This knowing what not to know in fact constituted a coping mechanism that corresponded to the military’s method of disappearing its victims. The vacuum or emptiness created by the disappearance of a loved one and the need not to know in turn produced a vacuum in the social function of the remaining individuals, manifesting itself in the disintegration of both macro- and micro-groups (Pelento 232). The overarching cruelty of the dictatorship caused a proliferation of what Corradi calls “micro-despotisms” in schools, work places, family settings and public places (119). Suárez-Orozco elaborates: “A massive and unparalleled social centrifugal force was set in motion. People no longer trusted one another, not even close friends. The terror induced silence and, perhaps more importantly, social isolationism and alienation” (483). Thus, while the military appropriated the vocabulary and images associated with the family, the violence it enacted ultimately undermined this sacred unit. The meaning of “private” space, those who inhabit it, and the activity carried out in it were all resemanticised given the atrocities of the dictatorship. The protagonists of De a uno desperately attempt to separate the private and public spheres. For them, the private space of the family kitchen (the mimetic space) can be easily closed off from the surrounding, public sphere (the diegetic space). The fact that this political reality is represented by the space under the table, however, signifies that the public sphere is subsumed within the private. From this central point the black hole under the table exerts both a centrifugal and centripetal force on the kitchen and family. First, it spills out into the surrounding space, contaminating the seemingly benign domestic sphere with its kidnappings. Second, those in the kitchen push others under the table, contributing to the inward pull that sucks up all in its wake. Any attempts to seal off the family unit from the outside are fruitless, as the point of vulnerability lies precisely in the heart of the kitchen. In addition to the dynamic interplay between the ostensibly independent mimetic and diegetic spaces, the auditory elements of the play also underscore the complicated relationship between these two spheres. The stage directions indicate the presence of a “frenetic criollo waltz” that periodically becomes distorted, rising and falling like an animal’s cry, at times distant and muffled, sudden

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and loud, or monotonous and resigned. At times the protagonists should appear to hear the cries and to want to scream in order to smother them, while at others the sounds go unnoticed (57). The other auditory component is composed of the knocks and voices emerging from under the kitchen table. Each protagonist who is pulled or pushed into this space repeats his or her respective line. For Héctor, it is the reminder that “One can’t live without witnesses and without memory”14 for José, the question “Are you really interested in my opinion?”15 for his sister Inés, “It’s lucky that I don’t know anything”;16 and for their mother Rita, “Do you believe that a mother can remain silent?”17 In this way, the voices serve as a constant reminder of the victims of the Proceso. In Issacharoff ’s words, this invisible, auditory space “invades the inner, mimetic space. The invisible thus invades and finally overcomes the visible” (61). Yet, despite the centrifugal action in which the violence of the public sphere permeates the private realm, the remaining protagonists have essentially isolated themselves from others with whom they could seek solidarity. As in La nona, the micro-setting of the family serves to represent the macro-setting of society as a whole, isolated and paralysed as a result of state-sponsored violence. As Corradi notes, “A major problem for social movements of resistance is to move away from defensive to positive action, from the quest for insulated identity to meaningful collective enterprise” (126). Through their strict adherence to an empty discourse on family, the protagonists of De a uno have trapped themselves in the kitchen, which represents anything but a utopian space. The viscous material applied to their house as a form of protection thus serves as a metaphor for fear and ultimately ensures their social alienation rather than their survival. Both La nona and De a uno draw on the space of the kitchen and its related activities to implicate those members of the middle class who opted for omission, silence, and complicity with the discourse and actions of the dictatorship. In both works the supposedly isolated private sphere represented by the family kitchen, long the favoured site in costumbrist and neo-realist theatre, is ultimately characterised by death despite the protagonists’ efforts to displace this destruction onto what they perceive to be an entirely separate, public sphere. In La nona, any efforts by the characters to contain the threat of destruction in La nona’s cave or displace it onto the rest of society fail, as the real threat is posed by their own willful blindness and corruption, and as such originates in the kitchen, which represents the heart of the family. In De a uno, this public sphere is actually subsumed within the intimacy of the family kitchen, both contaminating it and in turn feeding off the denial and passivity of the protagonists. As they stage the violent permeability between the public and private domains, La nona and De a uno confront spectators with the sinister consequences of acquiescence to state-sponsored repression.

Notes 1 The National Commission on the Disappeared (Comisión Nacional Sobre la Desaparición de Personas—CONADEP) established by Alfonsín estimated the number of disappeared at 8,961 based on the number of official accusations lodged against the armed

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forces. However, the Commission recognised that many disappearances went unreported, either because the victim lacked family members, or because these relatives were either too far removed from urban settings to lodge a complaint or too terrified of suffering retaliation at the hands of the death squads (Nunca Más 10; 293). The families of the victims estimate the number of disappeared at 30,000. As David Rock elucidates, even before the 1976 coup “[t]he definition of subversion was broadened and became increasingly capricious, encompassing the mildest protest, whether made by the parties, the press, the universities, the legal profession, or the unions” (363–64). Bortnik (1938–2013), recognised for her work in theatre, film and television, frequently drew on the family as a framing device for examining individual and collective responsibility in Argentina’s history (Graham Jones 1992: 108). She is best known out of Argentina for her work as screenwriter of La historia oficial (The Official Story, dir. Luis Puenzo 1985), in which the protagonist struggles to come to terms with her adopted daughter’s identity as the child of desaparecidos and with her husband’s involvement in the repressive regime responsible for their murder. De a uno premiered as part of the 1983 cycle of Teatro Abierto (Open Theatre), an artistic and political phenomenon in which theatre practitioners (playwrights; directors; actors; technicians; and designers) joined together in defiance of the regime’s censorship and in an effort to demonstrate the vitality of Argentine theatre, staging a series of plays which portrayed the participants’ view of the nation under dictatorship. Other cycles of Teatro Abierto ran in 1981, 1982 and 1985 (Graham Jones 2000: 89–97). A member of the so-called generación del 60, Cossa (b. 1934) has taken up as one of his central themes the social and economic disillusionment of Argentina’s middle class, although his style has evolved over time. While his works from the 1960s belong to the realist/naturalist vein, by 1970 Cossa’s somewhat strict adherence to realism was already giving way to experimentation with epic theatre, theatre of the absurd, and theatre of cruelty, which were being applied to Argentine theatre by playwrights described by some scholars as the neo-vanguardistas (Pérez 52–54). With La nona, Cossa distances himself even further from the realism of his earlier works by drawing on the grotesque and theatre of the absurd, yet still employs the middle-class family as a vehicle for social criticism. La nona, which was first staged at the Teatro Laselle in Buenos Aires in August 1977, enjoyed immediate and overwhelming success: the play ran in different parts of the country for eight years; tickets sold out every night during the first year; and the work was successfully adapted to film—directed by Héctor Olivera—in 1979 (Zayas de Lima, 1992b 138; González Álvarez 73). Since its first appearance, the play has had a constant presence on the Argentine stage and has even inspired a musical comedy that premiered in 2001. Out of Argentina, La nona has been staged in other parts of Latin America, Europe, the United States, Turkey, Armenia, and Israel (González Álvarez 90). Roberto Previdi Froelich sees the figure of La nona as a grotesque inversion of the traditional vision of the grandmother: rather than a benign and gentle presence, the Spadone’s grandmother heralds the family’s imminent destruction (135). As Luis Ordaz has pointed out, the description of La nona’s movements and speech in the play text suggest that the character is asexual (80). Furthermore, although the play’s stage notes do not specify that the grandmother should be played by a man, both Ulises Dumont and Juan Carlos de Seta played the role in the version staged by Carlos Gorostiza, as did Pepe Soriano in the film. Beatriz Trastoy explains that casting a male in the role created a distancing effect that prevented spectators from associating La nona with the positive figure of a grandmother (138). This grotesque representation of the grandmother figure clashes directly with the nostalgic vision invoked by Chicho in his refusal to admit not only La nona’s role in the family’s destitution, but also his responsibility for doing away with her. Significantly, Chicho is a self-proclaimed composer of tangos, none of which he has actually completed;

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in the end, his romanticised vision of the grandmother as the trunk of the family tree is as ineffective as his musical aspirations. As Previdi Froelich explains, while La nona exploits the power of the consenting majority, Chicho’s strategy is based on the interests of a self-serving minority (136). This direct quotation from Bortnik’s play and those that follow are my own translation. The original Spanish quotations appear in note form: “Ponémelo de mal humor un domingo y te juro que te mato Gaby, eh?” (59). “(De pie. A un lado del escenario. Con una toalla como babero se afeita frente al público) . . . se renueva la cara al afeitarse . . . símbolo de civilización, eso es una cara afeitada. Los pelos nos acercan a los animales y nos alejan del aire, de la luz, del contacto sensible con la vida. . . . Afeitarse, cada mañana, es renovar el encuentro con el calor y el frío del mundo y enfrentar ese encuentro como un hombre entero, como una criatura liberada de los atavismos de la especie” (58). “Encima te ahorrás la aplicación, porque es autoadhesivo y te queda la casa sellada, completamente sellada: ¡está garantizado! ¿Vos sabés lo que significa que ninguna puerta y ninguna ventana te deje filtrar la tierra, ni el ruido, ni nada? ¡No se filtra absolutamente nada! . . . ¡No me digas que no es un invento sensacional! En el medio de la ciudad podés estar aislado” (68). “Un movimiento en el mantel la detiene. Se queda sin dejar de batir. Esperando. El movimiento se repite. Acomoda el mantel y lo patea delicadamente debajo de la mesa. Vuelve a esperar. Todo quieto, continúa su andar” (59).

13 PABLO: JULIA: PABLO: JULIA: 14 15 16 17

“¿A quién era que le gustaba tanto el pastel de Mamá? A vos, tesoro . . . No, yo digo a alguien que venía de visita, que vos se lo hacías especialmente . . . Yo siempre hice el pastel para ustedes tesoro, acaso alguna vez viste que tu madre se preocupara más por los extraños que por su familia?” (68)

“No se puede vivir sin testigos y sin memoria.” “¿En serio le interesa mi opinión?” “Es una suerte que no sepa nada.” “¿Vos creés que una madre puede quedarse callada?”

References Bortnik, A. (1986): De a uno, Hispamérica 15.43: 57–72. Corradi, J. (1987): “The Culture of Fear in Civil Society”, in From Military Rule to Liberal Democracy in Argentina, M. P. Ramos and C. H. Waisman (eds.). Westview Special Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean. Boulder: Westview Press, 113–129. Cossa, R. (1989): La Nona, in Teatro 2, R. Cossa. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 67–136. Filc, J. (1997): Entre el parentesco y la política: Familia y dictadura, 1976–1983. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Foucault, M. (1986): “Of Other Spaces”, Diacritics 16.1: 22–27. González Álvarez, J. M. (2012): “(Des)Memoria, biopolítica y relaciones de poder a propósito de La nona de Roberto Cossa”, Latin American Theatre Review 45.2: 73–92. Graham-Jones, J. (1992): “Decir ‘No’: El aporte de Bortnik, Gambaro y Raznovich al Teatro Abierto ’81”, in Teatro argentino durante El Proceso (1976–1983), J. A. Arancibia and Z. Mirkin (eds.). Buenos Aires: Vinciguerra, 181–195. ——— (2000): Exorcising History: Argentine Theatre under Dictatorship. Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press. Issacharoff, M. (1989): Discourse as Performance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Keith, M. and S. Pile (1993): “Introduction Part I: ‘The Politics of Place’”, in Place and the Politics of Identity, M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.). New York: Routledge, 1–21. Kusnetzoff, J. C. (1986): “Renegación, desmentida, desaparición y percepticidio como técnicas psicopáticas de la salvación de la patria”, in Argentina psicoanálisis represión política, O. Abudara (ed.). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Kargieman, 95–114. Nunca más. Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas. Rivadavia: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1984. Ordaz, L. (1992): Aproximación a la trayectoria de la dramaturgia argentina. Ottawa: Girol. Pelento, M. L. and J. B. de Dunayevich (1986): “La desaparición: Su repercusión en el individuo y en la sociedad”, in Argentina psicoanálisis represión política, O. Abudara (ed.). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Kargieman, 229–237. Pérez, I. (ed.) (1986): El grotesco criollo: Discépolo-Cossa. Buenos Aires: Colihue. Previdi Froelich, R. (1992): “América deshecha: El neogrotesco gastronómico y el discurso del fascismo en La nona de Roberto M. Cossa”, in Teatro argentino durante El Proceso (1976–1983), J. A. Arancibia and Z. Mirkin (eds.). Buenos Aires: Vinciguerra, 131–140. Rock, D. (1985): Argentina 1516–1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War. Berkeley: University of California Press. Suárez-Orozco, M. M. (1991): “The Heritage of Enduring a ‘Dirty War’: Psychological Aspects of Terror in Argentina, 1976–1988”, The Journal of Psychohistory 18.4: 469–505. Taylor, D. (1997): Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Durham: Duke University Press. Trastoy, B. (1999): “La inmigración italiana en el teatro de Roberto Cossa”, in Inmigración italiana y teatro argentino, O. Pellettieri (ed.). Buenos Aires: Galerna/Instituto Italiano de Cultura, 137–145. Zayas de Lima, P. (1992a): “Tres metáforas sobre un país dominado”, in Teatro argentino durante El Proceso (1976–1983), J. A. Arancibia and Z. Mirkin (eds.). Buenos Aires: Vinciguerra, 199–209. ——— (1992b): “Variables culturales e ideológicas en la respuesta de la crítica y los espectadores: el caso de La nona: América-Europa (1977–1990)”, in Teatro y teatristas. Estudios sobre teatro iberoamericano y argentino, O. Pellettieri (ed.). Buenos Aires: Galerna, 137–146.

14 Paraguay between dictatorships El Edificio, an unknown play by Josefina Plá1 Yasmina Yousfi López

Paraguay, that “island surrounded by land” (Roa Bastos 1977: 51), has been a territory marked by a series of armed conflicts, which prevented the country from making progress at the same pace as neighbouring countries within the general landscape of Hispanic-American culture. That is why the process of insular misconfiguration during the 20th century, which resulted from a gradual widening of artistic and literary contemporary trends, was complex. The War of the Triple Alliance, from 1864 to 1870, left the country devastated and subject to the demands of the victorious countries, and in the space of only sixty years, Paraguay was embroiled in the Chaco War of 1932–1935, which asseverated its “island” condition. If we add the repressive military dictatorship exercised by General Higinio Morínigo five years later, which removed the democratic traces of José Félix Estigarribia’s government, and the rise to power in 1954 of Alfredo Stroessner, responsible for the longest Latin American dictatorship, we are looking at a territory that allowed for few possibilities of creative development. This history is also responsible for the limited recognition of Paraguayan culture today. General José Félix Estigarribia, governor of Paraguay and leader of the Liberal Party from August 1939, died in an aircraft accident on the 7th of September 1940. In these circumstances, the responsibility of appointing a president so that elections could be held fell on the House of Representatives and the Council of State. However, given that those bodies had not been formed, army High Command obtained consent from the Council of Ministers to appoint the Minister of War and Navy, General Higinio Morínigo, as interim president. The new leader – who did not hold elections until three years after his appointment, instead of complying with the Constitution and holding them shortly thereafter – acted with vehemence. By exercising an anti-liberal strategy, he carried out a redefinition of policy in Paraguay based on, in the first instance, the removal of liberal ministers, whose positions were then occupied by military, and a group of Catholic intellectuals known as “los tiempistas”, who used the near-fascist newspaper, El Tiempo, as their voice. It was the beginning of an authoritarian regime that hounded political parties, trade unions, students, and mass media and which, at an international level, displayed a pro-German stance through its political and financial relations with Axis countries until 1942.

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Paraguay’s cultural revitalisation in the 1940s was promoted by a group of young intellectuals, writers such as Julio Correa, Hérib Campos Cervera, Ezequiel González Alsina, Augusto Roa Bastos and Josefina Plá. This group wanted to bring Paraguayan literature closer to the contemporary trends by moving away from the post-Romantic works that idealised Paraguayan reality and by assimilating new techniques and social themes. The process was, however, slow and complex. Among other control measures, the National Department of Press and Propaganda (DENAPRO) published an order in 1941 that enabled it to monitor public and individual activities by establishing censorship in movie theatres, theatres, press and radio. However, two projects that were started during this decade would constitute a fundamental step for the institutionalisation of theatre in Paraguay. The first project was the creation of the Ateneo Paraguayo Company in 1941, driven by the cultural institution of Ateneo Paraguayo, one of the most important in Paraguay. The new cast was directed by Fernando Oca del Valle, an engineer from Madrid exiled in Paraguay after the Spanish Civil War, who had gained experience as a theatre director during the Spanish Second Republic (Peiró Barco 2002). The second project that strengthened the process of institutionalisation of theatre in the Guarani country was the founding of the Municipal School of Scenic Arts by Josefina Plá and the Paraguayan director Roque Centurión Miranda. Although the gestation of this project came about during the thirties, the unstable political situation and strong cultural repression during Morínigo’s government prevented its start-up. Consequently, the school was not established until after the civil war of 1947. Josefina Plá (Lobos Island, Spain 1903 – Asunción, 1999), who settled in Asunción after the Spanish Civil War, was one of the great reformists of 20-century Paraguayan culture. Plá always maintained an intellectual, solid commitment to her host country, not only through her very prolific literary work, but also through a rigorous effort as a literary historian, theorist and critic. In the previously mentioned theatre school, she worked both as a secretary and History of Theatre teacher from the outset, and there she promoted theatre to be understood as literary and artistic fact, rather than merely a form of entertainment (Plá 1994: 104). However, during the dictatorship of Higinio Morínigo, Ateneo Paraguayo was the only theatre company functioning regularly because the choice of their repertoire was subject to the criteria of DENAPRO. In an unstable social climate and under a tough dictatorial regime, Oca del Valle steered clear of the most critical and innovative theatrical proposals in order to avoid censorship. Therefore, while he was the director of the Ateneo Paraguayo Company, he prioritised “the continuity” of the repertoire, which entailed forgoing the dissemination of a “more modern” theatre. Nevertheless, Oca del Valle occasionally directed works by contemporary Paraguayan authors such as Mario Halley Mora, Ezequiel González Alsina, Roque Centurión Miranda, Augusto Roa Bastos and even Josefina Plá. Plá, as a researcher, highlighted the maturity of the works created by national playwrights, which, by combining local concerns with universal issues, would become strong candidates to consolidate a dramatic

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contemporary Paraguayan literature. However, none of these works directly tackled political issues: De todas las obras extranjeras o nacionales representadas, la única que rozó temas de posguerra, buscando un nivel universal, fue Mientras llega el día de Augusto Roa Bastos en colaboración con Fernando Oca del Valle, estrenada en 1946. Jaime Bestard (1890–1976) en Arévalo, si bien sitúa sus personajes en la época de la guerra del Chaco, pasa por alto los temas de esta y centra su conflicto en lo doméstico y costumbrista. Evaden esta situación también, buscando el plano ético o puramente humanos, La quijotesa rubia y El gran rival, obras de González Alsina, piezas de sobrio y fino diálogo que sugieren una influencia casoniana. Estas obras, en conjunto, marcan sin duda un crescendo en el aspecto estructural, en el buceo psicológico, la agudeza del mensaje, el dinamismo del diálogo; y aunque la fragmentación de incitaciones impide definir corrientes, no cabe duda de que el teatro camina a una mayor jerarquía como hecho literario y como reflejo de la conciencia humana y social. [Among all the performed works, national or foreign, the only one that touched on post-war era topics, striving for universal resonance, was Mientras llega el día by Augusto Roa Bastos in collaboration with Fernando Oca del Valle, which premiered in 1946.2 Even if, in Árevalo, Jaime Bestard (1890–1976) places his characters in the Chaco War period, he ignores the topics related to it and focuses its conflict on domestic and costumbrist affairs. La quijotesa rubia and El gran rival by González Alsina also avoid this situation and only search for the ethical and purely human point of view. They are theatre plays with a sober and elegant dialogue that might have been influenced by Casona’s work. Collectively, these works mark a crescendo on the structural side, the psychological diving, the sharpness of the message, and the dynamism of dialogue. [. . .] there is no doubt that theatre is moving towards a greater hierarchy as literary fact and reflection of human and social awareness.] (Plá 1988: 256–257)

El Edificio (1946), a hidden dystopia As a dramatist, Plá wrote almost thirty works, most of them still unpublished.3 Even though some works dating from her initial creative output were written in collaboration with Roque Centurión Miranda, Plá would display, from the 1940s to the mid-1970s, a broad dramatic production consisting of conventional theatre, brief theatre, children’s theatre, translations, and adaptations for the radio drama. However, state control, the lack of editorial networks and a readers’ market, and the weak development of a national theatre made dissemination of her work difficult. While the editing of some of her works was unusual, the stage was not a very effective means of sharing her theatre either, since Plá would debut her works only thanks to theatre contests, such as the ones promoted by Radio

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Cháritas in Asunción or the Ateneo Paraguayo, or by means of the Municipal School of Dramatic Art as an academic exercise for its students. Four of her most important dramas were created during the dictatorship of Higinio Morínigo. As Jorge Aiguadé, editor of her Teatro escogido (1996), points out, Josefina Plá understood theatre as a means of “debating ideas” (1996: 13), in which the characters “pursue the illustration of a thesis, the evidence of an idea concerning social reality or the answer to some existential but rational question” (1996: 13). Aquí no ha pasado nada (1941), Pater familias (1941) and Fiesta en el río4 (1946), which highlighted the patriarchal society and were a direct attack on tradition and the sociocultural order of the country, did not become known until some years after their creation. Though Aquí no ha pasado nada was published relatively quickly by the National Printing of Asunción in 1945, Fiesta en el río, winner of the IV Theatrical Contest of Radio Cháritas in 1976, was not published until 1977, while Pater familias, which took part in the same contest that year under the name of ¿Adónde irás, Ña Romualda?, was not edited until 1984 in the volume Teatro paraguayo inédito, directed by Francisco Pérez-Maricevich. The fourth play written during Morínigo’s dictatorship, El Edificio (1946), remains unpublished and has never been performed, so it has not yet been critiqued. This work is not as realistic as the previous ones, either from a stylistic point of view, or in terms of its subject matter, suggesting that the author was capable of adopting various aesthetic languages. The play is an Orwellian allegory that reports, with a poetic prose full of symbolism, the destruction of the individual by totalitarian regimes; considering the year in which it was written, 1946, it refers not just to the Paraguayan dictatorship, but also to Europe. Related to Historia de un número (1949), the most well-known among the author’s plays,5 which addresses the issue of the denial of individuality in a mass society in which man is reduced to a number, El Edificio is probably the Paraguayan play that best reveals not only the social and political climate of the forties but, interestingly, also anticipates the repression, censorship, and manipulation that would be exerted from 1954 during yet another dictatorship – that of Alfredo Stroessner.6 El Edificio, “scenic nightmare”7, presents us with a dystopian society whose citizens live under the oppression of a tyrant “Constructor”, who owns a huge building in which those who are revealed as opponents of his absolute regulations are confined. Reduced to numbers, slaves of a totalitarian and strictly rational regime, the citizens wait for their relatives to return from the building or to be locked away themselves, since what happens inside is a mystery. A revolution starts then, within the walls of the building, which eventually collapses, and the surviving protagonists begin a new life of freedom. Plá creates an expressionist work with a subtle lyricism evolving from a complex combination of symbols. These symbols disclose the mechanisms of oppression and the crushing of the individual, and articulate the speech of liberation of a society that needs to be ideologically renewed. Thus, reality is subjected to a deep analysis through characters that are typified according to the function they fulfil within society and through inaccurate spatial-temporal coordinates, which confer an undeniable universality to the conflict. The tendency towards the use of monologues and

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the minimalist theatrical display strengthen the dystopian nature of the work; in fact, light and colour take on a special role in that they reflect the poetic dimension of the text while simultaneously marking the evolution of the plot. Thanks to these features, the play presents a dramatic sensibility in line with post-war contemporary theatrical trends, with ideas similar in nature to epic European theatre. Indeed, the ability to create an allegory of a totalitarian society converts the text into a pioneer work within the genre of dystopian fiction, since its main benchmark, George Orwell’s 1984, would only be published in 1949. The work is divided into three acts that take place in an ambivalent stage setting – the interior and the exterior of the Building. It becomes the symbol of totalitarianism and the space of fear, mystery, oppression and death, an immense architectural mass continually growing, like a Kafkaesque castle, as an extension of its Constructor. The exterior, a wasteland covered by its enormous shadow, is the place of uncertainty, doubt and sadness, but also of memories and hope. It is depicted as a landscape with a “vague beach appearance” where individuals gather, exhausted and stripped of their identity, as a large mass living in a waking state. The sky, which becomes a constant obsession in the collective imagination, since characters can barely see it through narrow blue slits due to the magnitude of the Building, appears only in the final scene as “overwhelming, so high and blue”, when the dictatorship is literally destroyed. Most scenes take place in parts of the Building’s interior, such as the Constructor’s office and some rooms, which look identical to each other, or the basement, where prisoners live condemned to total darkness. The initial stage direction places the dramatic action in the “current” time. The work, written in 1946 according to Jorge Aiguadé (1996: 15), presents the social climate that exists in a totalitarian regime from “any place on Earth”, either the eroded Europe of the Second World War, as an extrapolation of Fascism, Nazism or Stalinism, or Latin America, specifically Paraguay, whose dictatorship established a model of government influenced by European Fascism. Given the universality of the dramatic proposal and its allegorical component, there are no commentaries further concretising the place or time. However, the circumstances of the characters, the megalomaniac speech of the Constructor and even the description of the Building itself as a metaphor of the regime, reveal that the dictatorship had not only been established many years previously – analogous to the height reached by the architectural construction – but that it still had full control and anticipated that it would continue unhindered – hence construction of the Building never stops. For instance, in Scene B, Old Man 1 talks about the changes the Building had undergone since his youth, and his storytelling suggests the metaphoric representation of transition from a democratic government to a dictatorial one: VIEJO 1:

(Con un susurro monótono). Lo recuerdo cuando era mozo. Era mucho más pequeño. Lo rodeaban jardines. En las salas entraba el sol y había gentes que conversaban en voz alta. Luego, no sé cómo, todo aquello fue cambiando. Las salas

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fueron haciéndose más imperiosas y otras cada vez más apagadas. Y se comenzó a hablar de que se había construido un enorme sótano profundo, grande y oscuro como la noche. (in a monotonous whisper) I remember it when I was a young man. It was much smaller. It was surrounded by gardens. The rooms were lit up by the sun and people talked out loud. Then, I don’t know how, everything changed. Rooms became more imperious and others got darker and darker. And people began talking about this enormous basement that had been built, deep, large and dark as night.]

Amongst the characters we can differentiate between those who live and work in favour of the regime, the rioters, and the dehumanised people. As a common feature, the characters do not have their own names, but are defined according to their function in society: the Constructor, the planners, the guards, or the Poet; or by their gender, age, or the relationship status that connects them, both in the case of the main couple – the Young, the son of the Constructor, and the Girl – and the members of the oppressed collective as the Father, the Child, the old men, the Husband, the Wife, Men and Women. As Ramón Bordoli has stated with regard to Historia de un número, in which the author uses the same method, by this generic way to name the play’s characters the playwright tries to give them a symbolic category, tending to a universalisation of language (1984: 447). The symbolic nature of the characters comes also from their physical traits and their gestural language. The Constructor “es una figura de dimensiones geométricas y colosales” [is a figure of geometric and colossal dimensions], with “una voz potente, metálica que debe dar una sensación de irrealidad, como si no saliese de él” [a powerful, metallic voice, that should give a sense of unreality, as if it does not come out of him]. He is a dehumanised character, both psychologically and physically, who defends a project of society in which there are no individuals, but rather numbers, “cimientos de toda matemática, por tanto, de toda construcción racional” [foundations of every mathematics and, consequently, of every rational construction]. Citizens have never seen the Constructor, who is a mythicised character whose very name they fear to pronounce, calling him simply “He”. The expressive paucity and the calculating ideas of the Constructor contrast with the speech of the Poet, the character who represents the greatest threat to the stability of the Building’s regime. Poetry makes poets indestructible and imperishable individuals; with poetry they become constructors of the spirit of men and of the world that surrounds them, they are diffusers of ideas, creators of concepts capable of questioning and rejecting the values imposed by the regime by awaking consciences and, therefore, threatening the integrity of the Building. The dialectic between material and spiritual ideas, poetry being a defining expression of world’s beauty, is made explicit in the first encounter between the Constructor and the Poet, when the latter, in spite of having been enclosed in the Building along with all the others, has a “filtering quality” and manages

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to get through security, warning the Constructor about the breakdown of his empire. Poets are characterised as “parthenogenetic” and capable of reproducing extraordinarily fast “without the need to doctrinaire wedlock, conspiracies and coups d’état”, as the Poet explains to the Constructor. They conceive of themselves as a metaphor for poetry and, in order to defeat them it is not sufficient to lock them away in the basement, because their words are able to go through the walls of the Building: POETA:

CONSTRUCTOR: POETA:

CONSTRUCTOR: POETA:

CONSTRUCTOR: POETA:

[POET:

CONSTRUCTOR: POET: CONSTRUCTOR: POET:

CONSTRUCTOR: POET:

Meter a los Poetas en el Sótano no es aniquilarlos. Ellos pueden quedar allí, pero su canto traspasará los muros, volará por encima de tus torreones. (Con desprecio) ¿Con qué alas? Yo las suprimí todas. Sin libros, sin diarios, sin radios . . . Los llevarán las nubes, la lluvia de primavera, un pájaro que pase, una hoja que vuele. La poesía, Constructor, tiene cualidades nucleares. Me das una idea. No los meteré en el Sótano. Los haré matar. Será peor. La sangre de los Poetas engendra Poetas con una rapidez aterradora. Nacerán muchos más de lo que tú seas capaz de matar. En suma: que os creéis indestructibles. Tan indestructibles o tan perecederos, como el mundo mismo. Todo lo que existe en el mundo nosotros lo hemos creado. El espíritu del hombre nosotros lo hemos construido. Putting poets in the Basement does not annihilate them. They can remain there, but their words will move right through the walls, will soar over your towers. (with contempt) With what wings? I cut them all off. Without books, without newspapers, without radios . . . Clouds will carry them, spring rain, a passing bird, a fluttering leaf. Poetry, Constructor, has nuclear qualities. You are giving me an idea. I will not put them in the Basement. I will have them killed. It will be worse. The blood of Poets gives birth to more Poets with frightening speed. Many more poets will be born than you can kill. So, you think you are indestructible. As indestructible or as perishable as the world itself. We have created everything that exists in the world. We have built the spirit of man.]

Since poets embody the ideological dialectic of individual freedom, the spirit is therefore the only territory upon which the Constructor can never encroach,

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since censorship is powerless there. The Building then, in spite of its dimensions, is less resistant than the spirit of the poets: CONSTRUCTOR: POETA: CONSTRUCTOR:

POETA:

CONSTRUCTOR: POETA: CONSTRUCTOR: POETA:

CONSTRUCTOR: POETA: CONSTRUCTOR: POETA: CONSTRUCTOR: POETA: CONSTRUCTOR:

POETA:

Los sueños de los poetas son inútiles. Los sueños de los Constructores producen monstruos. (Golpea la mesa: su golpe resuena nuevamente como una campana) Llegaré también a ese lugar que llamas el espíritu y lo destruiré. Te creo capaz de intentarlo. De intentar el crimen sin nombre, aquel delito ante el cual hasta la faz de Dios se cubre. ¿Cuál? El asesinato del espíritu. ¿No crees que entonces habré conseguido algo que vosotros no conseguisteis nunca? Sí, si pudieras conseguirlo. Pero no lo conseguiréis jamás. Intentar no es conseguir. Y además, entre nuestras obras y las vuestras hay una diferencia. ¿Cuál? Al principio te lo dije ya. Las nuestras permanecen. (Con soberbia) Mi Edificio está hecho para durar; es piedra y acero. Nada perdura si no está construido sobre el Hombre. Y el hombre es Espíritu, o no es nada. ¿Quién vio el espíritu? ¿Quién vio la mano que sujeta tu Edificio contra el suelo? (Pausa) (Toca el timbre en el cuadro) Llamé a los Guardias. Irás al Sótano. Allí sin luz ni aire, tratarás de crear esos mundos que dices. Te pasmarías, Constructor, si supieras qué mundos se es capaz de crear en la sombra y en las cadenas. ¿No sabes que en la oscuridad crecen las raíces? (Entran los GUARDIAS; lo flanquean) La libertad un día regresará trayendo las manos llenas de sueños. (Sin ironía) Hasta pronto, Constructor. (Sale entre los GUARDIAS).

[CONSTRUCTOR: Poets’ dreams are useless. POET: The dreams of Constructors generate monsters. CONSTRUCTOR: (hits the table: his blow resounds again as a bell) I will reach that place you call the spirit too and I will destroy it.

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I think you are capable of trying to. Of attempting a crime without a name, a crime that would scandalize even God Himself. CONSTRUCTOR: What crime? POET: The murder of the spirit. CONSTRUCTOR: Do you not think that then I will have achieved something you never did? POET: Yes, if you could manage to do it. But you never will. Trying is not achieving. And, besides, there is a difference between your works and ours. CONSTRUCTOR: What is that? POET: I already told you, at the start. Ours remain. CONSTRUCTOR: (with arrogance) My Building is made to last; it is of stone and steel. POET: Nothing lasts if is not built on Man. And Man is either Spirit or nothing. CONSTRUCTOR: Who saw the spirit? POET: Who saw the hand that holds your Building on the ground? (Pause) CONSTRUCTOR: (rings the bell) I called the guards. You will go to the basement. There, without fresh air and in the darkness, you could try to create those worlds you are talking about. POET: You would be amazed, Constructor, if you knew what worlds one can create in the darkness and chained. Do you not know that darkness is where the roots grow? (GUARDS enter and flank him) One day freedom will return her hands full of dreams. ( Without irony) See you soon, Constructor. (The poet exits with the GUARDS).] POET:

The plot also features a love story between the Young, son of the Constructor, and the Girl. They commit an act of rebellion by falling in love in a context in which love is a forbidden feeling. The Young, who is the only heir of the Building, refuses the values instilled by his father and declares his love for the Girl through an act whose metaphoric meaning is expressionistically represented: the Young opens his shirt and shows his heart “branded” on his chest to the Girl. The love speech and his feeling of invincibility, capable of changing a society in which men are mere instruments in the Constructor’s hands, accompanies the characters throughout the work. The Young, who has confronted his father, is enclosed in the basement, where the Girl had already been imprisoned. After the collapse of the Building, the couple – along with the Poet – are the only survivors. Then there is an obvious reference to the Bible as the Poet appears as the creator of the world thanks to his having the gift of the word:

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JOVEN: POETA:

Nosotros somos necesarios. Somos la pareja eterna. Con vosotros se salvó la humanidad. Y conmigo la libertad. Yo soy inmortal. Sin mí las cosas no tendrían nombre. [. . .] (Echan a andar, abrazados y felices. El POETA les sigue tomando notas en un cuadernillo).

[YOUNG: POET:

We are necessary. We are the eternal couple. With you humanity was saved. And with me, freedom. I am immortal. Without me things would not have a name. [. . .] (They start walking, embracing and happy. THE POET follows them, writing notes in a booklet).]

Further characters of the play are the guards, who are responsible for ensuring the rules are obeyed. They are almost omnipresent, capable of hearing any undesirable comment without the individual perceiving it. Their automatism and coldness are in line with the industrial halo of the Building. That is why they are not able to make their own decisions and cannot prevent the fall of the regime. We should also note the voice emanating from the speakers, which instructs the population by constantly repeating the slogans of the regime: “Orden y disciplina. Las dos palabras claves del Edificio”, “Cuantos viven a la sombra del Edificio deben considerarse felices y privilegiados”, “Cada ladrillo del Edificio sabe que contribuye a sostenerlo. Cada Número sabe que es un ladrillo del Edificio”, “Loado sea nuestro Constructor” [Order and discipline. The two key words of the Building, Those who live in the shadow of the Building must consider themselves happy and privileged, Each brick of the Building knows it is contributing to holding it up. Each Number knows it is one of the Building’s bricks, Blessed be our Constructor]. There are five planners who also work for the regime – they are engineers who prepare the expansion of the Building, subject to the leader’s direction. Planner 1 designs a pavilion for the “desventurados ciegos” [unfortunate blind people] who cannot see the enormity of the Building. This pavilion has no windows in order to avoid, according to the Constructor, the penetration of ideas. Planner 2 presents the pavilion for deaf people – those who “no quieren oír” [do not want to hear] and who pose thus the most dangerous threat. This pavilion has bells constantly ringing to detect faking deafness, so those who do not want to hear will not be heard either. The pavilion for mute people is presented by Planner 3 and has speakers continually working, so people incarcerated there can only hear what is necessary and have no means of arguing. The fourth Planner designs a pavilion for those who do not know where their right hand is, a disease whose propagation should be avoided. This area has to be a place where “todo funcionará a contramano” [everything functions the wrong way], for example, furniture will have just three legs, and hence “ejercita el sentido de vigilancia y moviliza las potencias de equilibrio” [the sense of vigilance is exercised and the power of balance is mobilised] because “mientras alguien está tratando a toda costa de mantenerse en el asiento, no puede pensar en otra cosa” [while someone

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is doing their best to remain on the seat, they cannot think of anything else]; in addition, windows will be set on the floor, the roof will be horizontal but the floor sloping, with lamps, creating an “funcionamiento indirecto y retardado de todos los procesos mentales” [indirect and delayed functioning of every mental process], so those who do not know where their right hand is, will not know where their left hand is either. Finally, Planner 5 is in charge of the pavilion for people without taste. The mission of this last pavilion is to indoctrinate people into good taste. However, the semantic ambiguity of this expression leads the planner to understand “taste” literally and consider it impossible to transmit good taste to those who do not have taste at all. In short: the blind, deaf, mute, those lacking taste and people paying special attention to their left hand, share disabilities which go against the social perfection to which the regime aspires. The symbolic value of the scene highlights individuals who, despite not explicitly stating their opposition to a totalitarian regime, do not express adherence either, and carry out a passive strategy of insubordination. The performative elements of the play have a very important dramatic function. The wealth of stage directions, clothing indications, gestures, stage movements, illumination and acoustic effects, all contribute to enhance the atomised nature of the scenes and help to improve the dramatic intensity achieved through the dialogue. It can also be noted that the use of a mask, typical of expressionist theatre, has the function of hiding and, at the same time, revealing the essence of the guards. As instruments of the regime, they suffer a dehumanisation: they wear masks “más bien lisas, como vacías” [rather flat, as though empty] in the first act; in the second one “las facciones serán menos aparentes” [features will be less visible]; and in the third one “carecerán absolutamente de ellas, como un maniquí moderno” [they will lack them completely, like a modern mannequin]. Indeed, masks disappear as guards transform into automatons. However, when the Building falls, the guards suffer a reverse process and they appear without the masks, “sus rostros vulgares expresan el terror y el desconcierto” [their vulgar faces express terror and confusion]. Something similar happens to the Constructor: after the encounter with the Poet, the Constructor’s fanaticism causes the features of his face to disappear. After the collapse of the Building, the Constructor remains in his office without knowing how to react, looking toward the stall, terrified – at this point the audience assumes an active role, becoming the only witness to his degradation – and his image becomes increasingly vulgar to the point of being grotesque and ridiculous: Un chasquido bárbaro y musical abre una grieta enorme en la pared izquierda. Entonces del cuerpo poderoso vuelto de espaldas al público surge un hombre pequeño y enteco de ropas vulgares y oscuras, de facciones ratoniles que mira en torno desatentado, sin saber qué hacer. El estuche hueco del cuerpo se bambolea y cae largo es en el escenario, de espaldas siempre. El hombrecillo quiere escapar del escotillón: este se cierra con seco golpe. Corre entonces hacia la escalerilla: con sordo estrépito un montón de cascotes vienen a obstruirla. El hombrecillo vuelve al centro de la escena:

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va de un lado para otro, empavorecido, se asoma al borde del proscenio; la vista del público lo aterra. [A brutal and musical crack opens a huge breach in the left wall. Then, from the powerful body with its back to the audience emerges a small and weak man wearing dark and tasteless clothes, his mousey features looking around, thoughtless, without knowing what to do. The hollow case of the body wobbles and falls over on the stage, still facing away. The little man wants to escape through the trapdoor, which closes with a heavy thud. Then he runs to the ladder: a pile of rubble blocks it with a dull thudding. The little man comes back to the centre of the stage: he goes from one side to the other, panicked, he leans out over the edge of the proscenium; seeing the audience frightens him.] Gestures and stage movements are also key elements to understanding the physiological and physical evolution of the characters in the play. As already stated, the totalitarian regime of the Building is very stable, so the oppressed are in a very advanced stage of decay. The absence of props is compensated for by the mechanical movement of the group: “sentadas en el suelo con las piernas cruzadas, las mujeres hacen movimientos con los brazos como manejando monótonamente sendas máquinas” [sitting cross-legged on the floor, the women move their arms as though monotonously operating machinery], and men, sitting on stools or small cubic pedestals, “mueven las piernas como accionando pedales” [move their legs as though they are activating foot pedals]. During this scene, the characters become stripped of any kind of critical awareness or memories; in other words, there is an identification or affinity created between the individual and the machine until they become completely transformed into a number. Furthermore, the industrial-like, cold, mechanical environment is also determined by sounds that reinforce the play’s ambience of agony, distrust and uncertainty: the noises of pulleys, motors, sirens, metallic ratchets and whispers emerging from different areas of the stage along with periods of absolute stillness. The dialectic between love and impassibility, between the poet’s utopia and the dystopia of the Building, as well as the manipulation of a collective by means of strong censorship and the mechanisms of resistance to an authoritarian regime, such are the topics developed throughout the play, rendering the ending both apocalyptic and foundational. Censorship, a feature of the work’s symbolic dimension, not only silences ideas – “no hables”, “no pienses” [do not talk, do not think] – but also nullifies emotions – “no sueñes” [do not dream] – depriving citizens of their humanity. That is why the regime forbade the most dangerous words: love, illusion, dream, abstract art, psychoanalyse, concern, justice, freedom, thinking and heart. The ending of the play, which shows us the Poet constantly shaking the mass of automatons into which society has been transformed, sees the dissolution of censorship resulting from the insurrection of feelings. The putsch, sparked by memories, desires, pain and, above all, invincible love, demonstrates the recovery of critical awareness and the hope for freedom, along with the re-humanisation of the citizens which, consequently, triggers the fall of the

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Building. Ultimately, the initial situation is reverted: the dystopic society gives way to a utopia represented by the horizon: Con vosotros se salvó la humanidad. Y conmigo la libertad. Yo soy inmortal. Sin mí, las cosas no tendrían nombre. JOVEN: ¿Qué hacemos ahora? POETA: ¿Y lo preguntáis? Todo está por hacer. ¿Veis aquello allá lejos? JOVEN: ¿Qué cosa? POETA: El horizonte. MUCHACHA: Ah, ¿eso era? JOVEN: (Un tanto desilusionado) No es gran cosa, ¿verdad? Una línea que tiembla . . . POETA: Ah, pero detrás está todo. Todo lo que hace la dicha, la esperanza, la razón de vivir. JOVEN: ¿Vamos a buscarlo? MUCHACHA: Vamos. (Echan a andar, abrazados y felices. El POETA les sigue tomando notas en un cuadernillo). POETA:

[POET:

YOUNG: POET: YOUNG: POET: GIRL: YOUNG: POET: JOVEN: GIRL:

Thanks to you, humanity was saved. And thanks to me, freedom. I am immortal. Without me, things would not have a name. What should we do now? What do you mean? Everything is still to be done. Do you see that thing, out there? Which thing? The horizon. Ah. That’s what it was? (A bit disappointed) It is not much, is it? A trembling line . . . Ah, but everything lies behind it. Everything that gives us happiness, hope, the reason for living. Shall we go find it? Let’s go! (They start walking, embracing and happy. THE POET follows them, taking notes in a booklet.)]

El Edificio, a hidden play El Edificio ends with a final image of the Poet creating a new society. This scathing, clever and lyrical allegory of totalitarianism, which reflects on the closeness and structural opacity of the dictatorial system, remained hidden in its time. Pressed by the United States’ threats to take economic reprisals against Paraguay, President Higinio Morínigo had broken off relations with the Axis powers. However, the regime’s Nazi/fascist-inspired apparatus persisted. Morínigo’s dictatorship

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played both sides: in parallel to the consolidation of Paraguayan-American relations, a Nazi settlement in southern Paraguay had continued to grow during the course of Second World War, and anti-Semitism failed to diminish because “its philosophy fed the ideological skeleton of most National Socialist sectors” (Seiferheld 2012: 554). During the final throes of the War, Morínigo’s policy exceeded its “opportunism” by openly declaring war on the Axis Powers in order to assure the inclusion of Paraguay in the UN and to put an end, rather officially than de facto, to the Nazi-fascist model. This allowed for various measures to be put in place, including a political openness in 1946 through the rehabilitation of the Liberal Party and the legalisation of the Paraguayan Communist party for the first time in history. Nevertheless, political disagreements arose during this new period as a consequence of the coalition government between the Febrerista Revolutionary party – socialist – and the Colorado party – conservative – and of the dictator’s preference for the latter. This led the country into a bloody civil war spanning from March to August 1947, leaving the territory destroyed and about to collapse into anarchy. Thus El Edificio by Josefina Plá was created in a political context in which Nazism had been theoretically rejected, albeit only gradually removed from the state’s policies. However, the essence of Nazism was to endure since its ideological dimension had become deeply rooted in society. The universality of this play suggests an identification of the Constructor with Hitler, Stalin or Franco, but also with Higinio Morínigo himself, or even with Alfredo Stroessner afterwards. The play is therefore of critical relevance both in the national and the international context. After the Second World War and the Paraguayan Civil War, the totalitarian Nazi/fascist-inspired spirit survived in Paraguay in sectors of the Army and in its Constitution: “La débil caja de resonancia que el país representó en aquel período, reprodujo y registró sonidos de guerra y de odio que ya no dejarían de escucharse después” [the country was a weak sounding board at that time reproducing and registering sounds of war and hate which would not stop echoing afterwards] (Seiferheld 2012: 599). Even if Europe was beginning to be reborn, the authoritarian ideology was not only far from being dissipated in Latin America, but would also help to consolidate future dictatorial governments that would shake the recent history of the continent. The hint of political openness developed during the last years of Federico Chaves’ democratic government (1949–1954) was not enough to relieve the social trauma caused by the civil war. This situation favoured the rise to power of Alfredo Stroessner, who would lead the longest and one of the most repressive dictatorships in Latin America (1954–1989). His tyranny gradually seized the two pillars on which he based his regime: the Partido Colorado and the armed forces (Lewis 1986: 419). The mechanisms of governmental intimidation and censorship shaped a “monolithic” regime that did not accept nuances: “Hay que aceptar al general con todo su sistema y con los que este considera sus legítimos precursores” [The general must be accepted along with his entire system and with those who he considers his legitimate precursors] (Rodríguez Alcalá 1987: 113).

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The repressive apparatus thought up by Stronism was based on a model of domination which left its mark on every social class and was gradually consolidated thanks to the support of the United States. Several intellectuals whose ideas threatened the regime – which claimed to be a government of peace and stability – went into exile. Among them were Elvio Romero, José Asunción Flores, Gabriel Casaccia, Hérib Campos Cervera or Augusto Roa Bastos. Every artistic manifestation infringing upon the government suffered severe censorship, since the Stroessner regime obstructed all lines of thought. Ironically, the regime boasted the opposite: “en rigor, hubo mucha libertad de prensa y de expresión, se diría que en exceso. Hasta el desenfreno. Solo que estaba reservada para uso y abuso exclusivo de los voceros de la dictadura” [in fact, there was much freedom of press and expression, an excess one could even say, though it was reserved for the use and abuse of the leaders of the dictatorship] (González Delvalle 2014: 62). Specifically, in the domain of theatre, all amateur or experimental theatre groups were rejected and works promoting democratic values opposing those of the dictatorship were punished: La dictadura jugó siempre con la palabra. Usó y abusó hasta límites increíbles de lo que Roa Bastos llama “la perversidad semántica”. En la publicidad stronista ningún país tenía un gobierno tan democrático y amante de la paz y de la libertad. Y en nombre de esa democracia, de esa paz y de la libertad, apresaba, torturaba, mataba, saqueaba, Confinaba, exiliaba a quienes pretendían ejercer los derechos elementales de expresión, asociación y reunión. [Dictatorship always played with the word. It used and abused to an unimaginable degree what Roa Bastos refers to as “semantic perversity”. According to the Stronist publicity there was no country with such a democratic and peace-loving government. And in the name of that democracy, that peace and freedom, it captured, tortured, killed, looted, confined and forced into exile those who attempted to exercise the elemental rights of expression, association and reunion.] (González Delvalle 2014: 33) The publication or staging of El Edificio, by Josefina Plá, would have certainly forced the author into a second exile. Censorship apparatuses in totalitarian regimes like those of Morínigo and Stroessner precipitated mechanisms of selfcensorship such as Plá’s decision to hide the play. Despite not having been staged, El Edificio is, nonetheless, probably the author’s best and most incisive work. While in her most realistic theatre Plá criticises society, giving voice to the Paraguayan woman for instance, her expressionist theatre manages to depict, through lyrical symbolism, the social climate of an epoch, without necessarily alluding to Paraguay. Behind interventional and developmental policies and despite the determined march of democracy the country was undergoing, a tyrannical regime lived on. El Edificio, thanks to its aesthetic modernity, stands out as one of the most revealing works of Paraguayan theatre’s history for it managed to

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denounce enduring dictatorship and, at the same time, embody a discourse of disobedience. Under the office where the Constructor and the planners forge the Building and under the workshops where numbers work while mindlessly chanting the slogans of the regime – “order”, “discipline” – there is the basement. Poets lived their confinement in the basement hoping for freedom just in the same way Plá concealed El Edificio. And from confinement, as the play shows, emanates subversion.

Notes 1 This work has been made possible thanks to the project Escena y literatura dramática en el exilio republicano de 1939: final [FFI2010–21031/FILO], funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. I would like to thank Universidad Católica de Asunción for allowing me to access to the Josefina Plá’s document collection. 2 Both the playbill and Paraguayan press (El País, 27th July, 1946) talk about co-authorship. However, as stated by J. V. Peiró Barco, the creative work of the director is confusing because, according to the bibliography of Augusto Roa Bastos by Milda Rivarola, the work was written by Roa and “perfected by Oca del Valle to be performed” (Peiró Barco 2002). 3 My PhD thesis, still in progress, is a critical study of the unpublished dramatic works of Josefina Plá. A complete edition of her entire body of theatre is expected in the near future. 4 Aquí no ha pasado nada and Fiesta en el río were the last of the seven plays written by Josefina Plá in collaboration with Roque Centurión Miranda. 5 Historia de un número was performed in Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay and has been included in several theatre anthologies (Teatro breve (1969), Teatro breve del Paraguay (1981), Antología crítica del teatro breve hispanoamericano. 1948–1993 (1997) and Teatro paraguayo de ayer y de hoy (2001), among others) (Pérez López 2003). The similarities between its dramatic proposal and the one of El Edificio lead us to believe that the latter is the direct precedent of this “trivial farce”, written three years afterwards. 6 In 1946, Josefina Plá also wrote “El ladrillo”, a short story entirely related to El Edificio. It was revised in 1968 but not published until 1989, when it was included in the story anthology La muralla robada, edited by the Biblioteca de Estudios Paraguayos of Universidad Católica of Asunción. As suggested by its title, the plot of “El ladrillo” deals with the construction process of the building and thus its diegetic time precedes the one of the play. A first-person narrator relates the progression of the nightmare, from the harmless brick which was offered by the neighbours, to the moment when they are gobbled by the building. The protagonist, who refuses to obey the command to enter the building, eventually becomes the last rag buried into the sand at its base. Nevertheless, the dehumanisation of society and the triumph of totalitarianism were an impending reality: “Y ahora comprendo: yo creí quedar fuera del edificio. Pero no. Porque ya no hay dentro y fuera del edificio. Todo es edificio”. [And now I understand: I believed I was outside the building. But I wasn’t. Because there is no inside or outside the building. Everything is the building] (Plá 1996: 310). In the introduction of La muralla robada, Plá explains the reasons that inspired her to write the short story: “la sacudida brutal de la Segunda Guerra Mundial”, “el estruendo apocalíptico de Hiroshima” and “el convencimiento de que el hombre construye lo que ha de destruirlo” [the brutal shock of the Second World War, the apocalyptic thunder of Hiroshima, and the certainty that men build what will destroy them] (Plá 1989). Because of the obvious connection between both texts, her reasoning may also be a key to understanding the gestation of El Edificio. 7 The material available to study this play is the original manuscript by the author. Thus, no page numbers are included in the citations.

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References Aiguadé, J. (1996): “El teatro de Josefina Plá: el valor de la idea y el punto de vista femenino”, in Teatro escogido, J. Plá (ed.). Asunción: El Lector, 7–30. Bordoli, R. (1984): La problemática del tiempo y la soledad en la obra de Josefina Plá. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid. González Delvalle, A. (2014): La prensa y la cultura bajo el régimen. Asunción: Abc Color. Lewis, P. H. (1986): Paraguay bajo Stroessner. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Peiró Barco, J. V. (2002): “Teatro paraguayo contemporáneo”, Stichomythia. Revista de Teatro contemporáneo, http://parnaseo.uv.es/ars/esticomitia/numero0/indicecero/a2.htm (Consulta: 19 de agosto de 2015). Pérez López, M. A. (2003): Raíz y altura. La labor teatral de Josefina Plá. Alicante: Biblioteca virtual Miguel de Cervantes, www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/raz-y-altura-la-labor-teatralde-josefina-pl-0/ (Consulta: 29 de agosto de 2015). Plá, J. (1988): “1811–1987. De los próceres de mayo a las últimas tendencias”, in Escenarios de dos mundos. Inventario teatral de Iberoamérica, IV, M. Pérez Coterillo (ed.). Madrid: Centro de Documentación teatral, 250–261. ——— (1989): La muralla robada. Asunción: Biblioteca de Estudios Paraguayos, Universidad Católica de Asunción. ——— (1994): Cuatro siglos de teatro en el Paraguay III. El teatro paraguayo en el siglo XX. Asunción: Universidad Católica de Asunción. ——— (1996): “El ladrillo”, in Cuentos completos, M. Ángel Fernández (ed.). Asunción: El Lector, 293–310. Roa Bastos, A. (1977): “Paraguay, isla rodeada de tierra”, El Correo de la Unesco 8–9: 51–68. Rodríguez Alcalá, G. (1987): Ideología autoritaria. Asunción: RP ediciones. Seiferheld, A. (2012): Nazismo y fascismo en el Paraguay. Los años de la guerra 1936–1946. Asunción: Servilibro.

15 Negotiating sexuality and censorship in Las sábanas by José Corrales Lourdes Betanzos

One effect that many dictatorships in Latin America have had is censorship of literature and the fine arts, despite the fact that this region’s authoritarian leaders differ vastly in their political ideologies, often spanning opposite ends of the political spectrum. Cuba is one of the longest-standing non-fascist dictatorships in Latin America, if not the only one. Though Fidel Castro’s regime has been receptive and supportive of the fine arts by subsidising ballet schools and musical conservatories and the like, it has also been extremely specific about restrictions to these artistic activities and the consequences when they are not adhered to, which at the very least have involved censorship and in the most extreme cases have involved the imprisonment of the artist or author. Besides other possible factors, such hindrances to artistic production have forced many Cuban playwrights into exile, where they have found a more receptive audience and forum for the free expression of their artistry, which they lacked on the island. However, these efforts to obstruct counter-revolutionary artistic production by Fidel Castro’s authoritarian regime did not bring the overall fine arts and literature context in Cuba to a halt. Zoé Valdés ponders, ¿Cómo es ser escritor en Cuba? Me gustaría mucho poder responderles por experiencia propia, pero pese a que publiqué una primera novela y un poemario en mi país, jamás fui considerada una escritora, me trataron y me tratan de bandida o de pornógrafa.” [What is it like to be a writer in Cuba? I would like very much to be able to respond to you through firsthand experience, but despite the fact that I published a first novel and poetry collection in my country, I was never considered a writer, I was called a bandit or a pornographist.] (Valdés 2005: 35)1 Rosa Ileana Boudet describes the status of theatre in the early sixties in Cuba acknowledging the opening of the cultural centre Casa de las Américas which greatly impacted the cultural politics on the island. But she also alludes to the fact that the theatrical debuts of the time were often “controvertidos” [polemic] and that the weekly periodical entitled Lunes de revolución embraced and published only about plays and writers that embraced the Revolution (Boudet 2012: 9–10).

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Cuba is no exception to dire consequences for anti-dictatorship writers under the socialist/communist regime of Fidel Castro as evidenced by his June 1961 speech to intellectuals where he affirms that any author or artist who does not support the ideals of the Revolution puts him/herself in a precarious position for existence within it.2 However, this type of treatment from the Cuban government of the time did not deter these individuals from pursuing their intellectual endeavours in creative writing. Instead it fuelled them even further to find alternative techniques to share their creativity even when it conflicted with or challenged the goals of the Castro dictatorship. The arts and theatre continued to exist and to be produced on the island as long as they functioned within the ideals of the Revolution. In the cases where they did not do so, stagings where shut down during their opening performances or prohibited from ever being opened on the island. Such repression extended to all literary genres. Matías Montes Huidobro suggests in his article “La voz del otro en el teatro cubano contemporáneo”, Castro’s dictatorship stimulates an unintended era in New Cuban Theatre, one that develops and grows outside of Cuba under perilous circumstances (Montes Huidobro 1997: 103). Decades later during what would become known as the Special Period, the Castro dictatorship begins an ideological/intellectual rectification period, a period of adjustment which resulted in an era marked by deep repression of intellectuals, artists, and authors during the late eighties and into the nineties. Zoé Valdés, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Reinaldo Arenas were a few of the Cuban writers of the Special Period – the late 1980s and early 1990s – that suffered the regime’s repression and censorship in Cuba. In an essay entitled “Ser escritor en Cuba” [Being a Writer in Cuba] Cuban novelist and poetess Zoé Valdés details the censorship and repression that intellectuals and creative writers felt during this period. She describes the environment as being hostile to writers considered to be counter-revolutionary, even if they did not write about the Revolution in their works. She mentions the case of Reinaldo Arenas, who was imprisoned for two years by the Cuban government for signing a contract for a book with a French Publisher and doing so without having gone through the regime’s required protocol for it (Valdés 2005: 38). Valdés indicates the exact moment that Castro pronounced his lack of trust in intellectuals and writers citing his address at the inauguration of the San Antonio de los Baños film school at the end of the 1980s (Valdés 2005: 40). In addition she shares, “Yo sabía que de escritor, en mi país, no ganaba prestigio ni Dios, que más bien para las autoridades ser escritor era poco menos que ser pandillero, pues entras en la lista negra de los sospechosos una vez que has opinado por escrito, sin regalar loas al régimen.” [I knew that as a writer, in my country, not even God would gain prestige, that for the authorities being an author was mostly little more than being a gangster, you are put on the blacklist of suspects once you have expressed yourself in writing without offering verses to the regime] (Valdés 2005: 36). She later affirms that authors of the Special Period had three choices – commiting to revolutionary ideals at least in pretense, prison or exile (Valdés 2005: 40). In her article “Mostrar lo invisible” Graziella Pogolotti poses,

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En Cuba, los acontecimientos desencadenados en el año 89 repercutieron con intensidad en el plano de las ideas y en la vida económica y han llegado a amenazar la propia supervivencia del país como nación independiente. En lo que se refiere a las ideas, precepitaron un proceso de reflexión crítica iniciada unos años antes que tuvo su expresión política en el llamado proceso de rectificación y se manifestó también en la cultura, particularmente en las artes plásticas y el teatro. [In Cuba, the chain of events in 1989 reverberated with intensity in the realm of ideas and in the economic life and they have threatened the very survival of the country as an independent nation. In what refers to ideas, these precipitated a process of critical reflection initiated a few years before it was exercised politically in the so-called rectification process and it also manifested itself in culture, particularly in visual arts and theatre.] (Pogolotti 1999: 19) Pogolotti also points out that Cuban theatre of the 1970s and 1980s had tried to address the issues of a generation formed by the Revolution. The theatre criticism steers away from and reacts to a prudish conception of morals, especially in terms of sexuality. She clarifies that the youth of the time began to reclaim their liberty in this area. This generational evolution begins to appear in Cuban dramaturgy in the eighties and starts to nuance the national political debate stemming from the so-called process of rectification (Pogolotti 1999: 23). She continues by stating that the disappearance of socialism in Europe and the tightening of the US embargo had deep repercussions on the Cuban economy of that time, but it also shook the consciences of the nation such that conducts were modified and values undermined. By contrast, theatre charged on by challenging the audience to search for self-recognition and for a space for reflection. She explains, “Las alusiones críticas a las penurias de la vida cotidiana y a la quiebra de algunos valores morales permean el teatro y una parte de la narrativa en los inicios de los 90” [The critical allusions to the paucity of daily life and to the breakdown of some moral values permeate theatre and part of the narrative during the beginning of the decade of the nineties] (Pogolotti 1999: 24–25). The years leading into the Special Period are the exact historical context in which Las sábanas (1998) was written by José Corrales. The play debuted at El Portón in New York City and was staged and performed there by the Latin American Theatre Ensemble in 1989. Corrales went into exile from Cuba in 1964, first going to Mexico and settling in New York in 1965. Though he wrote this play while in exile, Las sábanas was written during this reflective period of re-examination of sexual morals in Cuban theatre in general both on and off the island. Through this and other plays he wrote during these years such as Las hetairas habaneras, Corrales shares and empathizes with those fellow playwrights who were still suffering under Castro’s dictatorship during the Special Period because he was directly impacted by this repression himself two decades before. In her article “Cuba, Myth, and Transnational Revisions of Nation”, Gail Bulman explores national identity among other issues in the work

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of Cuban playwrights Raúl de Cárdenas, Pedro Monge Rafuls, José Corrales and Manuel Pereira. She affirms, Reading “Cuba” through Cuban theatre has, perhaps, posed more difficulties than defining any other nation through its theatre at the end of the twentieth, beginning of the twenty-first century, largely because of the great number of playwrights writing outside of their national borders and, at the same time, because of the lack of freedom experienced by Cuban playwrights living on the island. (Bulman 2007: 194) She goes on to signal that the playwrights she includes in her article have used intertextuality to draw parallels between the intertext’s or their author’s similar situations, and then to recontextualize their exiled status by breaking the imposed silence of the exiled through their new text [. . .] these plays recuperate silenced voices and through them, tell the other side of the Cuban Revolution story, protest against the exile’s current situation, and invent a new medium, the New Cuban Dramaturgy, to empower the Cuban. (Bulman 2007: 196) Pedro Monge Rafuls himself acknowledges the earlier impact that José Corrales’ dramaturgy would have made had they not been forced to endure the hardships of Castro’s regime. Monge Rafuls explains, “si no fuera por la escisión a la que nos vimos obligados, el teatro de José Corrales hubiera ocupado, mucho antes de ese momento de reorganización, un lugar importante dentro de la dramaturgia cubana” [were it not for the rift into which we were obligated, the theatre of José Corrales would have occupied an important place in the dramaturgy of Cuba much earlier than that moment of reorganization] (Monge Rafuls 1998: 89). In 2017, the censorship and repression seem to still exist on the island as is indicated in a New York Times article from January 23rd 2015 by Victoria Burnett entitled “Blurring Boundaries Between Art and Activism in Cuba: In Cuba, Artistic Freedom Remains an Open Question”.3 Nevertheless, Cuban playwrights both on the island and in exile now find themselves in an interesting moment that has yet to be played out, but that has been suggested previously through dramaturgy by members of both groups – that of reconciliation. Theatre critic Daniel Zalacaín analyses this theme of reconciliation in plays written on the island and in exile in his chapter “El viaje a la otra orilla” in the critical edition De las dos orillas: teatro cubano (Zalacaín 1999: 187–202). In his article “José Corrales: Un buen ejemplo de la dramaturgia cubana en el exilio”, Pedro Monge Rafuls elaborates on the fact that Corrales situates his plays in Guanabacoa, which this critic explains gives the characters an aspect of duality because their town is not a large city like nearby Havana nor is it provincial.

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Monge Rafuls feels that this duality defines why the characters think and act the way that they do. He affirms that Corrales’ characters possess a sexual openness that is not typical of provincial citizens. He states: Sus personajes tienen problemas y poseen una concepción del mundo muy distinta a la del típico provinciano. Pero, al mismo tiempo estos personajes están determinados por tradiciones e ideas conservadoras; o sea que también muestran una cultura muy distinta a la del hombre capitalino. [His characters have problems and possess a world perspective that is different than the typical provincial one. But, at the same time, these characters are determined by conservative traditions and ideas; or rather that they also demonstrate a culture that is very distinct from that of the capital.] (Monge Rafuls 1998: 90) Monge Rafuls considers duality a striking feature of Corrales’ plays. Esther Sánchez Grey-Alba affirms in an article that studies the dramaturgy of José Corrales that in theatre even the inaudible aspects of the visual and written text are of utmost importance, but are sometimes only perceptible to certain audiences. She posits, El teatro, que es en definitiva una representación de la vida, buscó nuevos medios de expresión que pudieran interpretar el sentir de los personajes; la clave ya no estaba tanto en el mundo exterior, sino en la conciencia de aquéllos, en lo que sentían o pensaban, es decir, en su mundo interno. El diálogo, por lo tanto, adquiere una nueva dimensión no sólo porque lo que se dice no se puede interpretar siempre en un sentido directo, sino porque el lenguaje toma a veces significados ocultos, audibles sólo para cierto público. [Theatre, which is definitively a representation of life, searched for new means of expression that could interpret the feelings of the characters; the key was no longer in the exterior world, but rather in the conscience of those, in what they felt or thought, in other words in their inner world. Dialogue, therefore, acquires a new dimension not only because what is said cannot always be interpreted in a direct sense, but because the language or discourse often takes on hidden meanings, audible only to certain audiences.] (Sánchez Grey-Alba 2000: 105) In Las sábanas, Corrales offers what he calls an interrupted monologue from the enigmatic protagonist Teresita. The domestic objects of the title of the play – bed sheets – function as one of the markers of the transitions between the multiple communicative planes of the text both visually and linguistically. The sheets, as objects and theatrical signs, suggest something that is hidden. With the symbol of the sheets, the changes in theme and mood are marked as well as fluctuations in their colour and the degree of sensuality of the main character. The theatrical object of the bed sheet forms the frame of the personal context that serves as the

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sign for the most intimate thoughts of Teresita. In the same manner, the utterances of each character engage the spectator to deduce the non-verbal message when these are accentuated by truncated words or other linguistic traits. Patrice Pavis defines silence as the “absence of noise” clarifying that it is an intrinsic part of the actor. He identifies three basic types of silence, one of which are the pauses that occur during the actor’s recitation of the dramatic text, be they psychological pauses or voluntary/involuntary ones (Pavis 1998: 336). In Corrales’ play, these pauses are found mostly where there are ellipses interspersed within the utterances of a given character. These pauses explicitly marked by the playwright form an additional dialectic dimension of the text when they are combined with the didascalia. The silences underlined through ellipses by the dramaturge provide a moment of pause that provokes the audience to ponder what the character has left unspoken. It is precisely here where the deepest, innermost thoughts of the character occur, in the silences, in the inaudible utterances. Pedro Monge Rafuls elaborates on José Corrales’ use of silences stating, “los silencios y los juicios emitidos por los personajes nos obligan a tomar posiciones y a pensar seriamente sobre lo que hemos terminado de ver o de leer” [the silences and the judgements emitted by the characters force us to take a stance and to reflect seriously on what we have just seen or read] (Monge Rafuls 1998: 91). About Corrales’ characters he adds, “Sus personajes viven un infierno porque por lo general tienen una vida interior traumatizada que solo se exterioriza cuando tienen algo que decir” [His characters live a ‘hell’ because they generally have a traumatized interior life that they only reveal when they have something to say] (Monge Rafuls 1998: 91). Esther Sánchez Grey-Alba also makes some affirmations concerning the use of silence in the playwright’s piece titled El palacio de los gritos stating that it is a silence that seeks to be heard, one that has universal resonance once it is transformed into art (Sánchez Grey-Alba 2000: 113). Even though the circumstances in Las sábanas are different, there are similar uses of silence in this play. Teresita’s hushed words draw the spectator closer, creating a shared intimacy in which the audience becomes complicit in her innermost thoughts, indeed the very essence of her being, her condition. Ricardo Lobato Morchón reveals what he calls “fenómenos de articulación lingüística” [phenomenons of linguistic articulation] (55) that, according to him, are not exclusive to Theatre of the Absurd nor to Vanguardist poetry. By understanding his ideas about the disarticulation of language in these movements, we can identify their elements in Corrales’ play. One of the traits that Lobato Morchón defines is that discourse is shred to the point of obtaining from it a net signifier, an unknown “non-code” (Lobato Morchón 2002: 55). What this critic deems as a characteristic of the disarticulation of language is that the decomposition of language occurs, a breakdown of the discourse, the words no longer serve their communicative function. In the case of the protagonist of Las sábanas, this “non-code” is the way of expressing her true self. The lack of articulation of language is the means by which Teresita verbalises her most intimate thoughts, thereby expressing the silence that, according to Sánchez Grey-Alba, seeks to be heard. Silence thus becomes her weapon and defense mechanism.

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Teresita’s marital circumstance – being unhappily married and yearning for a former lover – and her initial naivety prohibit her from expressing her true sexual desires as well as her opinions about sex not only to her sexual partners, but to society in general. She is obligated to find an alternative means of communication. Thus, Corrales employs the disarticulation of Teresita’s discourse in order to establish this alternative medium. In the first scene of the play, as Teresita describes her first sexual encounter with Lucio at the age of 15, she addresses the audience to elaborate how it happened and how she was feeling and reacting (Corrales 1998: 6). Her lack of understanding of her body’s natural reaction to stimulation – an orgasm – is evident in the way that she explains it. The use of the word “orgasm” is circumvented, instead the character describes feeling radiant, like she is in a cloud, floating. Because it involves an interrupted monologue, one can perceive a guarded intimacy and trust between the protagonist and her audience since Teresita addresses them directly in her speech and yet does not refer to certain things by their proper term. In the second scene, Teresita discusses the topic of oral intercourse without ever naming the act explicitly. Her silent pauses and truncated phrases result in an implied significance for her discourse. Through these linguistic features, Corrales utilizes silence to address a topic considered taboo by traditional society. In another part of the same scene, Teresita comments on Otto’s lack of libido saying, “Aquello ni se le . . . bueno, el asunto duró poco . . . yo diría que ni diez minutos” [It didn’t even [referring to Otto’s erectile dysfunction] . . . well, the thing didn’t last long . . . I would say not even ten minutes] (Corrales 1998: 15). Here again, the pauses provide the means of communication for the meaning when these are juxtaposed with implied references to the male reproductive organ and the brevity of the sexual act. Teresita finds it difficult to express her will and wishes as is evident in the following fragment: “Cuando esta tira sea lo suficientemente larga para que pueda usarla como una soga de escape, les aseguro a Uds. que ésta que está aquí . . . Estoy delirando. Delirando. ¿Qué me pasa?” [When this strip is long enough to use as an escape rope, I assure you that this one here [referring to herself] . . . I’m delirious. Delirious. What’s wrong with me?] (Corrales 1998: 16). This truncated utterance suggests self-censorship on the main character’s part as she comes to the realisation that she will never be able to escape her current circumstances, which consist of being a woman who is unhappily married and is longing for a former lover. She feels trapped or imprisoned in her current situation. This sense of entrapment corresponds also to Cuban citizens who did not agree with Castro’s dictatorship. They could not freely express their opposing views for fear of repression of imprisonment or worse. But also leaving Cuba was not an easy task to achieve. There were and still are many bureaucratic and political obstacles and consequences for daily lifestyle which make a positive future almost impossible for these Cubans to imagine. As a Cuban exile himself, Corrales experienced this sense of inescapable circumstance of hopelessness.

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When she suspects that Gladys has found a way to reunite her with Lucio, Teresita’s language and tone denote restlessness and nervousness. The sentences truncated by ellipses or silent pauses are the elements that form the fragmented and agitated discourse of Teresita’s verbal and non-verbal language. She wonders, “¿Qué se traerá Gladys entre manos ahora? Una sorpresa para mí. Espero que no sea . . . Bueno, ella es capaz de todo. A veces ni la reconozco” [What is Gladys scheming now? A surprise for me. I hope it’s not . . . Well, she is capable of anything. Sometimes I don’t even recognise her] (Corrales 1998: 20). Teresita’s state of mind becomes frenetic from this moment. As the scene progresses, the fragmented utterances continue to be interrupted by ellipses, enumerations, and abrupt swings of opinions that suggest her inner desperation. This desperation drives her to a mental state in which language breaks down, producing a segmented and, therefore, frenzied dialectic. Teresita’s anxiety in this scene consumes her to the point of linguistic breakdown. In the following exchange, both Lucio and Teresita skirt direct communication with each other in order to avoid the most difficult issue between them, the truth about her past. Lucio implores for her to explain what is bothering her, but she responds, “No tengo nada que decir. No sé cómo decirlo. No sé cómo explicarlo” [I have nothing to say. I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to explain it] (Corrales 1998: 26). They resort to lack of communication rather than confronting the issue. During this exchange, a contrast between spoken word and action is produced. The abundance of the utterances from Teresita forms a paradox when they are juxtaposed with phrases that suggest a lack of communication. Such phrases include “es hora de que hablemos” [it’s time for us to talk] when there is supposed to be dialogue taking place or “No tengo nada que decir” [I have nothing to say] when in reality there is a great deal left unsaid. The fact remains that Teresita gets to the point of linguistic breakdown described by Lobato Morchón when she indicates that she can no longer find how to express what she needs to say to Lucio. According to Lobato Morchón, Vanguardist theatre found, in the breakdown of language, the exact metaphor for lack of communication (Lobato Morchón 2002: 59). Thus Corrales recuperates this notion of lack of communication from his Vanguardist precursors in order to underline the communicative schism that exists between Teresita and her interlocutors. Gail Bulman alludes to the function of using intertextuality in another Corrales play titled Las hetairas habaneras and explains that the differences between the old and new texts “have both a dramatic and ideological function; they present theatre as a way of giving voice to the exiles and they postulate hope for the future of the nation through those voices” (Bulman 2007: 198). In his play Las sábanas, Corrales instead employs silence, lack of communication, and non-verbal cues as strategies to reveal these hidden voices. Most of Teresita’s enunciation consists of an interrupted monologue as described by the dramaturg himself. Even though her utterances are characterized by pauses and leaps in logic, a certain rhythm, fluidity, and coherence are still perceivable. Towards the close of this scene, Teresita’s speech adopts a rhythm that mimics sexual intercourse until climax is reached. This way, the parallel between

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Teresita’s discourse and the intimate non-verbal cues of the sexual act are drawn. This juxtaposition suggests anagnorysis for this character. Yara González-Montes explores Corrales’ characters in general and indicates that colocados en un mundo en que se han roto todas las barreras de la moral tradicional, estos seres atormentados por el deseo cruzan por la escena sin lograr ni la felicidad, ni el sosiego [placed in a world in which all traditional moral barriers are breached, these individuals tormented by desire cross the stage without achieving happiness nor tranquility.] (González-Montes 2001–2002: 219) In Teresita’s autoerotic scene, Corrales utilizes the pauses and ellipses to build the discourse that yields a form of expression for Teresita, the language that is her sexuality (Corrales 1998: 39). Until now, the traits of her language implied that she was repressing the part of her being that most identifies her – her sexuality. The non-verbal dialectic that Teresita engages in to discover her own sexuality and realize that she will never be able to fully express it serves as a parallel that Corrales draws to those living under Castro’s dictatorship. Corrales’ play is an allegory for the loss of innocence, an awakening of Cuba’s citizens, and a yearning to escape current conditions. Essentially, his piece parallels the overall evolution of Cuba in relation to the Revolution; particularly, for those who were or were considered to be dissidents. Pedro Monge Rafuls affirms that Corrales’ plays generally take place in the decade of the 1950s, which was Corrales’ adolescence. The critic explains that his characters and the plot are seen from the perspective of this young man that was beginning to experience and discover the Cuba of that time period, una Cuba sexual, atrevidamente sexual donde se vivía una existencia burguesa en constante ebullición social y política que unos pocos años después explotaría en la revolución que cambió las estructuras socio-económicapolítica-morales de la Isla. [a sexual Cuba, daringly sexual, where one lived a bourgeois existence in constant social and political agitation that would later explode into the revolution that changed the socio-political-economic-moral structures of the Island.] (Monge Rafuls 1998: 90) Though he sets his plays in the decade of the fifties, Corrales wrote Las sábanas in the late eighties – a moment in Cuban history when the dictatorship was effecting a new wave of repression and rectification of the ideals of its country’s people as the rest of the world was experiencing a significant shift through the events leading up to and following the fall of the wall in Berlin and, along with this, the symbolic end to pro-Soviet ideals and the Iron Curtain.

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This shift is exactly what Teresita goes through in Las sábanas. She starts the play as an adolescent learning about and exploring her sexuality and as the play closes we see a woman who has realized the fissure between her desires/dreams and the reality of her circumstances, which she would prefer to escape from. Teresita loses her innocence, but arrives at sexual awakening by the end of the eight years that pass in the play. Though, by the end of the interrupted monologue, she has yet to fully apply her awakened sexuality. Lucio and Otto – Teresita’s two sexual partners – are each different, each representing different moments in her life as well as contrasting perspectives and dynamic with her. Lucio is her first sexual partner and is associated with desire, ecstasy and pleasure, while her husband Otto with domination, obligation and abuse. Teresita behaves and interacts differently with each male partner; with Lucio she is positive, hopeful, and the sexual satisfaction is mutual; meanwhile, she denies Otto sex because of the negative way he treats her and because he admits never actually being sexually aroused by her. In terms of a sexual relationship and the differences in the nature of the interactions between Teresita and her partners, through his actions and speech Otto is solely focused on pleasing himself; he makes often incorrect assumptions about the needs and desires of Teresita and women in general. By contrast, Lucio draws his sexual pleasure from helping Teresita explore and define her needs and desires. During the second act, fourth scene of the play, Lucio and Teresita have reunited after not having seen each other for eight years. They exchange rings in a mostly non-verbal intimate and bittersweet symbolic marriage ceremony, which is followed immediately by a long uncomfortable silent pause and a crying spell by Teresita (Corrales 1998: 25). In this moment, she has a great deal that she wants to say to Lucio and yet she is unable to find the words to do so. Nevertheless, Lucio initiates an exchange in which they each unveil several truths. From here, the truths behind their first sexual encounter are revealed – Lucio indicated that he realized she was a virgin because of the soiled sheets, though she had lied about this and her age at the time. She admits that she knew that he had not taken her to a friend’s place, but rather to a hotel known for hourly rental. Here both Lucio and Teresita are in their most vulnerable moment together. Yet rather than bonding over this, they argue, Lucio excuses himself to go to the bathroom and never returns even though in a later scene his return is expected. This scene between Lucio and Teresita evokes similarities to the often idealistic nostalgia felt and expressed by Cubans living on the island during the 50s as well as their longing for a return to their life at that time – a longing that, realistically, has little chance to be fulfilled in the expected way. The non-verbal dialectic that Corrales edifies extends even into Teresita’s costuming and the bed linens as visual cues not only into her current state in a given instant, but also into the contrast between her interactions with each sexual partner and her true being. The play consists of two acts and seven scenes designated only by the changing of bed linens and/or Teresita’s transformation of lingerie. The linens and negligee are interchangeable in the play and prompt the spectator to ponder the symbolism of these set pieces and costumes. These visual signifiers serve a purpose beyond merely being temporal markers. Teresita makes

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seven costume changes during the play, six of them involving negligee that varies in appearance from ordinary to extremely sensual, according to the descriptions in the didascalia. Closer observation of these transformations in attire reveal that Teresita’s lingerie wear correlates directly to whom is accompanying her on stage in the scene and the nature of her interaction with that individual. So the more ordinary attire is associated with Otto and Gladys, whereas the more sensual negligee is linked to the scenes which have direct or indirect connection to Lucio. The bed linens evolve in colour during the span of the play. Though these do not necessarily correspond to a particular character, they do align with the degree to which Teresita feels she is living her true self. The play opens with pure white sheets (Corrales 1998: 5). Depending on the cultural or religious traditions involved, white is associated with purity, innocence, chastity, wisdom, loyalty, humility, simplicity, power, divinity and rebirth (Varichon 2006: 8–49). Once Teresita appears as a married woman for the first time in the first act-second scene, the white sheets are changed for blue ones (Corrales 1998: 12). The colour blue can be associated in certain cultures or belief systems with debasement, low social caste, abjection, even as an omen to death. On the island of Sumba, east of Bali, a blue-dyed cloth has come to “represent the women’s mute protestation against what they perceive as injustice in their lives; it is a whisper of love” when the men in their lives leave or die. In Middle Eastern cultures, the colour blue was associated with devious or vindictive natures, while in western traditions it has corresponded to royalty, nobility, fidelity and peace (Varichon 2006: 175–177). The blue sheets on Teresita’s bed are a cold hue perhaps telling of her inner sadness and disillusion with her relationship with her husband. In scenes 3 through 5 the sheets are switched to pink. Here, Teresita shows signs of wanting to escape from the current circumstances of her marriage to Otto or there is an encounter with Lucio. The colour pink draws association with the idiomatic concept of vision through rose-coloured glasses, of having an optimistic albeit idealistic perspective. As a mix of white and red, the colour pink can also serve to render ambiguous the division between the symbolic value that each of its derivative hues possess. The symbolism of white has previously been identified. Meanwhile, red is symbolic of passion, power, life and death, attraction and rejection, privilege, and it corresponds to the feminine world in the Taoist tradition (Varichon 2006: 82–129). In these scenes involving pinkcoloured sheets, the protagonist finds herself caught in between the life that a patriarchal society imposes on a female and that which she would like to have where she would be free to be with a partner who is her equal, not one that is oppressive and dominating towards her. This is an example of the duality that was previously indicated is a common thread of José Corrales’ characters, individuals caught between provincial morals and traditions and those of more urban/metropolitan areas as Teresita is in Guanabacoa – a geographic location that is neither rural nor urban capital. In the sixth scene – Teresita’s autoerotic scene and the one in which she is anxiously awaiting Lucio’s return – the linens are red, symbolizing not only her heightened sexual self-awareness and anxiety about her lover’s anticipated

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arrival, but also a moment in which Teresita believes to have reached maximum self-empowerment. Despite this, in the seventh and final scene of the play, Teresita changes the sheets back to pink once she recognises the reality of her circumstances and makes an unspoken determination of how to deal with it. After declaring to herself, “Bueno, Teresita, tienes que cambiar las sábanas” [Well, Teresita, you must change the sheets], the protagonist removes the red sheets, replaces them with pink ones, removes her ring, and exits the stage (Corrales 1998: 43–44). What is not clarified in the didascalia for this moment is which ring she is removing – her wedding ring for her marriage to Otto or the ring that had been given to her by Lucio during a previous symbolic exchange of vows. The spectator can only deduce whose ring she is removing and what her next step will be from the fact that she was in a hotel waiting to have a rendezvous with Lucio and it becomes clear that he will never show up. This fact returns her to her previous circumstance of an unfulfilling marriage to Otto and, therefore, a time and space again associated with the colour pink because she will still find herself with the desire to flee her situation, but this possibility remains unattainable. The evolution of the colour of the sheets and of the sensuality of the lingerie offer the spectator additional clues into the emotional state of the protagonist – love and passion or lack thereof – but they also suggest the moments of truth and reality, dreams and wishes, and moments in which Teresita negotiates the blurred area in between these. The lingerie and bed sheets are removable objects – even disposable – but the conditions that Teresita lives in and that the common Cuban citizen live in are not as easily changed, if not through some form of escape or creation of alternate realities. In addition to the sheets and the lingerie, there is a third part of Teresita’s costuming that holds its own symbolic value: her glasses. Though Teresita is not wearing them constantly, she puts them on and looks through the window in moments when she wants to escape, to dream, or at least to consider another possibility for her life. Despite this, her musings are always cut short by Otto’s verbal objection to her physical appearance with glasses. He always prevents her from keeping them on (Corrales 1998: 18–19, 33, and 40). In this sense, he censors her dreams and wishes, her true self. As we have seen, not only does Otto censor Teresita’s true being on several occasions, but she does so herself as well. This self-censorship is not unlike that which becomes a defense and survival mechanism or even a weapon when living under dictatorial circumstances. That is, Teresita’s self-censoring is rendered parallel to that of some Cubans’ dreams and plans being censored and controlled by Castro’s regime. In conclusion, Corrales places the use of silence and non-verbal cues as a weapon of expression, when no other form of expression is possible. As shown by the techniques of fragmentation, ellipses, verbal pauses, and even visual censorship in costuming and set pieces selected by the author of Las sábanas, the non-verbal language is placed in the forefront. Corrales positions the protagonist’s thoughts in relief when she, herself is unable to utter them. The dramaturg presents Teresita over the span of eight years of her youth. She is a young Cuban

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woman who hides her true vibrant, sensual self behind an inaudible though visible and perceptible dialectic. About Corrales generation of dramaturgs, Gail Bulman has affirmed, “The texts of the New Cuban Dramaturgy reinvent the Cuban and, at the same time, create their own place in Latin American theatre history. Each play shows how Cubans, living in the diaspora, can rewrite the national script and give voice to their once silenced identity” (Bulman 2007: 232). As was previously indicated in this article when elaborating upon Corrales’ tendencies to situate his plays in the 50s, in Las sábanas Teresita, the protagonist, is not living in the diaspora but rather in the years leading up to the Castro dictatorship – this is done perhaps as a conscious strategy to veil the theatrical piece from encountering issues of censorship. Corrales constructs a non-verbal linguistic that parallels his own need to find an alternative voice and requires the interpretation of the spectator to arrive at a deeper understanding not only of the protagonist, but also of the experiences of Cuban exile writers, like the playwright himself, and how their experiences inside and outside of a postrevolutionary Cuba may differ from the dictatorial contexts found elsewhere around the world.

Notes 1 Note that the English version of Spanish-language citations found in this article have been translated by this article’s author. 2 For a full transcript of Fidel Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961, refer to the Latin American Network Information Center database of the University of Texas, Austin. Cited in bibliography. 3 For more on this article: www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/arts/design/in-cuba-artisticfreedom-remains-an-open-question.html?_r=0

References Boudet, R. I. (2012): Cuba: viaje al teatro en la Revolución (1960–1989). Santa Monica: Ediciones de la Flecha. Bulman, G. A. (2007): Staging Words, Performing Worlds: Intertextuality and Nation in Contemporary Latin American Theatre. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Burnett, V. (2015): “Blurring Boundaries between Art and Activism in Cuba: In Cuba, Artistic Freedom Remains an Open Question”, New York Times January 23, www.nytimes. com/2015/01/24/arts/design/in-cuba-artistic-freedom-remains-an-open-question. html?_r=0 Castro, F. (30 June 1961): Palabras a los intelectuales. Havana: National Cultural Council. In Latin American Network Information Center - University of Texas, Austin, http://lanic. utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1961/19610630.html. Corrales, J. (1998): Teatro y poesía 4: Las sábanas. Princeton: The Presbyter’s Peartree, Inc. González-Montes, Y. (2001–2002): “El legado literario de José Corrales”, Caribe 4.2/5.1: 217–225. Lobato Morchón, R. (2002): El teatro del absurdo en Cuba (1948–1968). Madrid: Editorial Verbum. Monge Rafuls, P. (1998): “José Corrales: Un buen ejemplo de la dramaturgia cubana en el exilio”, Círculo: Revista de Cultura 27: 89–95.

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Montes Huidobro, M. (1997): “La voz del otro en el teatro cubano contemporáneo”, in El teatro y su mundo: Estudios sobre el teatro iberoamericano y argentine, O. Pelletieri (ed.). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna, 99–107. Pavis, P. (1998): Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pogolotti, G. (1999): “Mostrar lo invisible”, in De las dos orillas: Teatro cubano, H. Adler and A. Herr (eds.). Madrid: Vervuert- Iberoamericana and Frankfurt: Vervuert, 19–27. Sánchez Grey-Alba, E. (2000): “La voz del silencio en el teatro de José Corrales”, Circulo: Revista de Cultura 29: 105–113. Valdés, Z. (2005): “Ser escritor en Cuba”, in Bienvenidos a la transición, G. G. Piney Roche (ed.). Cádiz: Aduana vieja-Colección 1812, 34–41. Varichon, A. (2006): Colors: What They Mean and How to Make Them. New York: Abrams. Zalacaín, D. (1999): “El viaje a la otra orilla: exilio y reencuentro”, in De las dos orillas: teatro cubano, H. Adler and A. Herr (eds.). Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana and Frankfurt: Vervuert, 187–202.

16 Appropriating the past under Somoza and the Sandinistas The polyvalent sign of El Güegüence E. J. Westlake

The people of Nicaragua have spent the better part of the last five centuries struggling under Spanish colonial rule and US imperialism. Nicaraguan theatre reflects all of the facets of art under colonial oppression and through foreign intervention. Indeed, the very first “play” after the Conquest was likely developed during colonial times and for the purpose of lampooning colonial authority. El Güegüence emerged as a dance drama written in the colonial mestizo Spanish-Nahuatl dialect during the 18th, or possibly even the 17th century in southwestern Nicaragua. The piece and its clever and subversive title character were fully embraced by the Nicaraguan intelligentsia in the 1930s. The 1930s also saw the beginning of the brutally repressive Somoza dynasty. El Güegüence found new life as a cultural icon during the Somoza regime largely due to a push by poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra, who “discovered” the dance drama through the comments of the poet Rubén Darío and the publication of the dramatic text by American anthropologist Daniel Brinton (Brinton and Mántica Abaunza 1969). More interestingly, El Güegüence continued to grow in importance in the Nicaraguan cultural imagination after the dictatorship, with the implementation of the Sandinista grassroots arts programmes. Indeed, El Güegüence morphed rather easily from a figure and a narrative that supported the nationalist ideals of the three dictatorial regimes to those that seemed to reflect the democratic socialist values of the post-dictatorship government. The key to this mutability lies in the ways in which nationalist visions are expressed culturally in both dictatorial and post-dictatorial cultural programmes. The story of El Güegüence offers rich material for the nationalist vision in a postcolonial society. The title character, a poor but wily merchant, travels along the road to Mexico with his two sons, trading what he can. While the colonial governor and his men lament their own “poverty” (they don’t have gold pens or fancy textiles), they hatch a plan to force the merchant to pay taxes, and send the bailiff to bring him to the royal court. When the bailiff arrives, Güegüence pretends to be blind and calls the bailiff a washerwoman. He then feigns ignorance that he does not know the proper protocol, and the bailiff offers to teach him for a price. The bailiff ’s stipulation, that the lesson will cost Güegüence, gets twisted around by Güegüence, who pretends to be deaf. Then, when he finally does

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pay the bailiff, Güegüence performs a “short con” to actually make out better than when they began. In the royal court, Güegüence continues his shenanigans. He shows off his vast wealth, knowing that this appeals to the governor’s greed. The governor calls upon Güegüence’s two sons, Don Forcico and Don Ambrosio, to corroborate his story. Don Forcico backs up Güegüence’s stories. Don Ambrosio, on the other hand, calls his father a fraud and a liar. He tells the governor that Güegüence is a common thief and that the goods he shows off are old junk that he has stolen. Furious, Güegüence insists that Don Ambrosio isn’t really his son, stating that his wife had an affair with another man while he was away on business. In the end, he successfully convinces the governor to give Don Forcico his daughter in marriage. Güegüence triumphs over the machinations of colonial power. Today, troupes perform the dance-drama El Güegüence as part of the Fiesta de San Sebastián in Diriamba, Nicaragua, a small village just south of Managua. Dancers rarely perform the text of the drama because it is written in a hybrid Nahuatl-Spanish that is not easily accessible. In 2005, El Güegüence received the proclamation from UNESCO designating it part of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912–2002) famously referred to the main character of the dance drama as “el primer personaje de la literatura nicaragüense [the first character of Nicaraguan literature]” (Cuadra and Coronel Urtecho 1968: 65) and stated that “la obra permanece viva porque su protagonista es un personaje que el pueblo nicaragüense lleva en la sangre [the work lives on [. . .] because its protagonist is a character that the Nicaraguan people have carried in their blood]” (1968: 64). Cuarda admired Güegüence’s ability to foil the colonial governor’s greedy aspirations. He describes Güegüence as a trickster: “burlón, picaresco, lado desconfiado, haciéndose el sordo, y diciendo de su primera entrada a escena su primera frase doble sentido [mocking, mischievous, equally distrustful, feigning deafness, and saying, from his first entrance, his first sentence of double meaning]”, and then he lists the traits he finds admirable, including that he is a “viejo matrero, se burla de la autoridad [old maverick, mocking authority]” (1968: 66). Cuadra, however, was not anti-authoritarian per se. Indeed, he belonged to the Nicaraguan Vanguardia movement, a group of poets and students who embraced Fascism. They all signed on as supporters of Anastasio Somoza García when he installed himself as president in 1937. Cuadra believed only a political “strong man” could save Nicaragua. And so his admiration for the trickster and his insistence that Güegüence flowed in the blood of all Nicaraguans raises some questions about postcolonial nationalism and the role it plays in authoritarian regimes. The political leanings of the members of the Vanguardia are well known, although Cuadra’s own views are somewhat less straightforward. Cuadra, together with other young poets formed the Vanguardia in 1931. Like many of the literary movements of the time, the Vanguardia took its cues from the European avant-garde, most notably the French precursors to Surrealism. All of the

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Vanguardia members came from the wealthy patrician class of Granada. Cuadra studied law, but never became a practicing lawyer, opting instead to run the family farm and lumber mill. While the members of the Vanguardia applauded the rebellion mounted by Augusto César Sandino against the US Marines in the Segovia Mountains, they firmly supported the then-General Somoza after he orchestrated Sandino’s assassination. They admired Sandino’s nationalism, but did not subscribe to his leftist platform. The Vanguardia members formed an organisation called the Camisas Azules, named after the same phenomenon associated with falangismo in Spain, in turn named after the Camicie Nere of the Italian fascists, and began publishing a newspaper called La Reacción. The young men had read the work of Spanish fascist Ramiro de Maeztu, an advocate of national syndicalism combined with Catholic values. His ideology was closely related to Spanish falangismo although it was more ardently pro-Capitalism. The members of the Camisas Azules began printing lampoons of the current Nicaraguan president, Liberal Party leader Juan Bautista Sacasa. They also printed a manifesto in 1935 where they collectively declared their support of Somoza: Consideramos la candidatura del general Anastasio Somoza como una fuerza real, a la que pueden sumarse – tarde o temprano, según él, sepa comprender el bien público y adaptar sus principios y sus actos a su realización – las fuerzas morales necesarias que le aseguren la cooperación de su pueblo. Es un hecho que el general Somoza está actualmente en condiciones ventajosas para obtener el triunfo de su candidatura presidencial. Lo apoyamos, entre otras razones, porque puede perpetuarse en el poder. Apoyamos su candidatura para que sea la última candidatura, así como votaremos para dejar de votar. [We consider the candidacy of General Anastasio Somoza to be a true force, to which can be added – sooner or later, according to him, as he comes to understand the public good and adapt his principles and actions to their realisation – the necessary moral forces that will ensure the cooperation of the people. It is a fact that General Somoza is currently under advantageous conditions for the victory of his presidential candidacy. We support him because, among other things, he can remain in power. We support his candidacy because he will be the last candidate, and we will vote to stop voting. (qtd. in “Los ‘reaccionarios’ y su aventura política” 2013: n.p.)1 The Vanguardia members wanted someone who would stay in power indefinitely. The following year, when they interviewed Somoza, they again clarified their agenda: [L]a estrella de Somoza ha venido guiando la transición nacional hacia el afianzamiento del orden y el robustecimiento del Estado [. . .] La juventud reaccionaria, a la que nosotros pertenecemos, amiga de un poder fuerte, libre y durable, [. . .] se adhirió a la candidatura del general Somoza porque la

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considera la más a propósito para operar la reforma del Estado y la reorganización del pueblo. Para nosotros – concluían –, Somoza es la paz porque representa la fuerza y la unidad, la disciplina militar y la unión nacional. [[T]he star of Somoza has been guiding the national transition to the strengthening of order and the strengthening of the state [. . .]. The reactionary youth, the movement to which we belong, friends of a strong, free, and durable power [. . .] supported the candidacy of General Somoza because we consider him to be the most appropriate man to orchestrate state reform and reorganization of the people. As far as we’re concerned – we concluded – Somoza is peace because he represents strength and oneness, military discipline, and national unity.] (ibid.) Most of the Vanguardia members continued supporting Somoza after he came to power. Somoza rewarded several of them with appointments to various minor offices. Cuadra, however, became increasingly dissatisfied with Somoza’s handling of the government. After Cuadra hung posters of Sandino in protest, Somoza’s National Guard arrested him and jailed him temporarily. The historical record of Cuadra’s political leanings from this point on has been scant, perhaps because of a desire for Cuadra to bury his fascist past as much as possible and perhaps because of the complicity of those who revere his work. Many accounts, including his own, suggest that Cuadra became ardently anti-Somoza after his arrest. It is important to understand, however, that Cuadra was anti-Somoza, but not anti-fascist. He could see that Somoza used government policy to enrich himself at the expense of the rest of the country. Somoza’s personal economic goals often came into conflict with those of the Granada patrician class. This kind of kleptocracy probably prompted Cuadra to see Somoza as a thug and not a legitimate agent of the kind of fascist reorganisation that would be beneficial to the nation. Cuadra used his fascist contacts to form a resistance to Somoza, travelling to Italy and to Spain to try to raise money for weapons to overthrow him, but to no avail. When Cuadra published his Spanish translation of the original hybridlanguage text El Güegüence in his journal Cuaderno Taller San Lucas in 1942, he had not changed his political positions much, if at all. He connected with the dance-drama as an avant-garde writer, a nationalist, and a fascist in his recognition of elements in it that fit with the project of the Nicaraguan avant-garde, his admiration for the struggle against foreign imperialism and political corruption, and his reading of the text as a “blood and soil” narrative. The Vanguardistas were attracted to the sounds used in the poetry of the Futurists and Dadaists. For this reason, a primary obsession of the Vanguardia was with the play of language. Vicky Unruh examines specifically the staging by the Vanguardia members of the dramatic poem Chinfonía burguesa in 1931 along with a whole evening of readings and performances reminiscent of the performances of the Dada artists at the Café Voltaire in Zurich. Unruh states that they “sought to exploit the creative potential of oral language.

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This fascination with the powers and creative limits of living speech pervades avant-garde discourse and practice”, and she goes on to compare Chinfonía burguesa with Apollinaire’s “Les femmes” and Marinetti’s tributes to the “brilliant talker” (1987: 45). This focus on the potential of language is one key to understanding Cuadra’s fascination with the hybrid language dance-drama El Güegüence. But the work of the Vanguardia was based also on the unique qualities of Nicaraguan language in their quest for a truth at the heart of a national culture. Unruh notes that the “dual agenda of the Nicaraguan vanguardistas was to “modernize literary expression and to create a viable national tradition” (1987: 38). Cuadra speaks at length about the Vanguardia’s interest in folk culture: Todo este fervor y sus delirios formaron el horno donde debía cocerse el barro de nuestro canto nativo. Una vez removido el fuego del amor patrio, se abrió para nosotros una etapa nueva de búsqueda de la originalidad. La fórmula era clara: lo original es lo originario. Y nos fuimos al pueblo interrogando su voz, su expresión, su lengua viva, sus formas, sus nombramientos. [All this fervor and our delusions formed the oven where it must bake the mud of our native song. Once the fire of love of country was removed from the oven, it opened for us a new stage of search for originality. The formula was clear: the original is the original. And we went to the people interrogating their voice, their expression, their living language, their ways, their designations.] (1958: 188) The Vanguardia rejected the cultural traditions of 19th-century modernism, a product of the bourgeoisie, a segment of society which the Vanguardia members held in utter contempt. But the recovery and use of folk culture would infuse the new movement with a deep connection to the nation. El Güegüence stood, for Cuadra, as the absolute beginning of Nicaraguan culture. Cuadra admired the hybrid language of El Güegüence for the same reason. Like the “nursery rhymes” of Chinfonía burguesa, it seemed whimsical and childlike, but also primitive and mysterious. The hybridity represented for Cuadra the moment of inception for the nation: [E]l nicaragüense fue un pueblo que fue pasando lentamente de una lengua a otra. Fue el encuentro y la lenta fusión de dos lenguas y por varios siglos lo que había era una mezcolanza, una jerigonza como resultado de esa fusión lingüística. [. . .] el castellano dominó, pero adquiriendo una gran riqueza de palabras, giros y libertades sintácticas que explican el poder expresivo posterior de un Rubén Darío. [The Nicaraguans were a people passing slowly from one language to another. It was a meeting and the slow fusion of two languages and for several centuries it had been a mixture, a dialect as a result of this linguistic fusion. [. . .] Castilian dominated, but acquiring a great richness of words,

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turns of phrase, and syntactic liberties that explain the later expressive power of a Rubén Darío.] (Layera 1991: 1035) Similar “primitivist” trends appear in the work of the Dada poets, particularly Hugo Ball who recited “sound poems” and later surrealists such as Antonin Artaud, whose analyses of Balinese and Yaqui dancers influenced his “Theatre of Cruelty”. The native people hold a certain power that can be reached in the subconscious mind of the civilised European. For conservative writers like Cuadra, El Güegüence also serves as a “blood and soil” narrative. The name “Blood and Soil”, or Blut und Boden, comes from the literary and cinematic traditions of Nazi Germany. The Nazi’s valued narratives that valorise both racial purity and a connection to the land as didactic nationalist cultural works to inspire and unite the people. Films and plays of the time often show the value of hard work on the land and the importance of protecting pure Aryans from potential contamination. Aryan peasant girls who wandered into the city were in danger of being taken advantage of by unscrupulous nonAryans who might pollute their racial purity. El Güegüence, as a folk character, stands in as a common Nicaraguan peasant, and the mestizaje that occurs in the play works as a kind of new world racial purity. Cuadra certainly valorised the peasant. His best-known play, Por los caminos van los campesinos, written in 1937, features a poor farmer and his family caught in the crossfire of the conflict between liberals and conservatives. Before we even meet the characters, Cuadra describes the land with a romantic lens: the straw hut home is like “una persona muda, que vive en todos [a mute person, who lives in all of us]” under a tree like it is “como debajo de un ángel verde [under a green angel]”. He notes that “El rancho es un personaje que se alegra o llora, que encierra el odio o deja escapar la queja como un viejo animal famélico [the farm is a character who is glad and who cries, who holds in its hatred or blurts out its complaint like an old starving animal]” (Cuadra and Coronel Urtecho 1986: 17). Their poverty, too, is portrayed as a virtue. The family works hard, and yet perseveres despite their poverty. It is no accident that the lawyer, the corrupting influence of the city, is named “Fausto”. The lawyer preys upon the trusting nature of the peasants who simply want to secure a future for their children. Reverence for the land works as a kind of adhesive to bind citizens together in nationalist discourse. Furthermore, in a society built on agrarian feudalism, the aristocracy is most closely aligned with the peasant class, on whom they have built their wealth and society. A nationalism based on conservative ideology would prop up this alliance in the form of a romantic peasant ideal, creating peasant characters who accept their poverty with grace and who reject any notion of class warfare. El Güegüence does not employ the gentle farmer. However, the title character uses his resourcefulness to survive and calls on his folk humour and wit to gain the upper hand. He does not represent the sophisticated urban bourgeoisie whom Cuadra detested. Güegüence is part of a long tradition of peasants

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travelling throughout Central America to eke out a living. While Cuadra admired that Güegüence was an “old maverick, mocking authority”, Cuadra does not view that authority as “authority” in general. He saw the authority of the colonial governor as a foreign invader attempting to impose his will on the Nicaraguan people for his own enrichment. In the early 20th century, such a colonial authority attempted again to dominate the Nicaraguan nation in the form of US intervention. But in terms of “racial purity”, the “blood” aspect of the Blut und Boden ideal, Cuadra must use a different paradigm to define “purity”. Unlike the Nazi nationalists of Germany, Cuadra would have a more difficult time claiming an ancient tie to the land. For the Nazi’s, pseudoscientific writing declared that the Nordic people came from prehistoric Germany. The descendants made up the Herrenvolk, or racially pure “Master Race”. Because the elite of Nicaragua descended from immigrants who came from Spain and not from Nicaragua, they could not claim a mystical connection with the land. However, Cuadra relies on a kind of nationalist mestizaje to stand in for this purity and grant the elite class ownership of the land they occupy. While Cuadra said that the Vanguardia sought the “original” in their pursuit of folk culture, he did not mean a purely indigenous culture. El Güegüence is not the oldest performance tradition in Nicaragua – not by a long shot. Indeed, it was significant that Cuadra, in light of his political leanings, chose to valorise a mestizo text and to dub the title character as the first character of Nicaragua. Cuadra’s writing about Nicaraguan literature, while celebrating the indigenous elements, reflects the Eurocentric notion that all things from Europe are superior to any culture inherited from the Americas. He states: The Greco-Roman tradition is more accessible through our language [. . .]. The indigenous tradition is more difficult because it has scarcely been expressed in language and what is there becomes a challenge. But this challenge, I believe, inspires creativity and opens mysterious zones of human thought and feeling that the western world, with its excess of rationalism, has forgotten. (qtd. in White 1986: 33) To Cuadra, Nicaraguans inherited the primitive – dreams, the subconscious, vivid imagery – from indigenous people, and the ability to reason and to write from Europe. Europeans were rational; the indigenous people were not. And although he is celebrating a mestizo culture that has the best of both worlds, the devaluing and erasure of indigenous people is clear in his statement. In Breviario Imperial, Cuadra reflects on The Conquest as a positive moment in the development of Nicaraguan culture. As he considers Spanish Fascism and embraces it as his own ideology, he writes: Somos y tenemos que ser cruzados para responder con la verdad a la herencia inmensa que nos dejaron nuestros fundadores. Porque esa herencia se

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encierra en una palabra: conquistadores; y esta juventud, que anhela la grandeza de la Patria, y en el futuro la grandeza y fuerza imperial de la América, debe ser de nuevo, integral y decididamente, ¡juventud conquistadora! [We are and we have to be crusaders to answer truthfully to the immense heritage that our founders left behind. Because this heritage is contained in one word: Conquest. And this youth, who yearn for the greatness of the country, and for the future greatness and imperial strength of America must be, again, totally and decisively, conquering youth!] (1940: 60–61, emphasis in the original) It would make sense that Cuadra would embrace a dramatic text created at the moment of conquest, when the indigenous culture was being actively assimilated into and effectively annihilated by the Spanish culture. Between the creation of the Noble Savage in the literature of Romanticism and the drive for independence in the Americas, nationalists undertook the appropriation of the culture of native people by the colonisers following their removal or assimilation. In mestizaje, Latin American writers propose that the people of the Americas are better for this blending. Furthermore, the appropriation allowed everyone in the nation, including Europeans with no indigenous heritage, to claim a sacred link with the land. In this sense, mestizaje serves the same function as Nazi ideas of Herrenvolk. Cuadra continued to serve as the voice of the elite in the resistance to Somoza and his two sons, who continued the brutal dictatorship. The wealthy and middle class grew more dissatisfied as the economy turned in the 1950s and the ever-increasingly repressive measures of the younger Somoza, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, alienated the last supporters of the regime. An earthquake in 1972, and Somoza Debayle’s funnelling of the relief funds into his own companies, finally pushed the public to a tipping point. Even Cuadra supported the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, or Sandinistas) in the push to overthrow the government. But he soon became openly critical of the Sandinistas after they came to power in 1979. Where the Somoza dictators had generally ignored literature and the arts, or created their own outlets for cultural propaganda, or when that didn’t work, would outright censor publication or production (in 1977, the National Guard razed Ernesto Cardenal’s peasant artists’ collective and burned the paintings there), in post-dictatorship Nicaragua, the Sandinista’s put much of their energy into creating grassroots arts communities to tackle many of the lingering social and economic issues. The new nationalism rested on the foundation of community-based and indigenous art of all kinds. The establishment of theatre collectives became an important component of spreading both important information and nationalist propaganda. As Martin Cuellar told me in an interview (2002), the Sandinistas were funding anyone who wanted to begin a theatre troupe, funding he used to form the puppet theatre Guichipilín. Ocho de Marzo began a troupe to teach women about the domestic violence laws and birth control. Nixtayolero used theatre to discuss agricultural reform. In particular,

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the Sandinistas turned to the dance-drama El Güegüence for inspiration. While the earlier fascists had seen the colonial piece as a play about the mestizo “origins” of the Nicaraguan nation, the Sandinistas cast the main characters as native Nicaraguans, and therefore read the narrative as one of indigenous resistance to colonial power. Several of the Sandinista intellectuals at the time wrote about the indigenous people of Nicaragua, calling for an end to indigenous genocide and for policies that would bring the indigenous people out of poverty. In fact, at first glance, people like Ernesto Cardenal, the national poet under the Sandinistas, and Jaime Wheelock, one of the intellectual architects of the revolution, seem to write favourably of the native peoples of Nicaragua, and they seem to be strong advocates for the indigenous communities of the region. However, if one reads the work of the Sandinistas more closely, it becomes readily apparent that such advocacy is for an imagined people situated in a distant past. The reading of the national dance-drama El Güegüence by Sandista scholars shows this warped imagining of indigenous people by white and mestizo Nicaraguans. The Sandinistas saw Güegüence as a native Nicaraguan from the Mangue (also called “Chorotega”) people. While the dance-drama is referred to as a drama of the Mangue, it has little if any of the language in it. In fact, it is written in Nahuatl-Spanish dialect, the Nahuatl being the people who displaced the Mangue people in Nicaragua. In fact, “Chorotega” is actually a Nahuatl word meaning “those who are cast out” or “those who flee”. It is likely that the piece was created by the Mangue people and then taken over by the Nahualt people after the displacement. The Sandinistas saw the revolutionary struggle as a continuation of the original national struggle of the Native Nicaraguans. As Jaime Wheelock stated: “historia comenzó con una encarnizada lucha del indio contra el colonialista español, mantenida luego – lejos de cualquier diálogo – durante los tres siglos que duró la dominación peninsular” [history began with the fierce struggle of the Indian against the Spanish colonizer, then continued – without the slightest bit of dialogue – during the three centuries-long Iberian domination]” (1980: 1). The Sandinista scholar Alejandro Dávila Bolaños read the story as a parable about native people resisting the Spanish colonisers. He states that El Güegüence is: “Teatro Popular Revolucionario durante todo el dilatado período colonial español hasta 1821. Esta Obra, dialogada, escrita por Autor Indígena, desconocido, constituye el más vigoroso documento contra la dominación peninsular en toda la América Latina [Popular Revolutionary Theatre during the entire expanse of the Spanish colonial period until 1821. This work, in dialogue, written by an unknown indigenous author, constitutes the most vigorous exhibit against Spanish domination in all of Latin America]” (1973: 19). Dávila Bolaños believed that the drama “Fué escrito para mantener viva la llama de la Rebelión de los Indios, la confianza en el triunfo de las empuñadas por los naturales, el éxito de la lucha librada contra sus opresores [was written to keep alive the flame of Rebellion of the Indians, confidence in the armed triumph by the natives, the success of the struggle waged against their oppressors]” (1973: 23). This refashioning of

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the parable as a people’s revolution fit the Sandinista metanarrative of revolution as birthright, of revolution as a natural outcome of foreign domination. The Sandinistas were able to appropriate the indigenous identity and stand in as the original people fending off an alien occupation. Both Nicaraguan and US intellectuals often argued that the singular author (because there can only be one) must have been a mestizo, because of his command of Nahuatl and his primitive grasp of Spanish, or wholly Spanish, because most people spoke the hybrid language and the Spanish was adequate for a Spanish labourer or soldier. Dávila Bolaños supposes that the author must be an indigenous man who worked in the royal court, “Haciendo uso, copiando con fidelidad estos encuentros judiciales, dotó a su personaje indio, El Güegüence de todos los recursos humanos y legales, para evadir en la Obra, los abusos, exacciones, caprichos y violaciones, que las Altas Autoridades (El clero y los españoles todos), representados por el Gobernador Tastuanes y el Alguacil Mayor, inventaban para robarles arteramente [copying faithfully and using these judicial meetings, endowing his Indian character El Güegüence with all human and legal resources to deflect the abuse, extortion, whims, and violations that the High Authority (all Clergy and Spanish), represented by the Governor Tastuanes and Bailiff, invented in order to craftily rob them]” (1973: 32). Dávila Bolaños makes good use of the linguistic work of Carlos Mántica in his examination of the word “Güegüence”. Mántica supposes the word means “old man”, or perhaps more appropriately “revered elder”, from the Nahuatl word huehue. Güegüence is the village elder, the “encarnación viva de la Rebelión Indígena [living incarnation of the indigenous rebellion]” (1973: 26). His first son, Don Forcico, is his legitimate son, and a “continuador de la lucha [maintainer of the struggle]” (ibid.). Unlike fascist interpretations, which cast the father and both of his sons as mestizos, in Dávila Bolaños’ interpretation, only the illegitimate son Don Ambrosio is of mixed race and as such an “aliado servil de los españoles [servile ally of the Spanish]” (ibid.). Additionally, Dávila Bolaños imbues his main character with a host of characteristics and a history not substantiated by any other scholarship on El Güegüence. He suggests that the author was a member of the nagualistic order: Del texto de la Obra, se deduce asimismo que el Autor, en un tiempo de su vida agitada, hizo la guerra contra los blancos y hasta fue Jefe de una tropa que operó en [. . .] la secta indígena de Los Naguales cuya finalidad era forjar un gran frente de jóvenes guerrilleros, descendientes de aborígenes, para definitivamente arrojar a los españoles de nuestras tierras. El Abate Brasseur de Bourbourg, todavía en el siglo pasado, oyó hablar de esta Asociación, que la calificó como “una masonería contra la raza blanca”. [Within the text of the play, it is also clear that the author, in the time of his busy life, made war against the whites and was even the Commander of a troop that operated in [. . .] the Indian sect of Naguals whose purpose was to forge a broad front of young aboriginal guerrillas to definitively cast the Spaniards out of our lands. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, even in the

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last century, heard of this association, and called it a “Freemasonry against the white race”.] (1973: 32–33) In a footnote to this, he explains that this nagualism is an “esotérica ASOCIACION INDIGENA, de la cual muy poco sabemos, pues nuestros indios evaden las o dicen sencillamente que es ‘cosa secreta de los viejos’, y ‘cosa mala que ya no existe’ [esoteric INDIGENOUS ASSOCIATION, of which very little is known, for our Indian evades answering, or simply says it’s ‘secret thing of old’ and ‘bad thing that no longer exists’”] (1973: 33n9). He goes further with the stereotype of the mysterious and spiritual native, quoting others describing the religion as a bloody cult saying the name: se deriva de “nahuatli”, secreto, misterio, oculto; en su origen es aplicado a las tribus de origen mexicano, porque fueron sus sacerdotes y señores quienes introdujeron en Temoauchan o Chiapas, los misterios horrorosos en los cuales se derramaba mucha sangre humana y que estaban mezclados con una multitud de supersticiones, cuyos ritos tomaron después el nombre de “nahualismo”. [derived from “nahuatli”, secret, mystery, hidden; originally applied to the tribes of Mexican origin, because they were its priests and lords who introduced in Temoauchan or Chiapas the horrific mysteries in which much human blood was shed and they were mixed with a multitude of superstitions whose rites afterward took the name “nahualism”.] (ibid.)2 Interestingly, however, Dávila Bolaños’ hypothetical author, although he clearly belongs to a simple-minded and superstitious group of people, is paradoxically complex in his thinking. Dávila Bolaños’ indigenous author also understood deeply how to communicate double messages with the hybrid language. Dávila Bolaños marvels at his ability to create one meaning for the Spanish audience and a secret message of revolution to the indigenous spectators. Dávila Bolaños manages to tie in the struggles of Güegüence with the struggles of oppressed people of the world: “se puede asegurar con certeza, que el Autor, fué gran agitador revolucionario, que además de hacer labor entre sus compañeros de raza, trabajó con el mismo empeño en las plantaciones de caña de azúcar [. . .] donde laboraban numerosos negros esclavos traídos de Cuba” [You can also say with certainty that the author was a great revolutionary agitator, who in addition to his work among his people, worked with the same determination on the sugarcane plantations [. . .] where many black slaves brought from Cuba labored]” (1973: 34). In this sense, he casts the indigenous author as a revolutionary everyman, again anchoring the struggle of the Sandinistas in the indigenous past. But he ties it to an indigenous present as well: Este Anónimo Autor indígena, llenó a cabalidad su alto cometido revolucionario, pues durante más de doscientos años mantuvo en pie, a través de

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su Obra, la acción y el deseo permanente de los Indígenas de la costa del Pacífico de Nicaragua, de luchar con las armas en la mano para terminar con el dominio de los blancos invasores. [This Anonymous Indian Author, was full to the brim with revolutionary commitment, because for over two-hundred years he stood firm; through work, action, and abiding desire, the Indigenous of the Pacific coast of Nicaragua fight, with weapons in hand, to end the domination of the white invaders.] (1973: 35) Dávila Bolaños alludes to, of course, the Miskito Indians from the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. This is interesting not so much for the fact that the Miskito people were engaged in armed struggle, but that the Miskito people were no allies of the Sandinistas. To be sure, the relationship was problematic at best. Unlike the Pacific side of Nicaragua, the east coast was originally settled by British traders interested only in extracting natural resources from the area. This was in stark contrast to the Spanish mission of conquering and completely subjugating the people of the Pacific. It was to the advantage of the British traders to maintain relatively friendly relationships with Miskito, Suma, and Rama people in order to keep the channel of trade open. In fact, the British armed the indigenous nations of the Atlantic so that they could help fend off attacks by Spanish forces. The Atlantic coast continues to differ from the Pacific in that many of the people are descended from either one of the main nations of indigenous people or from African slaves. The majority of people on the coast speak both English and Spanish. The English is similar to what you would hear in Trinidad or Jamaica and it gives the African and Indigenous residents the upper hand when in Spanish-speaking mestizo company. Until the 20th century, the territory went back and forth from British to Spanish to British hands, but the Spanish-speaking government in Managua was never able to fully integrate the geographically separate east into a unified Nicaragua. The Miskito, as a result, maintained more of an allegiance with the Protestant, English-speaking world and always looked at the Catholic and Spanish mestizos of the west as invaders. The Pacific side gained the upper hand when the United States decided to look into using Nicaragua as the site of the inter-oceanic canal at the turn of the 20th century. The government in Managua began to aggressively push to absorb the east in anticipation. Building a canal would mean pushing eastward down the San Juan River, shoring up the mestizo claim to the Atlantic coast. While Managua made several concessions to the Miskito people in order to buy their compliance, there were many unforeseen consequences for the Miskito. The site of Miskito government was moved to Bluefields, which was mostly African, while the reserve territory was mostly to the north, cutting the people off from valuable commercial ports. Commercial ventures in the area were taken over by mestizos appointed by the government, further removing the Miskito from economic activity. The United States, meanwhile, built a relationship with the Miskito in creating much-needed trade activity and providing work.

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There seemed to be common ground for a while, when the United States had to withdraw from the Atlantic because of the Depression. After the assassination of Sandino in 1934, the United States supported the Somoza dictatorship. This temporarily put the Miskito and the Sandinistas on the same side against dictatorship and against the United States. The characterisation of native people of Nicaragua by Sandinista intellectuals follows the same problematic formula we discussed earlier. Seeing themselves as the continuation of native people in struggle against imperialism, the Sandinistas often portrayed them as simple, primitive people of the past who struggled bravely, but were too simple to fend off colonisation. But they clearly situate this noble savage in the past, or characterise the noble savage as living in the present but as the primitive who lives in a bubble deep in the woods somewhere, apparently unaware of the modern world. Ernesto Cardenal draws a familiar caricature in “Canto Nacional”, where the Miskito people live naked in huts and sing love songs. In his later lampooning of the appointment of a Miskito “king” by the British, Cardenal reverts to the stereotype of the drunk and illiterate Indian, incapable of understanding how he is being manipulated by foreigners. When the Sandinistas toppled the Somoza dictatorship, they set out to bring civilisation to the poor ignorant savages. Who wouldn’t want modern agricultural methods, literacy campaigns (in Spanish) and the positive, collective restructuring of all economic activity? Indeed, the Sandinistas were surprised when the Miskito nation rebuffed Sandinista advances, viewing them as yet another incursion no different from the Somocista fascists. The Sandinistas, as Marxists, framed the current nationalist struggle in Nicaragua as strictly a class struggle. The poor peasants were unifying to throw off economic slavery in the form of economic imperialism from the United States, but managed by a feudal overlord in the form of the Somoza dynasty. The intellectual architects of the revolution envisioned that all modern problems of the people were economic, and that once economic justice was established, all other problems would fall by the wayside. This blindness to the cultural and ethnic differences made working with the indigenous nations impossible. Juliet Hooker in her piece on 20th-century visions of the Nicaraguan national character “Beloved Enemies” notes that the Sandinista ideal of Nicaragua, in actuality, merely continued the fascist ideal of Nicaragua as inherently mestizo: Successive Nicaraguan governments justified the internal colonization of black and indigenous peoples and the regions in which they lived on the basis of protonationalist and nationalist ideologies that envisioned Nicaragua as a “civilized” nation that was neither black nor Indian. (2005: 17) Hooker notes that the people of the Atlantic coast in general were viewed with suspicion, if they were acknowledged at all: [I]n the few instances when their presence was noted, they were often identified as potentially divisive agents of imperial foreign powers such as Britain

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and the United States. The FSLN’s only significant discussion of race before attaining power is in a section of its “Programa histórico” [. . .] entitled “The Atlantic Coast Will Be Integrated and Developed”. (2005: 27) In reality, the only difference between the Marxists and the earlier fascist movement was that the fascists saw the blending of the two cultures (white and indigenous), with Nicaraguan culture beginning with mestizaje, while the Sandinistas saw the beginning of the nation as a struggle against imperialism beginning with the indigenous, but ending with a classless, race-blind society. Hooker provides the perfect example of this view in the writings of Carlos Fonseca when she observes that he: claimed with regards to what is known as the “war of the Indians” of Matagalpa in 1881 that “even though it is known as the ‘War of the Indians’ . . . [the people in question] are not precisely Indians, but mestizo peasants who speak Spanish and do not retain their autochthonous language, although racially they present a dominant indigenous origin” [emphasis added]. (2005: 30)3 The native people began the class struggle, but in the Sandinista paradigm, they no longer existed. Finally, the Miskito people resisted the Sandinistas’ attempt to wipe out Miskito culture vis-à-vis forced assimilation into the Marxist refashioning of the state into a homogenously mestizo one. The Sandinistas, confounded by this resistance, used the ensuing Contra War to launch an all-out genocide. Villages were razed and people relocated “for their own protection”. Resistance leaders were rounded up and murdered. It was only after an international outcry that the Sandinistas backed off and cordoned off an autonomous zone in an attempt to keep a lid on the insurgency. In the Sandinista view – The Indian of Dávila Bolaños’ El Güegüence could be contained and therefore celebrated. The real human being is a threat and must be destroyed. The fact that El Güegüence resonated so completely with both the prodictatorship fascists and the post-dictatorship Marxists speaks volumes about the nature of nationalism and the consistency of nationalist narratives whether they are conservative or liberal, despotic or democratic, deployed by an elite class or the bourgeois revolutionaries. While Pablo Antonio Cuadra viewed the character of Güegüence as mestizo, Alejandro Dávila Bolaños viewed him as indigenous. Both saw him as a representative of the struggle against foreign imperialism. Both saw the “Indian” as a “problem” in need of civilisation, and better yet, absorption, or even having already been absorbed. In either case, the valorisation of this character and claiming him as a national figure created a narrative of a wily and long-suffering peasant, and the ideal of mestizaje gave nationalists an indirect mystical tie to the land.

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Notes 1 Although there is no byline for this newspaper article, I believe it was written by Jorge Eduardo Arellano, a scholar of Nicaraguan literature who has written much on the Vanguardia. 2 Dávila Bolaños states that he is quoting Luis González Obregón in his book México Viejo (he means Época colonial. México viejo: noticias históricas, tradiciones, leyendas y costumbres del periodo de 1521 á 1821, written in 1891), however, González Obregón is actually quoting Brassuer de Bourbourg in this particular instance, while the rest of the Dávila Bolaños quote is indeed a later paragraph in the González Obregón work. The actual Brassuer de Bourbourg quote is somewhat different: “il dérive de Nahualli, secret, mystérieux, caché; il fut appliqué dans l’originaux tribus de la langue mexicaine, parce que ce furent les prêtres et chefs de ces tribus qui introduisirent dans Tamoancha`n, ou Chiappas des mystères affreux ou` l’on versait le sang humain, et qui s’entouraient d’une multitude de superstitions, dont les restes prirent dans la suite le nom de Nagualisme. [it comes from Nahualli, secret, mysterious, hidden, it was applied to the original tribes of the Mexican language, because it was the priests and chiefs of these tribes who introduced in Tamoanchan or Chiapas horrific mysteries where human blood was spilled, and which are surrounded by a multitude of superstitions, the result of which took on the subsequent name of Nagualism.]” 3 Hooker is quoting Fonseca Amador (1985) from Viva Sandino, volume 2 of his Obras, 34: “Aunque se habla de ‘guerra de los indios,’ tiene sentido explicar que no se trata exactamente de indios, sino de campesinos mestizos que se expresan en español, que no conservan ya su lengua autóctona, aunque racialmente presenten un dominante origen indígena”.

References Books Cuadra, P. A. (1940): Breviario imperial. Madrid: Cultura española. ——— (1958): Torres de Dios; ensayos sobre poetas. Managua: Academia Nicaraguense de la Lengua. ——— (1986): Por los caminos van los campesinos. San José, Costa Rica: Libro Libre. Cuadra, P. A. & J. Coronel Urtecho (1968): El nicaragüense. 2nd ed. Managua: Distribuidora Cultural Nicaraguense. Dávila Bolaños, A. (1973): El Güegüense, o, Macho-ratón: drama épico indígena. Estelí: Tipografía “Geminis”. Fonseca Amador, C. (1985): Viva Sandino. Vol. 2. Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua. González Obregón, L. (1891): época colonial. México viejo; noticias históricas, tradiciones, leyendas y costumbres del periodo de 1521 á 1821. I. serie 2nd ed. México: Tip. de la Escuela Correccional de Artes y Oficios. Wheelock, J. (1980): Raíces indígenas de la lucha anticolonialista en Nicaragua: de Gil González a Joaquín Zavala, 1523 a 1881. 4a ed. México DF: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. White, S. F. (1986): Culture & Politics in Nicaragua: Testimonies of Poets and Writers. New York, NY: Lumen Books. Journal Articles Brinton, D. G. & C. Mántica Abaunza (1969): “El Güegüence, o, macho raton”, El Pez y la serpiente 10 (Invierno). Hooker, J. (2005): “‘Beloved Enemies’: Race and Official Mestizo Nationalism in Nicaragua”, Latin American Research Review 40.3: 14–39. Layera, R. (1991): “De la vanguardia al teatro nicaragüense. Valoración de Antonio Cuadra”, Revista Iberoamericano 157: 1033–1041. doi:10.5195/reviberoamer.1991.4976

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Unruh, V. (1987): “The Chinfonia Burguesa: A Linguistic Manifesto of Nicaragua’s AvantGarde”, Latin American Theatre Review 20.2: 37–48.

Newspaper Articles “Los ‘reaccionarios’ y su aventura política”. (11 August 2013): El Nuevo diario, www.elnuevodiario. com.ni/especiales/293961-reaccionarios-su-aventura-politica/ Personal Communication Cuellar, G. (17 October 2002): Personal Interview. Managua.

Index

adaptation 33, 47, 107, 115–16, 129, 156–68, 189–97, 205, 216 allegory 33, 35, 113, 156, 180, 206, 217–18, 226, 239 Álvarez Quintero, Joaquín 54, 76 Álvarez Quintero, Serafín 54, 76 Angola 8, 16, 20–21, 158, 168n, Antigone 32, 173–83, 184n Argentina 5, 14, 17–18, 22–23, 29, 38n, 79, 191, 200–13, 229n Arniches, Carlos 54 Atxaga, Bernardo 102–03, 107 audience 23, 35, 51, 54, 59, 61, 65, 69, 72, 75–77, 79, 87, 89, 91–93, 95, 102, 104, 116, 119, 131, 140, 146–49, 157, 159, 163–64, 166, 173–74, 179–80, 189–91, 225, 231, 237, 253, 255; audience response/reaction 69, 119, 147, 148–49; audience success 65; awake 118; entertainment of 105; involvement/ engagement of 30, 33, 72, 100, 102, 141, 147, 164, 224, 236; limitations in the repertoire audiences have access to 27, 35; politicization of 23, 100; questioning/challenging 33, 233, 237; transformation of 30 Avant-garde 26, 31, 35, 63, 87, 96, 101–02, 106, 129, 147, 246, 248–49; neo-Avantgarde 146 Basque country 29, 35–36, 90, 100–04, 145 Basque Statute of Autonomy 102 Bayani 115–19, 123n Blut und boden (Blood and Soil) 250–51 Bolivia 2, 5 Bonifacio, Andrés 112, 117–19, 123n Bortnik, Aída 200–01, 206, 211–12n Botero, Fernando 78 Brasil, Bosco 188, 194–96, 198n

Brazil 2, 5–7, 17–18, 27, 32, 59–69, 69n, 70n, 161, 163, 188–89, 194–96, 198n Brecht, Bertolt 31, 71, 94, 97n, 119–20, 123, 147 Brites, João 160–61, 168n Caetano, Marcelo das Neves Alves 16 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 32, 76, 78, 189, 194, 196 Cape Verde 8, 168n Carnation Revolution 16, 160, 168n Casona, Alejandro 54, 76, 79–81, 83–84n, 216 Castro, Fidel 20, 33, 231–34, 237, 239, 242–43, 243n Catalan Statute of Autonomy 128, 148 Catalonia 2, 4, 17, 31, 36, 90, 95, 126–37, 137n, 140, 145, 147, 148 censorship 24, 27, 35, 45–54, 55–56n, 58–69, 69–70n, 93, 113, 115, 122, 128–29, 137n, 141–42, 152, 175, 190, 194–95, 211n, 217, 221, 225, 227, 231–32, 234; accentuation of 18; censorship and Foucault 27–28; censorship and Theatre State Apparatuses 28; censorship criteria/ rules 47, 142–43, 150; censorship files 25, 48, 49, 60, 63; censorship in democracy 27; eluding/circumventing 31–33, 35, 46, 102, 111, 114, 123, 144–45, 155, 191, 194, 215, 243; establishment/imposition of 17, 22, 46, 47, 190, 215; film 141, 152n; law and 20; political 122, 173; press 46, 48; relaxation of 129; religious 27, 65; research on 27; self-censorship 27, 33, 51, 70, 228, 237, 242; wartime 46, 51 chamber theatre 29, 91–96, 97n Chile 5, 18–20, 31, 126, 133–37 Christianism 47, 65, 117, 123n, 149, 177–78; Christ 116 Cold War 18–22, 36–37, 114, 184n

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Index

Colombia 5, 74, 76–78, 83n Colonial War (guerras coloniais) 9, 13, 21, 31, 158–59, 163, 168 colonialism 2, 7, 9, 11–15, 30, 34, 36–37, 59, 111, 156, 158, 162, 167, 173; colony 1, 2, 5–8, 10, 12, 14, 16–17, 23, 31, 121, 155, 162, 168n, 178 complicity 33, 37, 201, 208, 210, 248 Corrales, José 233–43 Cossa, Roberto 200, 203–05, 211n Costa Rica 5, 20, 75, 77 Cuadra, Pablo Antonio 245–52, 258 Cuba 5, 9, 13, 20, 21, 23, 33–34, 75, 78, 83n, 231–34, 237, 239–40, 242–43, 255 Cuban Exile Theater 231, 243 Cuban Revolution 20, 234 Dagoll Dagom 35, 140–41, 143, 145–46, 148, 150–51 Dávila Bolaños, Alejandro 253–56, 258, 259n De a uno 33, 200–02, 206, 209–10, 211n, denial 4, 29, 32, 38, 62, 76, 201, 205–06, 210, 217 disobedience 37, 58, 100, 229 distribution of the sensible 58, 60–62, 65, 67–69 Dominican Republic 5, 81 dramatic literature 28, 96, 99, 105 dystopia 33, 216–18, 225 East Timor 8, 38n, 168n Ecuador 5 El Edificio 33, 214–29, 229n El Güegüence 33, 37, 245–58 El hombre y la costumbre 32, 173, 175, 178 El Público 119 El Salvador 5, 81 Els Comediants 130, 145 Els Joglars 137n, 144–145 empire 2–3, 12, 17, 28, 36–37, 72–73, 75, 163, 181, 220; anti-imperialist 9, 20, 23, 33, 88, 113–14, 123; imperial/ imperialism 6–7, 12, 16–17, 20, 23, 37, 59, 72–75, 77, 79, 113–14, 124n, 162, 245, 248, 251, 252, 257–58; neoimperialism 7, 9, 12–14, 22, 37, 38, 163 Equatorial Guinea 8, 13, 21, 32, 173–184, 184–85n Esono, Pancrasio 173, 175, 178–79, 183, 184–85n Estado Novo (Portugal) 16, 21, 27, 31, 45, 48, 51–52, 54–55, 158, 166–67, 168n

Estado Novo (Brazil) 17–18, 63, 188, 194–95 ETA 16, 104 exile 14, 19, 25–26, 28, 33–35, 63, 72, 76, 80–81, 100, 116, 122, 133, 136, 160, 175, 184n, 190, 200–01, 204, 208, 215, 228, 231–34, 237–38, 243 Expressionism 33, 91, 217, 222, 224, 228 Falange/Falangismo 73–74, 80, 83n, 142–43, 149, 247 Fascism 15–16, 19, 22, 81, 86, 158, 218, 246, 251 Franco, Francisco 4, 14, 16–17, 28–29, 31, 36, 45, 56n, 71–73, 75, 79, 82, 83n, 86–90, 92, 100–03, 107, 126–30, 132–33, 137n, 140–41, 149–50, 152n, 227 Francoism/Francoist 28, 29, 51, 54, 71–77, 82–85, 82n, 88, 90, 96, 112–22, 128, 140, 143, 145–49, 152, 152n, 177–78 freedom of expression 20, 47, 58, 60, 70n, 129 Frelimo 21, 158 Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacionalista (FSLN) 20–21, 33, 37, 245, 252–258 Fulda, Ludwig 52 Galicia 4, 16, 29, 35–36, 86–96, 97n, 129, 148 García Canclini, Néstor 7 García Lorca, Federico 31, 54, 71, 81, 111, 119–23, 128–29, 133 global South 1, 9–13, 20, 22–23, 38; Global South Studies 7, 9, 10 Guarnieri, Gianfracesco 58, 63–65, 69n Guatemala 5 Guinea-Bissau 8, 16, 168n Hauptmann, Gerhart 52 Hispanidad 28, 75, 83n, 175 Hispanoamérica 5, 17, 75 Historical Materialism see Marxism Honduras 5 Honwana, Luís Bernardo 155–168 Iberia/Iberian 1–6, 8, 10–13, 17, 22, 25, 35, 38, 86, 95, 96–97n, 103, 106, 203; Iberian Studies 3–4, 13, identity 5–10, 14, 29, 31, 36, 66, 72–76, 89, 93, 96, 99–100, 111–12, 114, 116, 118, 124n, 126–28, 130, 132, 134–37, 138n, 148, 162, 175, 188–89, 192, 202, 204, 210, 211n, 218, 233, 243, 254 improvisation 131, 164, 167

Index independent theatre 28–29, 31, 35–36, 86, 89, 93–96, 96–97n, 128–29, 140, 159–60 Indio 116, 118 Interrogatorio en Elsinore 188, 190 Juan, Anton 121–23 junta regime 18–19, 22, 191, 201 La casa de Bernarda Alba 120–21, 124n La nona 33, 200–06, 210, 211–12n La torna 144–45 Las sábanas 231–43 Latin America 1–14, 17, 20, 22–23, 28, 34, 70n, 71–82, 82n, 84n, 126, 178, 211n, 218, 227, 231, 253 Latin American Studies 1, 5–7, 10, 13 Lourenzo, Manuel 88, 90, 92, 95 Lumbera, Bienvenido 111–12, 116–23, 123n Lusophone 10, 159, 161, 163 Marcos, Ferdinand 22, 30–31, 37, 111–15, 118, 120–23, 123–24n Martí, José 5–7, 20 Martial Law 22, 111, 113–15, 118, 121, 123n, 127 Marxism 19, 21, 36, 94, 111, 120, 123, 257–58 Matilla Jimeno, Alfredo 80–81, 84n memory 24–26, 30, 32, 35, 104, 119, 133–36, 145–46, 149, 159, 166, 188, 192–93, 198, 210 Mexico 5, 17, 79, 80, 229n, 233, 245 Miller, Arthur 81–82, 84n, 102 Miroel Silveira Archives 25, 58–60, 64, 69, 69–70n Miskito Indians 256–58 Morgades, Trinidad 173, 175, 179–84, 184–85n Morínigo, Higinio 18, 33, 214–15, 217, 226–28 Mozambique 2, 8, 16, 21, 31, 37, 155, 157–59, 166, 168n Muñoz Seca, Pedro 54 Nascimento, Abdias do 58, 63, 65–66, 69n Nazism 15, 218, 227 Nguema, Francisco Macías 21, 174 Nicaragua 5, 20, 33, 36–37, 245–58, 259n No hablaré en clase 140–52 Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso! 31, 37, 155–68 Novas diretrizes em tempos de paz 188 o bando 35, 37, 155–68, 168n O Facho 8

263

Obiang, Teodoro 21, 32, 174–75, 183, 185n Ortiz, Fernando 7 O’Neill, Eugene 52, 65 Panama 5 Paraguay 5, 18, 21, 33–34, 38, 214–29, 229n Paraguayan civil war 227 Perón, Juan Domingo 17 Perón, Isabel 18, 201 Peru 5, 81 PETA (Philippine Theater Association) 115–16, 118, 122, 124n Philippines 2, 8–9, 21–22, 30–31, 35–37, 111–23, 123n Pinochet, Augusto 14, 19–20, 31, 126, 133 Pirandello, Luigi 52 Plá, Josefina 33–34, 214–29, 229n postdramatic theatre 140, 146–48, 149, 152 Postcolonial Studies 7–10 postcolonial/postcolonialism 7, 9–11, 14, 21–22, 26, 36–37, 111, 124n, 162–63, 174, 179, 181, 245–46 post-dictatorship/post-dictatorial 25, 33–38, 38n, 131–33, 136–37, 245, 252, 258 post-Negritude 179, 183, 185n private sphere 176, 200–01, 210 public sphere 33, 178, 200–01, 206, 208–10 Puerto Rico 5, 38n, 75–76, 78, 80–81 Quijano, Aníbal 6, 178, 185n Rancière, Jacques 60–62, 66, 68–69 recovery 25, 86–87, 95, 100, 126, 225, 249 Renamo 21 re-humanisation 225 Rivas Cherif, Cipriano 80–81, 84n Rizal, José 112, 115–20, 122–23, 123n Rodrigues, Nelson 58, 63, 65, 67–68 role of art 191 Said, Edward 8, 72, 124n Salazar, António de Oliveira 13, 16–17, 27, 31, 36, 45–46, 50–51, 55, 86, 166 Sandinista see Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacionalista (FSLN) São Tomé and Príncipe 8, 168n Saviotti, Gino 52 Second World War 3, 7, 16, 19, 21, 27, 46–50, 52, 62, 136, 188, 196, 218, 227, 229n sexuality/sexual 29, 33, 51, 62, 68, 70n, 101, 211n, 231, 233, 239–40 Shakespeare, William 32, 188–89, 192

264

Index

silence 27, 33, 35, 55, 69, 86, 93, 106, 148, 158–59, 175, 209–10, 225, 234, 236–38, 242–43 Silveira, Helena 58, 63, 67 site-specific 161, 165–66 Somoza regime 20–21, 33, 37, 245–48, 252, 257 space 24, 91, 103, 105, 112, 130–31, 134, 173, 175, 184, 191, 200–01, 205–10, 218, 233; domestic 144; dramatic 201–03; mimetic vs. diegetic 202–03, 205, 209–10; performance 103, 147–48; public 113, 130, 132, 137; space as venue 90, 108, 132, 140, 145, 148, 157; time and 36, 61, 121, 146, 163, 167, 242 Spain 1, 3–8, 11–14, 16–17, 21–22, 28–29, 34–36, 38n, 45, 51–52, 54, 56n, 60, 71, 73–79, 81–82, 82n, 84n, 86, 88–90, 94–94, 97n, 99–100, 102–03, 107, 111–14, 116, 121, 126–28, 133, 137n, 140, 141, 143, 145–46, 148–50, 152n, 174, 177–78, 184, 215, 247–48, 251 Spanish Civil War 13, 16, 27, 35, 45–49, 51, 53–54, 55n, 75, 79, 83n, 86, 95, 100, 119, 121–22, 126, 129, 137n, 145–46, 148, 152n, 215 Spanish transition to democracy 17, 29, 100–01, 103–04, 107, 128, 130, 140–41, 142, 145, 147, 149, 152, 152n Special Period 232–33 spectators 30–31, 51, 141, 147, 158–59, 164–68, 201, 206, 211n, 255 Stalin/Stalinism 15, 218, 227 Stroessner, Alfredo 18, 214, 217, 227–28

subaltern/subalternity 5–7, 11–12, 20, 23, 37, 111, 116–17, 162 Tamayo, José 28, 71–82, 82–84n Teatro Antroido 96, 97n Teatro Circo 96 theatre translation 48–55, 55–56n, 87, 93, 101, 124n, 216, 248 Tolentino, Aurelio 112 Torrado, Adolfo 54 Torre, Néstor 116–17 torture 18–19, 21, 25, 32, 45, 136, 149–50, 174, 188, 190–91, 195, 197, 200–01, 228 trauma 13–14, 16, 22, 24–26, 29–31, 33–34, 116, 122, 126, 133–34, 136–37, 146, 183, 192, 198, 236 United States 1, 6–7, 18–22, 37, 38n, 52, 70n, 81–82, 112–14, 162, 211n, 226, 228, 256–258 Uruguay 5, 18–19, 32, 189–91, 194, 198n, 229n Vanguardia (Nicaraguan movement) 246–49, 251, 259n Varela, Carlos Manuel 188–92, 198 Vargas, Getúlio 17, 27, 32, 63, 188, 194–96, 198n Venezuela 4 will to empire 73, 75 World War II see Second World War Yerma 121–22