Juan José Guzmán-Pérez y Carlos Vicente Domínguez ofrecen en este artículo un análisis de la propuesta de traducción y de adaptación escenificada de Dîner avec Mr. & Mrs. Q. (1969) de Agustín Gómez-Arco. A pesar del renacimiento que ha vivido la figura de Agustín Gómez-Arcos en los últimos años, su producción teatral permanece oculta a la sombra de su narrativa. Dîner avec Mr. & Mrs. Q. es la cuarta pieza escrita por Gómez-Arcos en su exilio parisino, propiciado por la censura y la falta de libertad de la España franquista. Representada en París pero olvidada en España, la obra original yace en el Instituto de Estudios Almerienses. Fruto de esta necesidad de recuperación del teatro gomezarquiano, se parte de una propuesta de edición crítica realizada por Carlos Vicente sobre la obra original, redactada en francés. Se pretende reeditar la pieza teatral original, no solo traduciéndola por primera vez al español, sino también presentando una propuesta de adaptación escenificada que podría contribuir a la difusión del teatro de Gómez-Arcos en la actualidad.
Agustín Iglesias is, together with Antonia Bueno and Paco Muñoz, one of the founders, in 1979, of the company Guirigai (made up of exiled Spaniards, Argentinians, Salvadorians and Uruguayans). The company maintained its headquarters in Los Santos de Maimona (Badajoz), where, in 2006, it opened Sala Guirigai to the public. Agustín Iglesias recognises himself as ‘son or little brother of the independent theatre that emerged in the 60s’: he joined the Independent Theatre in 1978 and, after spending a few months in the Basque group Geroa in Durango, he returned to Madrid and founded the Teatro Guirigai. In this article Agustín Iglesias presents the trajectory of Guirigai and reflects on the independent theatre he knows from the inside.
In this article, Daniel Sarasola analyzes Penteo, unpublished contemporary tragedy by Lourdes Ortiz, written from The Bacchae by Euripides, released in 1982. It represents her first approach to the Greek myths. The author finds through it a methodology of playwriting based on the parody inversion of a pre-existing plot which she will practice with greater freedom in later works. The use of extracts from the choruses of the original tragedy, the inclusion in collage of lyrical texts by other authors and the possible influence of August Strindberg´s station play in the structure of the second part of her play are examined.
María Jesús Bajo Martínez examines the place of independent theatre in Andalusia. The Independent Theatre movement emerged in Spain in the mid-1960s with a twofold aim: to renovate the stage, in opposition to stagnant commercial theatre, and to raise social awareness against the dictatorship. This movement, which came to an end in the early years of democracy, gave rise to the theatre of today. Numerous groups have sprung up in Andalusia, some of them of great importance on the national stage. But other ways of making and understanding theatre preceded it, facilitating its emergence.
In this article, Carlos Vicente Domínguez, presents the results of a brief semiotic analysis of the absurdist farce Sentence prononcée contre P. et J. (1970), an exilic work by Agustín Gómez-Arcos that has not been performed until now. Following the models of theatrical semiotics, he studies the segmentation (plot), space, characters and time of this play, which reveals not only an assimilation by the author of contemporary stage theories, but also an exploration, from the absurd, of the subversive possibilities of theatre.
In this article, Chelo Ansino Torres offers a brief analysis of Francisco Benítez’s theatrical production. Until now, this Cordobesian author has not been much read nor played. This investigation focuses on the stylistic variety of his work and underlines its quality, written in a distinctive language, where poetry interweaves with routine situations whose dialogues are humorous and sarcastic, always at the service of his original characters. Human beings dealing with an unjust world are a constant concern in Benítez’s production; therefore the author portrays anonymous people and their helplessness.
This article examines the limited presence of women’s drama during the 70’s ans the 80’s, highlighting the slow process of diffusion of some plays by authors such as Carmen Resino, Lourdes Ortiz, Ana Diosdado, and Lidia Falcón. Few of these women were able to carve out a space in the theatrical landscape of their time, and many plays that challenged the dominant social model were lost. By comparing works that offer critical representations of female roles, the article explores the relationship between female authorship, themes, and the enduring silence surrounding their work.
In this article, Juan José Guzmán-Pérez and Carlos Vicente Domínguez analyse the project to translate and adapt Agustín Gómez-Arcos’ play Dîner avec Mr. & Mrs. Q. (1969) for the stage.Despite the renaissance that Agustín Gómez-Arcos has experienced in recent years, his theatrical work remains in the shadows compared to his novels. Dîner avec Mr. & Mrs. Q. is the fourth play written by Gómez-Arcos during his exile in Paris, to which he was forced by censorship and the lack of freedom in Franco’s Spain. Performed in Paris but forgotten in Spain, the original text of the play can be found at the Instituto de Estudios Almerienses. The need to recover Gomezarquian theatre led to Carlos Vicente’s critical edition of the original play, written in French. The aim is to re-edit the original play, not only by translating it into Spanish for the first time, but also by presenting a proposal for a stage adaptation that could contribute to the dissemination of Gómez-Arcos’ theatre today.
In this article, Anne-Laure Feuillastre presents José María Bellido’s two-act play Los relojes de cera (written between 1966 and 1968), which has not been performed, despite a very surprising authorisation from the censorship board in 1971 (with numerous deletions). The text is still unpublished today and its manuscript is in the General Administration Archives, a copy having been sent to the Censorship Board in 1971. Bringing this work to light, which can be seen as a good example of the ‘dramaturgies of oblivion’, is part of the work of recovering a theatre rejected by Francoism and forgotten by democracy, which deserves to be visible in the history of Spanish theatre.
Rafael Torán explains how he found what is probably Miguel Romero Esteo’s first play, De lentejas y garbanzos—possibly written around 1965—and published by El toro celeste in the volume entitled Esencial MRE (collection ‘etclibros: estudios’, 2019). He presents his adaptation of the text in collaboration with Germán Jiménez, Miguel Gallego, Guillermo Busutil, Mercedes León, José Antonio Sánchez Gómez, Reyes Oteo, Ángel Espartero, Jordi Coca and Carmen Rico, as well as his staging of the play with a cast that includes Alejandra Cid, Javi Viana, Ana Moreno Pérez, Virginia DeMorata and José Manuel Taracido. Factoría Echegaray and the Miguel Romero Esteo Association have joined forces to premiere the play in Málaga on 20 February 2025, with six performances from 20 February to 1 March.
This article by Eduardo Chivite is the result of the work of cataloguing archive material compiled by the research group of the ESAD (Escuela Superior de Arte Escénico) in Cordoba since 2023. Over the last few years, several meetings have been held with actors from the Cordoba Independent Theatre, who have donated this material. Eduardo Chivite presents the I Asamblea de Teatro Cordobés (18-20/11/1983), a turning point in terms of institutional attention, group organisation and social impact on the city’s cultural life. The I Assembly was the brainchild of an organising committee that brought together the five groups operating in Cordoba at the time: Buhardilla, Grillo Verde, Trápala, Teatro de la Facultad de Filosofía and Teatro Universitario. Although the oldest group in Córdoba was founded in 1974, most of the others were formed between 1976 and 1979.
Pedro Ruiz Pérez presents Luis Riaza’s play El palacio de los monos in the context of Spain’s transition to democracy. After the work was included in Cátedra’s canonising collection ‘Letras hispánicas’ in 1978, Riaza experienced a couple of years of notable publishing and stage presence, almost a generational recovery of independent, experimental and antifranquista theatre. Barely five years later, in the drift towards the “normalización” by the new cultural policies, the aforementioned path was cut short. The play under study (written in the immediacy of Franco’s death) prefigures in its plot development a dead end for the political situation, which will be so confirmed with the decline of this type of theatre.
In this article, Cerstin Bauer-Funke analyses the different forms and functions of realism in three selected works: Cerca de las estrellas (1959), by Ricardo López Aranda, Miedo al hombre (1959), by Joaquín Marrodán, and El Cristo (1964), by José Martín Recuerda. These plays deal with three different ways of rebelling against repression. The configuration of the dramatic space also plays a central role, as it is a fundamental element of the realism practised by these playwrights: the dramatic space described in great realistic detail—a block of flats, a boarding house and a church respectively—is always an enclosed space which, as a microcosm, refers to the macrocosm, i.e. the Spain of Franco’s dictatorship.
In this article, Miguel F. Gil Palacios examines the sublime in Horror vacui, a play completed in 1994 that completes the cycle of the ‘grotescomachies’ and deploys the most varied theatrical styles and genres and, above all, presents a complex structure of several interwoven dramatic levels. The study focuses on this interweaving of dramatic levels that play with the most diverse forms of ‘mises en abîme’.
In this article, Ramón Soto Gámez examines the European influence of Romeo Esteo and his work. When Romero Esteo appeared in the literary field, the tensions inherent to this domain hindered his repercussion, despite the praise his work obtained. This ostracism towards he who opens a new path could lie in the fact that, in parallel to the great names of world innovators, his plays were more likely to be recognized outside Spain. This can be proven by the bonds the playwright maintained with foreign publishers and authors, and, besides, is confirmed by his personal archive and the newspaper archives.
Impressions du Kenya. Le théâtre et l’apprentissage de la langue française deviennent les maillons d’un dépassement de soi.
Cet article est un récit d’expérience issu du cours-atelier d’écriture créative et de travail plastique « Poèmes pour cerfs-volARTs » mis en place, dans le cadre du projet ARTLINGO, pendant l’année universitaire 2017-2018, à l’intention des étudiants inscrits en études roumaines (niveaux de compétence linguistique entre B1 et C2 ou locuteurs de langue d’héritage). Sont présentés d’abord, les objectifs, le déroulement de l’atelier ainsi que le public participant, ensuite sont analysées les difficultés et les réussites de notre démarche, pour ouvrir enfin quelques pistes de réflexion sur cette approche expérimentale de l’enseignement des langues.
Que todo arda (2020), by Israel Lewites Cornejo, is inspired by the socio-political context in Nicaragua, particularly the violences of spring 2018, and produces a metaphorical reading of referential reality that, between fantasy and fantastic, draws on myth and wonder without denying horror. At the heart of this generic hybridism, fantasy dominates and offers, between adventure and mystery, a hallucinatory vision of Nicaraguan social and political reality, where wonder vies with terror, and hope with indignation. We’ll be looking at how this exchange between fantasy and criticism of different forms of power works, and how the marvellous elements create a utopian contrast that encourages the same critical outlook. Finally, we’ll be looking at the forms of indignation that, between insurrection and the sacralization of the hero, warn against all forms of fanaticism and violence.
